My mother had a phrase for days like today:

Slicker that hot snot on a greased goat's gut.

I can guarantee two things:

First of all, my mother picked this up somewhere because she didn't speak in such ways. Well, occasionally when she completely lost it and stormed around. Then she could rip off some good ones.

Second of all, when she said it, it was if she was getting away with something. She came from a father who tried to be very proper in his speech, though sometimes he had a creative phrase come out of him. She always said the particular goat phrase with a smile, and if she could have, there would have been a wink.

It thawed last night, and then it rained and rained, and then sometime early this morning it froze.

Avadore's bus pulls right in front of our house, so I watch him get on from one of the front windows. This morning I watched him slip on the ice, and then get up. I almost went to the door, but then I thought, No, he's okay. Let him do it. And then he slipped again, and didn't get up. So I ran outside in my gray sweat pants, and lavendar tie-dyed peace sweatshirt from when I was twelve, and my sock-feet, and my hair in a messy bun to pick up the kid. At least I had my glasses on.

And oh, it was slick. I almost slipped and fell myself.

As I came out, I could hear Avadore screaming and howling. The bus driver got out of the bus, and walked towards Avadore. I got to him first, because I was booking it, and I picked him up and held him as he yowled.

The bus driver said that every single kid had fallen on the ice that morning. He said that no one watches one little boy get on the bus, and this morning he couldn't get down the steps from where he lives, so the driver had to go and help him down.

Finally, Avadore calmed down, and I checked him over to make sure there was no blood, and I carried him to the bus. He quit crying, and I asked if he was okay, if he would live. He said, "Yeah," and so I put him on the bus, and the driver put him in his seat.

I did not slip on my way inside.

I just went out, about 10:15, and it's still so slick, and incredibly windy. I poured ice melt all over. I slipped but didn't fall. (My back is not happy; I wrenched it a little in the process of saving me from the fall.)

When Avadore's bus comes, in about three minutes, I'll go out and help him inside.

That's all I need -- a preschooler with a broken coccyx (tailbone), Latin (coccygis) for cukoo's bill, or crow's beak, depending on who you ask. Its function is to be a muscle attatchment, and to be broken.

See? My anthrogeek knowledge strikes again.