Lets see, the white mother f*cker starts coming down since right before Thanksgiving here. It was all good to begin with. It was a fresh breath of air. It was the first sign of winter. We started to decorate the house with icicle lights, the Christmas tree, the gingerbread man, and the presents, and the stockings. It all began with that fuzzy, cozy sentimental feeling. After all, who doesn't want to have a white Christmas?

Life was still good when we watched Dick Clark, now Brian Seacrest host the New Year Eve's show at Time Square drinking hot chocolate inside the house. Then it all went downhill from here. The snow officially became a nuisance right after the New Year's Day. 

The next morning I gotta get up at 5 to leave the house at 6 so that I was able to punch in by 7. The overnight snow made the 30 minute drive to work feel like 30 hours. The never-seem-to-end, winding, sliding, salt-mixed-with-mud road exhausted my patience before I had a chance for my first cup of coffee in the morning. (God d*mn it, I could think myself being really bitchy in the morning, not to mention my patients and their family.) It was unbearable when the wind started to blow. The wind factor makes the temperature drop at least another 10-20F. It was saddening. It literally feels like "Su-Wu-Mu-Yung" in the winter time, right in this parking lot.  

When the snow is dry, its not too bad as long as the road gets plowed. But last week we had sleet. And for the first time my car got stuck on the driveway. Whats worst was that it started in the middle of the night when the power went off. We had a cold night WITHOUT heat in the house for the night. Brrr. I couldn't make any hot drinks either the next morning because our stove runs by the electricity. I called my in-laws and stayed in their house for food and shelter.

6 hours later at 3pm the power was back. I drove home at the speed of 20mph. However, heading home simply made me happy and content. Then just when I was ready to drive into the driveway, the car was stuck into the big patch of "icy slurpy." It wouldn't drive forward or reverse backward. It was a total mess. It was helpless.

I manually opened the garage door, got myself the shovels and the rock salt. I HAD TO get my car out of the icy mud. There was no other moments than this that I felt like living in Michigan is like living in the "out west." Like you saw in the western movie that women needed to rough it up by themselves. Simply put, something like in White Mountain where Renee Zellweger and Nicole Kidman got their horse wagan out of the mud. (Or was it in other western?) Anyway, and for the first time I felt that having a husband is necessary living here in this "out west."

I did not cry if you wonder. I had things taken care of by my own hands. I broke the ice with a shovel, cleared the ice slurp, and used up a whole bag of rock salt. The car was out after 45 minutes of struggle on the driveway. oh man. Then I saw husband's car slowly pulling closer into the driveway, that was one of the BEST moment in my life. He finished the rest of the job I could not physically finish myself. How wonderful it is to have a man in life!

I think the moral here is that there is nothing romantic about snow, really.