No good deed goes unpunished

So the kids came up yesterday to help bury Azul, and spent three or four hours digging a giant hole then filling it in again. Em came up as well, and cut some stove wood during the big dig. Then everybody came inside to warm up and dry their boots and jackets. K's jeans and socks were dripping, so I lent him my awesome pink chenille jammie pants to wear while his pants dried in front of the fire. They might have been too pink, though, because he switched to shorts from his gym bag. We ate fresh homemade rolls (thank you, bread machine!) and chatted, and everybody got ready to leave about dusk.

I went out to wave, and they were hopelessly stuck in the driveway. Hopelessly. Snow was falling in a way most picturesque. Em had the big low American car. S. had a pert little Scion or something. Both rubbish in the snow. I was shocked – my bald-tired Subie has no trouble crunching down the driveway, zipping up the little hill and erupting through the berm onto the road. Once on the road, slick plowed ice is sometimes a problem and I have to go down the hill and back around to the paved road – but loose snow is no big whup. So, amazingly, they're stuck, and we get a bucket of sand and pieces of cardboard and bags of dry leaves and shovels and spend a couple of hours rocking and digging… Everybody is tired, K. is in shorts and I'm pretty feeble, but we keep at it. Em's Mercury is heavy enough to get going and onto the road once we got it out of the loose stuff and into the ruts. The Scion is just worthless. It's probably 8 p.m., and we finally get traction in the packed-down tracks, and it's going… going… fleadgh. Not going fast enough. Slides right off the drive near the barn. So I limp back to the house, get the Sube, and using tie-down straps, pull them back on to the driveway. They get a run at the hill, going, going…not fast enough. slide off the road again. We hook up the same tie-down straps and this time they bust. The guys go to the gym for heavy rope. K. works to untangle the rope. He loses patience. We all troop inside, they call for roadside assistance, we wait. It is well over an hour when the tow truck shows up.

I need some new tie-downs, and a tow strap would be good.