I got back from what ended up being a nightmare of a flight back to Chicago from Vegas, and have been running really low on positivity and faith in humanity. But with a dumpload of snow, you can always count on the kindness of stramgers. That is one of my favorite things about this fine city.

I spent about 20 minutes scraping my car this morning, which should have only taken 10 if my scraper hadn’t broken in half. I spent another 10 trying to rock my car out of my parking spot, intermittently using my feet as shovels to try and clear a path. Lucky me, my car is small AND rear-wheel drive, so it didn’t really want to go anywhere but closer to hitting the car in front of me. After all this labor, my car was perpendicular to the curb, and about 6 inches away from the bumper of the car in front of me. Every time I floored it, I was convinced I was gonna hit that damn car. At this point I blocking the street, having to shrug to every car who tries to turn into my path, as if to say “WTF can I do?”

As I am about to rip my steering wheel from the column, a guy walking his dog stops and offers to help. As he tries to push my car out, another guy stops to pitch in. After 5 more minutes, I have 3 guys shoving my car onto the street and finally am out of the drift.

So thank you, guy with the dog, guy with the blue conversion van, and guy with the Mercury who helped me get out of a jam at the corner of Barry and Leavitt this morning. If I see you again, I am baking you cookies. From scratch.