Snow and Windshields

The weirdest thing happened to me this morning.

I was driving with Arthur to Scary Reading Hour at the public library. (For those of you who don't know, Scary Reading Hour is scary because A) the presenters are very nice people who are Very Enthusiastic and B) it's filled with twenty-something parents who wear low jeans and thongs.)

Last night it snowed about a half inch, but the roads and sidewalks were clear. I had to scrape the snow off of the car's windows to be able to see out, and I had the defrost cranked up. Anyway, to get parking at Scary Reading Hour, one has to get to the library about twenty minutes before it starts. So there I was driving down 11th Street when I heard a kind of popping noise. It wasn't a ding, or a ping, or George Micheal singing. No other cars were around us, and no gravel truck was in front of me, so I couldn't figure out what the noise was -- although in hindsight it sounded like shifting ice. As I drove along, wondering what the noise was and exactly where it had come from, a huge U-shaped crack appeared in my windshield. It was about two feet wide and a foot tall, and it was centered in the glass.

I figured the defrost, which was still cranked up, combined with a gravel ding from two years ago, stressed the glass enough to cause it to crack. It doesn't appear to be getting any larger, and we'll have to replace the windshield later this week. I tried to take a picture of the crack, but it only looks like a picture of someone's car in an underground parking lot.

Arthur and I got parking space number one and we sat in the Geriatric Parents Club section of Scary Reading Hour.

Oh. Yes. On the Arthur front, he's pushing some molars out or something. The result is that when he sleeps, it's random; when he's awake, he's easily frustrated and cranky, which makes him more likely to imitate a howler monkey. He's also very -- ahem -- congested, and I'm considering wearing a smock when I have to pick him up.