Word: Rime

 

rime

¹

[ rahym ]

noun

1. Also called rime ice. an opaque coating of tiny, white, granular ice particles, caused by the rapid freezing of supercooled water droplets on impact with an object.

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Dale was going to be late. He knew it in his heart. Sure, he was not technically late yet, but with the way his morning had been going? There was no other outcome. First his alarm had not gone off.  Had it only been that he could make do. But then he found out that his house had mice. How did he find that out? One of the rodents had chewed through his fridge’s power cable during the night. 

That alone had made his want to call out from work. But he already knew that was useless. His boss was someone who believed that nothing but emergencies warranted calling out, and the only thing that qualified as an emergency was a trip to the hospital. 

So now Dale had to deal without a good breakfast, without his normal lunch items, and while running late. And still, he might have made it. But then he got outside. His entire car had frosted over in the night. It was not a thick layer of ice, only a thin sheet of rime. It should have been easy to scrape off. But his ill fortune made even that far more difficult than it needed to be. The normally thin ice had not just affected the windows, as it normally would. No, this time it had crept into the door. He had no idea how that had happened, but it had. 

And it made opening the door far harder than it needed to be. He had struggled against the partially frozen door for what felt like minutes. And when it had finally popped open, it had done so with such rapidity and suddenness, that he was knocked back. This caused him to trip over a rock, and fall. Now his pants were covered with dirt and frost, and he still had to scrape the rime off his car enough that he could drive. 

That was blessedly easy. His ice scraper had not been damaged by any mysterious events, so it worked just fine. It did take an extra few minutes though. A few extra minutes that he was not heading to work. A few extra minutes that could end up making him late. Sure, if he drove fast enough, he could just barely make it. But with how the day was going, he was sure he would run into some kind of road work. Or get all red lights. Or get into an accident. Or any number of delays, really. 

Still, Dale got in the car. Sitting on pants that had recently been on frost covered ground was not fun, but he could handle it. He would have to at work, anyway. He turned the key and braced himself for whatever disaster would befall him on his drive. Then he turned it again. And again. Dale’s eye twitched. Was he cursed? Had he upset some karmic deity without knowing it? He must have. It was the only explanation for why, after everything that had happened so far, now he found out that his car refused to start.

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Ever have a day like this? A day where just everything goes wrong? Seems like that's happening more and more recently in the world.