a letter to mother nature.

Dear Mother Nature,

Who do you think we are, Upstate New York? It's too early for snow. Please come back in about a month, when the snow has a fighting chance of sticking to the ground and being pretty, as opposed to obnoxious.

Kisses and Hugs,

adie

i'm totally prepared for the hurricane. bring it, irene!

Some people are boarding up their windows.

Some people are at the grocery store, stocking up on milk, eggs, and any other perishable item they can think of that clearly won't survive a power outage. Except toilet paper. That will probably not need to be refrigerated. (Incidentally, I never understood why people bought toilet paper. It's not like you need more of it when the power goes out, unless you plan on stopping rain leaks from getting into your house, at which point I think you have bigger issues than whether or not you have enough toilet paper).

What did I do to prepare for the hurricane?

I went to the gym. You know, in case the power goes out and trees fall everywhere and I can't get to the gym.

Clearly, I have my priorities straight.

Well, I'm off to go buy some toilet paper.

Just kidding.

a three hour tour.

You can do so many things in three hours.

You could go to a movie...

You could take a nap...

You could eat a six course gourmet meal...

...or you could drive 10 miles home from work in the 8" of snow that accumulated in four hours.

Guess which one I did yesterday?

Now, I have no right to complain. It took the poor boyfriend, along with thousands of other DC metro residents, 6-8hrs to get home last night. And I'd imagine that's just the people who live within a 10-15 mile radius. Someone on the radio last night posed a very good (and terrifying) question: what if we had a real emergency? What if, god forbid, we had to evacuate the city for some reason? Basically, it looks like we're screwed. Sorry, DC! You're not going anywhere.

When I hit the roads just over two hours after the snow started, the plows hadn't even gotten around yet. In a city where 1" shuts us down, this is what we like to call "no bueno" (that's Spanish for "this really sucks!") Because the federal government and many other offices closed early, there were just too many cars on the road by the time it got bad for the plows to get in. My drive home looked something like this:

And it was even worse because there was snow. Like, a million times worse.

By about 10pm, the slush on the roads turned to ice. Thankfully I wasn't on the road at that point, but some family friends of ours were. So they came over (since our house is on their way home), and we had a sleepover! With ice cream and wine! Super fun!

Now it's all sunny out and the weather is like "hey look at me! I'm deceivingly beautiful! This snow isn't harmful, it's just pretty and makes your backyard look like a frosted cupcake! Come play with me!" But I know better. I'm on to you, Mother Nature.