Thundersnow & Icenadoes .. What?!

C'mon, Midwest...

..... calm down?!

We all knew, if we'd heeded at all to the predictions of the Farmer's Almanac, that this winter would be pretty brutal. At least we were warned.

Today I heard a new term: thundersnow. I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, although it's pretty self-explanatory in all of its unofficial existence as a real thing. Sadly enough, it's a preeeetty accurate description of exactly what's going on in the Midwest this week. At least it is in Ohio.

We woke up today to roads that looked wet, at most.
Nope. Wet-looking roads this week are actually panels of ice disguised as drivable surfaces. Traffic everywhere was a jumbled mess of brake lights and dormant speedometers, dotted with flashing police lights to mark all of the fender benders. You win, winter.

icy roads. everywhere.

To compound the slick roadways, Cincinnati is presently suffering a plague of potholes. Between the ice and the giant tire-hating gaps, the traffic map I found of just our area alone looks... awful.


looks legit, right?

Need a street view of that?
No problem:

potholes, aka road acne

It's like a game of Frogger out there trying to navigate any local streets without bouncing in and out of these stupid things. Our poor cars :(.

Fortunately, I spent most of my day indoors with the office staff, away from the debachle that is driving around here. Lizzy even bought us lunch, because she's super sweet and generous that way.

perfecto!

^ So maybe that wasn't the best choice considering my fitness goals, but in my defense, I think I managed to at least neutralize the threat at the gym tonight. I'm feeling it for sure today, but in that satisfying way that reminds me this will all be worth it.

Staying off the roads is my mantra today, so tonight it's just relaxing with Rob & the pups.

Be safe out there, drivers!

xo | cmd

WHAT.. A .. WEDNESDAY

Today started off with a 4-hour commute to work.
That's right, FOUR... HOURS.

I'm totally accustomed to a lengthy commute whenever I take Sydni out to Milford before heading to the office, but today was an entirely different story.

This... a 5-car accident on the Beechmont Levee, was to blame for the severing of a major commuting artery between basically two sides of Cincinnati:

borrowed this from the cincinnati enquirer
photog: liz dufour

^ I didn't know exactly what had happened or see any of the pictures until I got to work.... at 10:30.

There's nothing like an extended stop-and-go drive to make someone crazy, especially when it's in Cincinnati, where the traffic already flirts with the line of insanity when it comes to commute congestion. I left my house at 6:30, like usual, to drop Sydni off in Milford.

7:25 am.

First, I thought it was an unusually-slow advancement through a routine light that does lag, but not like it did today. Every 30 seconds showed another driver doing a 5-point turn in the middle of the road to turn back and find an alternate route. But not us... we're gonna brave it.

ummm....

Crap. Those flares advised us all that not only was our on-ramp closed, but that it was proooobably going to be a long trip back around. The cars coming the other way weren't doing much coming at all.. they were mostly just sitting as we inched on past.

squad car lights

So we followed each other back onto eastbound Beechmont, which, mind you is the exact direction from which I had originally came about an hour and 15 minutes earlier by this point. Squad cars with flashing lights and sirens driving down the medians never really mean good things.

bumper to bumper :(

And back on up the hill, which by this time in the morning [8:25 or so] gave a discouraging glimpse of all the traffic that was clearly headed in the wrong direction.

I decided to share my confusion with my phone's camera:

So long story short [and I do mean long], after using an entire quarter tank of gas in touch-and-go traffic for the next TWO hours of our lives, through stoplights that had been manually disabled and replaced with cops directing traffic, I finally got to work.

The way home was an entirely different, barren in comparison story.
fafa
There was also a much better view (:

gorgeous!

= HAPPPPPYYYY ME (:

selfie joy : no 4-hour commute!!

There are worse things.
And there are BETTER things!
Liiiiiike.. Becky texting me asking to see us tonight! (:
[Sushi it was!]

nom nom nommmmm

Of course, the fish who were not part of the meal had a special admirer, too:

her courtesy half-smile, because
mommy, the fish want to play with me!

Life's good, yeah?
... Yeah (: (: (:

xo | cmd