City car on a country road...

... and the city car was mine.

There I was this afternoon, driving down our hill on my way to the post office. As soon as I pulled out of our driveway, I saw the neighbor's goats on the road and heading towards the grass around our pond. Give me a blessed break.

I honked the car horn to get the goats' attention, and then I used my car to herd them back towards their own property. Which usually works just fine. However, I forgot about the mounds of gravel that are underneath the grass on the neighbor's side of the road. The problem with the gravel is that it's on an incline which goes down towards the drainage ditch which runs to the drainage pipe that's underneath the road. And the problem with that is my car is definitely a city car... two-seater sports car, low to the ground, and even though it's a heavy car, the tires got hold of that gravel and just slid a little bit towards that incline on the side of the road.

As I was sliding towards the drainage ditch, the goats were jumping back over the neighbor's fence and onto their own property. Smart goats.... they know enough to get out of the way of a city car being driven by a city girl.

When I realized what was happening, I slammed on my brakes, said a not-nice word or two, and felt the wheels of that car burying themselves deeper into that gravel. The goats were on their side of the fence, in their own field, watching me and my car.

Another not-nice word or two followed that... and then I was determined to get myself and my car back onto the road without having to walk back to the house and get my husband to push the car out. (And then have to listen to him saying "How in the world did you manage to do that?")  Details... men are always looking for details.

I tried to drive the car backwards onto the road, not once but twice. Didn't work. More not-nice words were bouncing off the inside of my car. Then I drove closer to the neighbor's fence, thinking that I could back up more easily if I got those tires away from the gravel. The goats saw my car getting very close to their fence and then ran off into the field. As I said--- smart goats.  Getting closer to the fence didn't work... it only got my car deeper into the very tall grass that's probably filled with all kinds of crawling and slithering things. No way was I going to get out of my car in all of that grass and go get my husband.

Only one thing to do.... drive the car down further into the incline, drive past the drainage pipe, and then drive the car up and over the incline through the grass on the other side of the drainage pipe which I knew to be gravel-free.  So that's what I did with my pretty little city car.... drove it into and through all of that tall grass (probably ran over half a dozen mice) and then gave it some gas when I passed that drainage pipe and that got my car out of the drainage ditch, up and over the incline and the tall grass, and back on the blasted road.

I stopped on the road and looked back at the spot where my car had been stuck, and then thanked my lucky stars that we didn't get the pouring rain that soaked the center of our town yesterday, because that drainage ditch would have been filled with at least two feet of water. And then the inside of my car would have really been filled with not-nice words.