And so, it was Monday morning. I am not one of those folks who can’t drag out of bed on Monday morning but a round of bizarre REM-type dreams just before my clock radio went off had me a bit unsettled. I wish I could remember what they were because isn’t there a superstition that if you tell someone a dream it won’t come true? I think I didn’t want these to come true but I also think I might’ve been embarrassed to report them on my blahg. At least my clock radio didn’t proclaim “earthquake in California!” like it did Sunday morning. My 0-dark-30 Neighborhood Prowl took a bit longer than usual because it was intermittently slippery. Intermittently as in I was constantly looking down, guessing where to put my foot. Actually, it’s kind of like rock-walking.

In any event, I ended up running a little later than I wanted to and then the roads were not all that great. Not terrible but something was coming out of the sky and the roads were not dry. Black ice? Hmmm… I guess the perfectly coiffed nitwit that was madly tailgating me on Ellsworth must have YakTrax on her tires because she was right on my you-know-what. I guess she doesn’t know that Ellsworth in that area is notorious for black ice and I guess she wasn’t there last year any of the times people spun out or slid spectacularly off the road into the surrounding fields. And there were people in front of me so I don’t know what she was thinking I could do. Push a button to open up some wings and *fly* over those vee-hickles? If the Ninja has such a button (and it may) I haven’t found it yet. I finally turned on my emergency flashers. BACK OFF, FER KEE-REIST!!!

I settled in to the designer/analyst’s Monday morning task of “what do I do for a living?” I forgot about my dreams and my walk and my commute, which really wasn’t all that bad. Later on, one of my Twitter buddies posted this link, saying that she (Twitter buddy) drives that road every day and the conditions were awful this morning.

I don’t know exactly what I think, except that I am horrified that those children were killed. I don’t live in that area but I’ve been thinking that here on the Planet Ann Arbor, they are not out there plowing and salting the main roads. We keep getting told (on the planet here, not where those kids were killed) that there are budget shortfalls and they can’t plow the neighborhoods (okay) but they will still do the main roads. First, I think the main roads are pretty bad. But then I think back and wonder if the roads are really any worse than they ever were. Second, I can’t figure out how we have the money to destroy a favorite parking lot (library lot) and build an underground lot below it and then squabble about what to build on top of it (er, a parking lot?) but we don’t have money to plow/salt the blasted roads! Why couldn’t we have left the library lot alone, saved a whole crapload of money and used it to buy a couple snowplows. I know, I know. Accounting is a very creative discipline and the money for the underground parking lot probably comes from a different dern bucket than the snowplowing money. I don’t care.

But then I think, whatever. I do not know what happened in that accident today. I read the article but I don’t know the road or the conditions at the time or whether either of the drivers made any mistakes. Three children were killed and my heart goes out to the mom who was driving. I have lost control of a vee-hickle on a slippery road a couple of times in my life but never with my children or their friends in my car. All I can think is something like, “there but for the grace of God, go I”.

I think our cities should place a priority upon clearing and salting at least our major roads in the winter. I also wish people would SLOW DOWN when the road surface is uncertain. We can’t count on snowplows and salt trucks to be everywhere at once. That is all. I am done. The GG will want to eat something when he gets home. Tonight it’s mother’s march on leftovers.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 7:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.