A few glasses of wine later...

...and I'm okay with talking about snow. Snow and I have a love/hate relationship, and my return to the mountains has complicated it further.

On one hand, snow is pretty and I'm stoked to live in a place that has seasons other than hot, hotter than the hinges of hell, kinda hot, and clammy-rainy. I also can't shake the childlike glee at not having to go to school tomorrow, even though I haven't been in school since 2007. (My sister, on the other hand, wears her PJs inside out whenever snow threatens. She's a teacher.)

On the other, snow is a pain in the ass. It covers cars, it freezes doors shut, it wrecks my hair, and it makes the roads difficult at best. When you live in a tourist town (like Asheville), the road woes are compounded because they're covered with snow, ice, black ice, AND flatlanders who can't navigate twisty, hilly roads in the sunshine, much less when it's dark, snowy, and the roads are coated in ice. It's like a perfect storm of I Hope You Didn't Really Like Having a Functional Car, Because You're Not Gonna Come Tomorrow.

I left work at 6:30 this evening, and the roads were already a mess. I'm not sure if the city didn't treat any roads at all or the Biltmore Forest/Sweeten Creek/Oakley areas are just special, but there was ice everywhere, even on the main roads. I was skidding at intersections that led into interstate on-ramps. Fortunately, I drive a stick shift and know how to drive on snow and ice, which were the only things that prevented me from braking straight into a ditch on a couple of occasions. I spent the last two miles of my commute home in first gear, and while I'm pretty sure my car/engine/mileage hate me, at least I made it in safely...

..only to almost wipe out in the driveway. Smooth, Lauren. Real smooth.