That said, is it stupid to ask why my street is a Himalayan snow-clogged goat path with one-side-only parking, but the freeways are as wide and dry as the desert in July?

Possible reasons:

No. 1: At night, enormous dragons fly the length of 35W and scour it with their fiery breath.

No. 2: The highway was plowed quickly with professional care, knowing that the free flow of traffic required the job to be done in the best way possible.

I'm going with dragons.

I wonder where they're kept. Probably in big barns in the suburbs. Probably the northern burbs. You wouldn't want them anywhere near the airport. Or maybe you would house the municipal dragons by the airport, because people who live around there are used to loud things flying overhead and think nothing of it. If they hear a dragon at 5 a.m., they figure it's FedEx.

"Well, pshaw," you say. "If there were dragons, we would have an annual contest to name them, like we do with the plows. Flamey McFlameface would win."

The one-side parking rule doesn't affect me, because I'm lucky enough to have a garage. But I spent decades without one and commiserate with those who must troll the neighborhood looking for an open spot, like you do at the State Fair when you're not going to pay no goldurn 20 bucks to park on someone's lawn. Except maybe now that it's dark and you're reduced to following people carrying enormous stuffed animals back to their cars.

Our Minneapolis street has one-side parking all the time, because it's narrow and twisty. The excess snow has reduced its width even more, so when you meet a car going the opposite direction, a difficult dance ensues: One of you has to back up.

This being Minnesota, both of you say "Ope! Sorry" and back up, until you realize you're both doing it, and then you both go forward, and then you both back up again.

There should be a rule about which car backs up, something simple we can all remember, like the darker-colored car has the right of way, so the lighter one must back up. If both cars are white, then the white car with the license plate that ends in an odd number has the right of way.

If both white cars have odd-numbered plates, the one that needs a wash has the right of way. If both white cars are completely clean, then the domestic car wins. In case both clean white cars with odd numbers were made in America, then the drivers shall consult Google to find which contains more parts made in Mexico but is assembled in America. In case both cars are absolutely identical, both drivers shall back up. The northbound car then takes a different route on a street whose name starts with a vowel, and the southbound car shall choose a consonant-starting street.

I mean, if we can remember snow emergency rules, we can remember this.

The other great thing about my neighborhood streets? There are ruts so deep they override the ability to steer.

I say, "I'd like to drive here," but the ruts say "Actually, no. Your wheels will follow these drunken-farmer furrows, and any attempt to correct by instinct will make you fishtail into the side of a parked car. Got it?"

Yes, I get it. So I bump along at 1 mile per hour, braking about half a block before the stop sign lest I sail through the intersection sideways and nail a car that's been trying to climb a slight incline for the past 45 minutes.

Well, this is all part of the joys of February, the worst month of the year, and we have to deal with these things. It does seem unfortunate to have to walk extra blocks because you parked far away, and now we're in for very, very, very cold weather.

An overly dramatic person might say the weather is "brutal." The poetically inclined refer to it as "raw," as if you could put the weather in the oven at 425 degrees for 20 minutes and get a summer day. The standard-issue Minnesotan quips that it's "nippy."

Sounds playful, doesn't it? "Wind's got a bit of a nip," you say to yourself, as tears stream down your face and you put one insensate leaden foot in front of the other, heading home in the dark.

Why do we live here? Minnesotans might be asking themselves right about now. The answer's simple. It's really not that bad, plus, unionized highway dragons!

OK, I don't really know if they're unionized, but if they wanted to be, I don't know who'd tell them no.