She called a little after nine, wondering what the road report and traffic cams looked like.

Well, I don't know. I'm still in bed, finishing up the sudoku.

It's my first day of leave, you know.

"Oh, I didn't know."

So I wake up the laptop and refresh the two pages left on the screen from our conversation last night. Checking the map, and the eight separate traffic cams between her and me.

The map? Not so hot. "Slick in spots" and "snowfall with blowing snow".

Craaap. The wife is already prepared to stay yet another day in Capitol City.

She's been gone five nights already. The heelers and I miss her. I check the webcams.

Heck, they're incredibly good. Traffic is light. Yes, it's mainly semis, but it's mostly semis in good weather, too. But all the places she was worried about, the asphalt is black. Not a speck of snow or ice. And no ground blizzards at all.

The only place that's crappy is right where she's at. Probably less than a mile from where she's sitting the camera shows snow covering almost all the road, with wisps of windblown white swirling across the interstate. I can see why she doesn't want to head home. And the forecast for tomorrow is much better. No snowfall, warmer, lots of sunshine.

But wind. Lots of wind for Saturday. Let us not forget the wind. It is the wind that makes our winter driving treacherous. It rarely snows enough to be a problem, but put a wind on top of that and the tire paths become glare ice and the ground blizzards leave you driving, literally, from one reflector post to the next.

No fun over a hundred miles.

I convince her to leave her warm, safe motel room and drive the drive. Happy that she will soon be headed back to us.

And worried that something may happen, and we'll all wish like hell that she had waited a day.

The wife calls back and lets me know when she leaves the city. I do the math, make a best guess as to when she'll pass before the camera at the summit between her and youngest son's university, and when that time comes close, I start hitting "refresh" on that view.

And never spot her.

Later, much later than it should have been, she calls from his dorm room. And apologizes for not calling earlier. His finals are done, and he's almost packed. The road reports are still vaguely bad, but the camera views promising.

They'll caravan home.

At 13:29 youngest son calls to let me know they've left University Town.

At half a minute past 13:29 the wife calls to let me know they've left University Town.

I guess he's in front.

I do the math again, and at the best-speed estimate I start hitting refresh on the mid-way traffic cam. It only takes a frame every three minutes but, hey, I could get lucky.

I'm not sure, but that might be youngest son's green car following the red semi down the hill...

Phone rings. Hunter with lots and lots of questions for picking a deer area to hunt next fall. (Yes, they plan that far ahead. Most of 'em, anyway.)

By the time the call is over, we're long past the time half my family should have passed that spot.

I call.

Yeah, they're well past that camera. In fact, they're almost to the next, which is fogged over.

They'll be home in less than fifteen minutes. I apparently did not endanger the love of my life just to have her back with us.

I haul the heelers outside with me to wait while I shovel snow from one side of the driveway to the other. The little maskless one cannot stand the cold, and is allowed back in.

Her blind sister, however, has an equally frozen squirrel cornered in the front trees. She's content to sit on the sidewalk and wait.

And has a hard time wagging her tail fast enough when she first has her Alpha arrive on the left, and then her boy shows up on the right.

The only two things she wanted for the holidays.