Hot vs. Cold

A patient came in yesterday and told me that she would much rather live somewhere that has a hard winter than somewhere like St. George with a ridiculous summer. I straight up laughed in her face.

She has lived here he whole life and has never experienced winter. So I decided to fill her in.

Feet of snow. Feet
Not just feet of snow but Drifting snow
Wind chill
Freezing Rain
Scraping ice off of your car
Sweeping snow off your car
Driving on sheets of ice, turning a 30 minute commute into 3 hours
Slipping and falling on said sheets of ice
Heaven forbid the heat in your car doesn't like you, you'll be toting around blankets and crying

She said that she figured you could only take so many clothes off but could always put more on. Plus, you could build a fire. Again I laughed in her face. Unless I have a fireplace I don't know where I'm building this mystical magical fire that will keep me warm in the negative degree weather with the wind whipping tiny shards of ice at my face.



Been there, done that. I'll take the blistering, hell of a summer here. Why? Because I can drive easily, float in a pool, and I know that it will end in a couple months and not drag on for a half a year.

Which looks more pleasant to you?

Pure Michigan vs. St. George A to Zion

 Let me just start by stating the the Pure Michigan commercials are freakin' pure genius. Tourism offices at every state should be bribing whoever put that lovely little marketing piece together to come and do one for them. That or Michigan in the summertime just plain rocks. It might be the later. That commercial plays A LOT out here and every time I think, why did we move to a stupid desert? This is dumb! Why are we not lounging on the beach at Lake Michigan or playing at Sleeping Bear Dunes?

In contrast we have this janky St. George tourism commercial that makes me ashamed to live here. These two older people meet and are trying to seduce/show up/date each other or something. They go golfing and the lady is all "I was thinking we could do something more vigorous?" and the weird buff older man is all "can you handle it?". Uncomfortable. Seriously Uncomfortable. As Chad says, that's how you get the HIV. Then you see them biking, hiking, rock climbing, ziplining and doing all the really cool things that there are to do here but the whole thing has been ruined. It ends with them running through the dessert as fire balls fall out of the sky "chasing" them. I kid you not, I couldn't make this stuff up. 

So then I'm feeling all sad about my hot, dry, dessert life (with flying fireballs!?) when I could be back home in the lush, green, gorgeous, lake filled, forest swept Michigan! But then my brain says, "hang on, remember this?"

The snow is literally half way up his thighs in spots.

Winning.

We're seeing "red" (Part I)

Has anyone else ever drove across the country in a moving truck? It's a unique experience. After getting sick with the flu we decided to postpone our moving date and we were finally on the road January 2. We were excited about our truck, it was spacious and roomy, the ride was going to be awesome! When we started packing our things in the cab, one thing after another, all the wonderful space that we had slowly started to disappear. One cooler, giant tub of cheese puffs, and an over sized puppy later... bam, no room! Rukia literally laid across me as we drove the whole entire way. Luckily, at this point, the cats were tucked away in our car being towed behind us.

We said our goodbyes and as we were finally headed out we turned right back around to the truck rental company. I guess we shouldn't be too surprised with the way we plan out our road trips. Both of the cigarette outlets didn't work and that didn't work for us. 2100 miles with no way to charge our phones or computer wasn't going to do. We got the fuses fixed and were on the road! Until we realized that the power inverter that we had wasn't charging any of our things. Off to Best Buy! We bought a more powerful inverter hoping that would do the trick and we thought that it had for a while. More on that later...

It was now 1pm and we were finally, seriously, on our way out. We got on the on ramp and realized my door wasn't all the way closed. So I slowed down and opened the door and grabbed the handle, pulled hard and wham! The handle came flying off! Pieces of plastic flew across the cab and our door was wide open. Danielle grabbed the wheel, I grabbed the door, and Rukia tried grabbing onto me for dear life. I finally managed to shut the door despite the wind and Rukia being against me. We saved the pieces of the door and just now put them on, right before we turned the truck in, hopefully no one will be the wiser.

Alright, we're good now... right? Driving across country is easy. Step one, start driving. Step two, there is no step two, all you have to do is drive! Just like Barney running a marathon things are never quite as easy as they seem. We made it to Kalamazoo, we had sunny weather, the crazy was behind us, and all our hopes and dreams about our awesome road trip were still intact. Then we had to be reminded that we were still in Michigan. Boo. All the wrath and fury that is winter in Michigan exploded in our face. Keep in mind that it had not snowed AT ALL the whole winter. It had been sunny and warm and delightful, very unlike Michigan. We were actually feeling kind of sad to leave such beautiful weather. NOT ANYMORE... SNOWSTORM!!!! Our visibility was zero, and the roads immediately became sheets of ice. This is when we discovered that our windshield wipers didn't work. Yay Budget truck! Moving at a whopping 35 mph we had both resigned to living in Michigan for the rest of our lives. Clearly we were not meant to leave the state. After passing the 7th car in a ditch we decided needed to break for pizza.

We pulled off the first exit that had food, expecting all of the businesses to be right there, wrong! We followed the signs to Pizza Hut, which led us up a giant hill, covered in ice from the snowstorm, into a janky, little town. We parked our whole lives in a dark parking lot behind Pizza Hut and Al's Guns N' Diamonds. Awesome. There was no lock on the truck. We went in and ordered and waited 20 minutes for our food. While we waited our paranoia kicked into high gear. I checked on the truck at least 4 separate times. Luckily no one was willing to brave the storm to steal our garbage couch and salvation army table, we really dodged a bullet there.

We made it back on the road, down the crazy, icy hill, struggling to see (ghetto windshield wipers that didn't work) and were back on the freeway. We were a half hours drive until we got out of Michigan, it took us an hour and a half. As soon as we crossed the state line the snow stopped. The roads were perfect, and so would be the rest of the trip, or at least we thought.