10 Reasons to Love and Hate Living in DC

Let me start out by saying, I do not technically live here. I live in the suburbs about 35 miles south of the city and I commute everyday, but if you take into account the amount of time I spend here for work, I am technically here more than home. (see green peg on map).

I love DC because:

1. Great Museums (Smithsonian)

2. The beach, mountains for skiing, Baltimore, Annapolis, Philly, Richmond and NYC are all fairly close

3. Plenty of great restaurants and CAKELOVE!

4. We also have pretty decent radio stations

5. The bars

6. The shopping

7. Georgetown

8. The Mall

9. The C&O Canal, Billy goat trail and rock-climbing

10. The FBI

Oh yeah and this.

I hate DC because:

1. Hot dog vendors from VA that drive their carts around

2. Bike Messengers (I just had to deal with one of them for a filing and I almost smacked him)

3. Taxi Cab drivers…..don't get me started

4. Terrorism

5. Pigeons

6. Street layout

7. Homelessness

8. The people that are not from here t hat "act" like they know…..

9. The cost of living

10. The Metro

And from this site:

"In truth, you can't swing a stick in Washington without smacking somebody who doesn't resent the onerous way the Federal government asserts itself on the residents of the city. Many are the people in Congress who simply believe that DC residents are superfluous to the city's existence, and the way the Feds use the city as their Petri dish of social experimentation is just putrid. Beyond that, DC's like a lot of cities: dysfunctional local government, weird city layout, crime, homelessness, a certain amount of dickheads and weirdoes, et cetera."

Winter Wonderland.....I think not.

I am NOT a fan of this weather we have been having on the East Coast for the past couple of weeks.

As a matter of fact, I would rather live someplace MUCH warmer. I may reconsider this though if somewhere in Mother Nature's little mind she felt it was ok to stop dropping ice from the atmosphere and just make it pretty, fluffy white snow; however I feel this is highly unlikely.

Last night we got snow again. It started when we were at M&K's for Rachel's first birthday party. Wait, let me rephrase that first sentence, we got snow where I live which fell on top of the ice that is on the ground from the ice storm that happened last Tuesday. Supposedly, according to the DC area Meteorologists, this was not supposed to be a big deal. Well I have news for them, it turned into one.

The State of Maryland must not have prepared because the majority of my ride to work this morning was driving on slushy MAIN ROADS that has a nice shiny layer of black ice over them. I am terrified to drive on roads like this. Reason being – I took a nice face first nose dive in my brand new Jeep and rolled over into a marsh near the marina near my house.

This is not what I like to refer to as a good time.

I lay hanging upside down in my seat, thing scattered all over the place and stuck. It was dark and when I opened my eyes after it happened my initial reactions were 1) I am dead; 2) No one saw this happen and I have no clue how far off the road I went or how deep down in the marsh I am; and 3) I need to find my cell phone, John is going to kill me. I luckily was able to locate my cell phone to try to call John but when the antenna is facing the ground you don't get a very good signal. I finally got through and he called Ronnie his cousin who lived literally 2 seconds away to come help me. Luckily, someone had seen it happen and called the police and EMT and then came down to try to get me out of the Jeep.

This man was unable to help me out, after I begged him for scissors to cut my seat belt which was preventing me from escaping. He was able to get me sans scissors and amazingly I was not hurt or just in shock.

(*Side note* - I had a dress on this day and he got a free show of the va-jay jay.)

The ambulance came and I refused to go to the hospital. John, Ronnie and Jamie (his wife) all showed up at about this time and Jamie says to me "Wow, all that and you did not even put a run in your pantyhose." (Leave it to Jamie to make me laugh). This is when my back started hurting. They begin to drag the Jeep out of the marsh, John takes me home and then to the hospital. I was given painkillers and sent on my way. Since then I have gone to several sessions of physical therapy although I look back and things could have been worse.

Funny thing to this story is: John and his father went to the market near the marina later that day and overheard a man talking about how he helped some girl out of the marsh and that she was wearing a dress. Um, yeah, my husband got to here all about my flashing!

I wrote this because I am wearing a dress today and I swear to god if there is black ice on my way home my Corporate Credit card will be buying me new clothes to wear tomorrow and a hotel for the night.

Happy Monday!