Snow, Ice, Wind - Part II, The Arctic Blast

I haven't gotten out of my ski pants, save total disrobement, in three days. I bend over, I lace my boots, I secure my goggles, I zip my parka, I get gloved and out I go into the white. I love it, I am afloat on all of that dry white snow that has obscured my corner and nullified the steps up to my front porch.

I've gone sledding, I've gone stomping through the snow, I have found that feets of snow impede motion, and let us not speak civilly of that horrid wind chill, that hurts my teeth when J make me giggle as we are fetching bacon for his lovely family, and makes my nose run like, like a german snot luge.

I sat in agony for a long while tonight while my bad ankle sent spikes of pain up my shin in protest of all of those dritfts of snow I gladly thromped through, booted and suited I stood at the stop for the mytholigical bus beast that never came. Toted back the sum total of my meager Christmas shopping and groceries in my green bags this afternoon, felt thoroughly little house on the prairie, had a glass of wine, did the dishes, did the laundry, shoveled the porch, had a bath, felt momentarily invincible.

and then I tried to upload photos and was thwarted, therefore I will go to bed.

It's been beautiful and I have loved every inch of snow on the ground.

Snow, Ice, Wind

Ah, local news. Churning the citizenry into a cappucino froth, the weather! It will happen! (with the caveat of or not!) but something will happen! So prepare, prepare, prepare!

And then we all stand around and marvel when it does, doe eyed in the cold and white. ODOT will capture the brazen and the foolish on their way to somewhere or nowhere at all, slip-sliding sideways and backwards when the East wind has buffed the macadam to a high gloss and in slow motion anticipation we spin the wheel away from the discordant sound of metal on metal.

I was anticipating a house full of people today, and I had a vat of chili to be made. So I got up at eight and looked outside. I've been running the heat at a steady sub-tropical 75 degrees, so I roused myself from my languid Sunday morning with the promise of wonderland. I was not disappointed as I folded myself back into my still warm sheets for another twenty minutes, I announced happily to my teddy bear that it was snowing and ruefully wished for a live body. If you are ever going to wake up to anyone, how lovely to do it when the world has gone white and quiet, and landmarks been befuddled. What better reason to not get out of bed.

But I did, empty bed, chili to be made.

I was chopping onions and browning chuck by 8:30 watching winter out my kitchen window, all of that confectioner's sugar snow huffing off of my neighbor's roof.

I have never really cooked with jalepeno peppers before. I made a note to myself to not rub my eyes, so after I had washed my hands in hot water with soap, I forgot and I rubbed my eyes. Holy Fuck, I'm blinded. I'd just like to state that it's not easy to give oneself an eyewash without an eyecup and the easy use of ones hands.

so I went out and had a mani and a pedi. Came back and beaned my chili, got wise put on my sorels, my ski goggles and my ugly ski jacket and went tromping through the snow and the wind on a cheese mission. A fool I looked, but a warm fool is no fool at all. Priorities after all.

One stock pot full of chili later, I found myself fitful in the house, a little bit stir crazy, a lot lonely. But that's what cold winter nights like this are for, underscoring what is absent.

Raking Leaves, Dancing Britney Spears

and the women come and go, talking of michaelango. the quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog. I thought I might have something as I wait for my hair to dry before I retire, so as not to have my longish hair go completely unmanageable somewhere after three in the morning. Which is to say I have nothing, save all I don't say.

Now that my hair is getting longish, a state it hasn't seen since my very early twenties, I like twisting it round and pinning it rakishishly about my head. Note rakish, not romantic. That's a long conversation I really ought to have with someone sometime soon, but not tonight. Also I just realized that my favorite threadbare sleep t-shirt circa 1991 is on backwards. Hold up a sec while I adjust and turn down the heat.

It's warm and wet in Portland. And I should be asleep, I have an early meeting, but mostly I slept the last five days and now I am wide awake and feel like dancing.

That is when I wasn't raking, scooping, bagging the leaves that just keep fucking falling onto my lawn. (gottdamned leaves mutters the Very Old Woman under her breath) I kvetch, but secretly I love it. I like the singular repetition of it, the camaraderie of it, as neighbors stop to commiserate, I love my iPod, I like a mouldering sweat and leaves in my hair, I don't even much mind the odd squicky larvae thing I unearth. The thing that irritates me is it kicks in my semi-dormant OCD and I feel I must rid my yard of EVERY SINGLE LEAF OR I WILL LOSE MY CRACKERS. Uh, wine helps.

And then there is poor Britney Spears, who on the day before the economists point out the obvious about the recession, pours out her soul to MTV, she is sad, bless her heart. But she is not likely to go hungry or lose the roof over her head. Savvy to have such a non-divulgent and at the same time extremely revealing not-mea-culpa-come-to-jesus to the very same media that built you up and so gleefully took you down. Everyone loves a train wreck. The question is what is her part in the complicity of the machine, at some point you must willfully surrender to the shuddering mirage of fame, of power, of the glory of money. And why is it always the young women who pay so fucking dearly.

I often think of Britney Spears in the context of another musician's song. Rufus Wainright has a line from a song that goes "I used to dance Britney Spears, I think I'm gettin' on in years" I can identify with that. I am too old for Britney Spears, I can't dance like she did in that school girl's uniform, never had any desire to emulate her, always scorned her obvious manufacturing. Still I can symapathize, ten years, two kids, and a million unflattering paparazzi pix later, to be rolled out for that kind of public comsumption would make me crazy. And to think there was a time where I was sort of vaguely ambitious enough to want that.

Thank heavens, I guess, for a solid case of oscillating intertia which has left me poor and unlaid in Portland, but rich in hope and friendship and expectation. Minor miracles, whatever.