We built this city.

DC. Traffic.

Say the two words together and you would find it equals nightmare. And the nightmare has become for me a daily routine.

You know it used to not be so bad. Of course I was at the time taking metro to get down to Anderson in Ballston cutting a good chunk of the travel time in half. But then he was moved to the heart of DC, working at the Verizon Center and suddenly we found ourselves both commuting from the city.

Add to that, he is now getting out fifteen to a half an hour later than he was back at the old office. The result folks is not a pretty one. The result is us getting home at 7 something, and even later if we pick my son up from my parents house a good twenty minutes-sans traffic-away.  Maybe this does not seem to horrible. But when you take in the fact we live just about 20 miles away from the office, and we leave the office at 5:30, well when you hit the door at near 8 like today.....well...

I know there is an easy solution, as some would suggest, we could sell the house and move closer to the city. But neither of us want to do that. Find another job, which would be great but not so easy during this time when everyone else is looking for positions, or are in the same situations.

Which means, we are simply stuck. With no other option than to suck it up and deal with it. But as the commute gets increasingly longer, my evenings becoming shorter in more ways than one. Logan doesn't get that time, Andy and I don't get that time. As it is, I wonder if he knows who I m half the time as we barely see him.

Still something has to give.
Because while my commute is getting longer, my patience is getting shorter.

All aboard

After a long day at work, all I really want is to go home. Who wouldn't? But of course going home isn't a short commute for me. And in case you don't know, or need a reminder, my commute is on any typical day an hour and a half.

One way.

You may find yourself saying, there is no way. Well yeah, at one point I would have agreed. Hard to believe there was a time, when I would have never given the thought of commuting into the city on a daily basis. But I quickly learned, if you want the money, and if you want the job. Well you better be willing to commute. Which explains why for the past three and a half years I have done just that. I have gotten lucky lately, after one to many 'odd' happenings I convinced Andy to at least start bringing me in during the morning rush hour. By doing so, we have saved five dollars one way and I get to spend up to a half hour of extra time with my husband.

It was a win-win situation.

Getting off work this afternoon, standing on the platform as I looked up at the wait time announcement I began to wonder, what would it take to get him to start picking me up in the afternoon as well. It was just before 4, the summer vacationers were just making there way home after a long day of touring the city. It was packed. Still I made my way down to the crowded platform, threw on my headphones and was jamming out to some Lady GaGa, when I looked at the sign, which read no trains were coming.

Brilliant. It looked like I was going to be in for a long wait. This of course is nothing unusual. Metro is notorious for broken down escalators, and its never working systems. I just happen to hit at the right time. I settled in for my wait.

That wait turned into almost a 40 minute wait. Sweaty and tired I pushed my way on to the packed last car, there of course wasn't any available seats, shocker! I glance around, at the kids taking up two seats as I struggle to wrap my hands around the poles. I curse my disability at times like this. I was thankful however that I was on my way home, at that moment its all that mattered, it wasn't like I couldn't hold on. Struggle yes, uncomfortable, yes. But I was on.I watched through the window as not so lucky commuters had to wait for the next train.

But my disability started to get the better of me as one commuter and tourist after another piled onto the already overcrowded car and by the time I was three stops into my long trip home, I was practically in someone else's bubble. And thats when she offered her seat.

I didn't know what to do, I never do. On one hand, I feel as though as an American with Disability, I have a right to sit there. And yet, on the other hand, I can stand just as easy as the next I don't desperately need the seat. Its a struggle I try not to think about to often. Because in all honesty, I tend to forget I even have a disability.

She pointed to the sign above her and said, this is yours. Its reserved for disabled people.

I wanted to be offended. Because I hate the fact its that noticeable. I wanted to be upset that someone even classified me as it.

But I wasn't. And I couldn't.
All I did was thank her, smiled. Grateful that for once someone actually gave up their seat for someone whom the seat was actually intended for.

The ten hour commute

On any given day on my commute into DC, its an hour and a half drive from my home in Northern Virginia to DC.

And this is on a good day.
Add accidents, broken down vehicles, or weather related and you can pretty much push it to a good two hours.

At least.

Now I have lived in this city all my life, so this is to be expected, even anticipated. But ten hours? Surely this is unheard of, even impossible right?

Wrong...think again.

They had been calling for a good amount of snow for the past week. But as most of us know in the area, you pretty much take the forecast and the weatherman that deliver it, with a grain of salt. As it was, they couldn't even tell how much we should be expecting until that very day. Which, depending on which part of the area you lived in, could be anywhere from 1 to 10 inches, in my neighborhood they were predicting 8-10. But as we looked outside on that Wednesday morning, it was doing nothing. Cloudy yes, but other than that there wasn't so much of a sprinkle hanging around.

