nashville in the winter.

nashville in the winter is a funny thing. nobody likes the cold, but everyone is slightly snow-obsessed. when snow flakes fall from the sky, it's a big deal and everyone posts photos whether or not you can actually see it. a few weeks ago, it snowed enough to where everything had a thin coat of white. i woke up to instagrams of tiny snowmen with captions about the SNOW DAY.

and then it was gone by noon, and there was no part of me that was sad i slept through the whole thing and missed it.

this is what nashville is generally like in the winter. while everyone is mostly thrilled for the potential sledding opportunities, they are also mildly panicked about what it means for the driving conditions and do not hesitate to stock up on milk and bread because, well, it could be a snowpocalypse. but with sledding. as long as there's sledding.

for the most part, it's pretty cute. they close down schools for a small dusting and, let's be real, they don't even KNOW what real sledding is like. no matter how much snow falls, it's always gone by the end of the day.

it's just how i like it. temporary.

and then there was this storm. it was supposed to come on monday and bring something like six inches of snow with it. and i didn't give it a second thought because, see above. nashville hasn't gotten over an inch of snow in over four years. every time it's predicted, it doesn't happen. including this time.

but what we

did

 get was ice. followed by almost an entire week of below freezing temperatures.

i took this on tuesday, when it was all said and done. everything was coated in ice.

that afternoon, i went outside to see what the situation was. i'd seen tweets and instagrams from friends about the road conditions, so there

were

 people out and about. also, it was day two and i was dying to get out too.

i walked outside, to the end of my driveway, and then walked back in. the ground was covered in a thick sheet of ice and, yeah, no thank you.

yesterday, after a light coat of snow had fallen, i thought mayyyybe that might work to my advantage?

this ^ was the layer of ice that covered my car. i thought about putting my hand out for scale or something but it was cold and i wanted to keep moving and you can still kind of get the idea.

it came off in two large pieces, one from the roof and one from the back windshield and trunk. the ice that covered the front hood and the bottom part of my windshield where the windshield wipers are ...is still currently there.

i live three side streets in from the main road. this day, i got almost to the end of the second road, where there's a small hill leading up to the stop sign. i couldn't make it up that hill, slid backwards, and then turned around.

today, i thought about trying again but i took a walk instead. it was nice to get out, to walk around, and to not risk crashing my car. it turned out to be the better choice, considering my neighborhood roads looked much the same. the ice was melty, but it wasn't near warm enough for it to make a difference.

my neighbor, from new jersey, was out trying to shovel the ice off the street. he hadn't tried to go anywhere, since he didn't need to, but he wanted to get out today. day four.

i wanted to get out today

. he commented on how crazy it is that they just don't plow everything. and went back and forth a little bit about how it's really kind of mind blowing that their method of dealing with it mostly involves just waiting it out and letting it melt.

and if the temperature doesn't get warm enough to melt everything for the rest of the week?

well, then, i hope you've stocked up on milk and bread.