Still, in anticipation nearly every county in the immediate area closed their schools feeling as though they better be safe than sorry. By noon, when the first sprinkle fell they announced that the federal government would be closing two hours early. They weren't the only ones, in fact most companies, including my husbands had the same idea.

Mine didn't. Still I had made a plan with my husband to come pick me up all the way from his office in Arlington VA, to my SE office and at three he left on his merry little way not knowing that this would be the start of the commute from hell.

His usual fifteen minute trip from office to office took nearly an hour to complete. But no worries, he picked me up, and we were soon on our way. Along with everyone else trying to mass exit out of the most powerful city in the world.

And of course it had begun to snow.

Our first problem was gas, having no idea it was going to take as long as it did, my husband didn't think of stopping to get some before heading out. Finding a gas station in DC is pretty impossible. Which means, we would have to wait til we get to Virginia. Great. But it was ok, we had enough to get us there, at least Andy, my husband thought so. I on the other hand?

Wasn't so confident. Looking at the never ending traffic, I was just hoping we would make into Virginia before the dial landed on E.

By 6, we finally made it past the welcome to Virginia sign and were creeping along the way. The snow was picking up, the traffic was miserable and it seemed that neither was going to be slowing down any time soon.

We were in for a long road ahead. I informed my husband at this point that we would be lucky to get home by midnight, to which he said that was impossible.

The good news, if there was any, was my mom had graciously offered to keep my nearly two year old son overnight, saving us from adding that much more time to the commute.

I don't know about you, but if your in the car for hours at end, with no end at sight, things get a little dicey between you and whoever you may be riding with. And while I would like to say we are the exception, sadly we aren't and by 7:30 pm, barely into Arlington, the frustration levels hit. We had been in the car now going on five hours. We hadn't had dinner and we had been up since before dawn. All I wanted was to get the hell out of the car, take a nice hot bath and enjoy the snowfall. From the inside of my house, and not the inside of my car.

Andy, who had been in the car a lot longer and had been maneuvering between the cars and the snow was feeling much the same. You never realize how exhausting it is just sitting there, trapped in a car can be. But it is. Every little thing seemed to make things that much worse. Including the number of cars that were piling up, being abandoned or stuck in snow.

I was worried about being the next to get stuck, or be struck by another car who was in the same position as we were. He was worried about the next exit, if there was one. About the falling branches and the power outages. Clearly no one in the area was quite ready for this. Including us. I don't think it was one of our finest nights that's for sure.Still there was no getting out of this, so we tried to make the most out of it, the Caps game was on, I had an amazing selection of music on my Ipod and our phones, had enough juice to last a while to surf the net and update status's from. Lets not forget, we planned some amazing vacations.

Though, the Caps loss two hours later, didn't help either of our moods, which is why it will not be mentioned again.

By 9:30, as the thunder snow moved above us, we were beginning to wonder if we would get home. Of course both parents had called several times by this point, proving that once their babies, always their babies. They both had suggested we find a place for the night, but with little options in sight, we decided to keep trudging along. After all we weren't the only ones stuck in the mess of it all.

I fell asleep somewhere around ten thirty, it was uncomfortable and often interrupted. My stomach was growling, my husband fuming and myself feeling the nerves wearing on me. And by eleven thirty, when we made it into Fairfax, I knew we wouldn't see the turn off into our development until Thursday morning.

I should have bet my husband.

By twelve fifteen, I was thinking a hamburger was sounding good. I can't eat beef. But at that moment I would have taken it without a complaint what so ever. As we passed the Hampton Inn, I yearned for the bed, but judging by the amount of cars I wasn't the only one and so we kept going. Surely we would be home soon enough.

The snow had stopped two hours ago, but the lightning remained. With several areas getting hit with heavy snow it created power outages, causing a rather eerie yet breathtaking sight all at the same time. We weren't the only ones on the road but without the street lights, the store lights, the snow glistened, and gleamed.

It was the first time since getting in the car that I appreciated just how powerful mother nature really is. Its the kind of beauty, we often don't think about, and don't experience with electricity so often handy these days.

Still, while the beauty was great, the car ride was getting old. I could have been halfway to Florida by now. I could have pulled in another work day by now. Florida sounded a lot better though. And beauty, couldn't hold a candle to a bed at this point.

It was one when we finally made the final turn into the neighborhood, 1:15 when we finally put the car in park and turned off the engine. Exhausted and overwhelmed we pushed our way through the ten inches of snow and made our way into the house, thankful we had power, because that would have been the icing on the cake.

We didn't care we hadn't had dinner, at that point it didn't matter anyway. We had one thing, and one thing in mind.

Sleep.

And believe me, it had never felt so good.