Snow.

There seems to be a lot of it going around. We had some tonight, and as I was mentally composing bits and pieces of this post I realized that I wanted to call tonight's snow heavy, and I also wanted to call it light. I decided that each descriptor was accurate, as they (sort of) apply to different aspects of said precipitation. The flakes were large and wet -> heavy. The flakes were large and caught the air to provide that great floaty, spinny effect -> light. It looked so gorgeous, so romantic. The descriptive phrases I came up with tended to be less romantic. Example: the way the snow floated so gently down, it looked like particulate matter suspended in a liquid. Candlelit supper worthy, I know.

But speaking of particulate matter, I love the way such light, slow-falling flakes provide a perfect visual aide to the wind, and show every swirl, gust, and riffle in the air. I loved the way the snow fell beneath street lamps, and I especially loved the way it swirled and spiraled down onto the steeple floodlights of the church I passed on the way home tonight. My favorite, though, was when a light shone straight into the branches of a small tree, and I could watch the slow snow settle gently down through the branches.


Unfortunately, wet snow is much prettier from the car. Once I was outside in it again it sounded and felt like a sullen, lead-footed rain. Tonight when I walked Miley the rain (all that was left of the former snowglory) had essentially stopped, and the damp wind made the night feel significantly colder than 39 degrees. I buried my chin and walked on, and spent very little time looking at a sky which was the color of stomach acid adulterated with varying amounts of charcoal.


But the key point here is that the snow was super pretty. It was. Ok, sleep time. (Showers? Who needs 'em?)

12/24-25.

Obviously it's been a while--if anyone was checking back in hopes of an update, I apologize. I also apologize for any odd typographical errors, as I am in Scotland at the moment. It took me a couple of minutes just to find the "@" sign so that I could sign into facebook. (Interestingly, its position is switched with that of the quotation mark.) The shift key is also a little further over than I'm used to, so that's proving to be interesting. At least all of the letters are in the same places.

Christmas was wonderful. Of course I don't remember it all at this point, but on Christmas eve Chloe and I went shopping for various things, and then went to our uncle's house to make eggnogg. I've done this for the past three years (including this one), but this was Chloe's first time coming to help. We separated a lot of eggs and mixed a lot of alchohol and honey and heavy cream. We watched bits of It's A Wonderful Life, and it's a wonderful movie. Around 11:15 we raced home to change and race to midnight mass, where my mother was singing and where we ran into some friends. I don't know how your late Christmas eves/early Christmas mornings go, but we, as usual, ended up stumbling around wrapping things and stuffing stockings and lamenting the loss of that one bag with the candy in it until around 2:30 am, at which point we gave up and fell into bed. My brother, when asked whether he had finished his wrapping, gave the vague and, as it turns out, highly appropriate answer of "sorta." Christmas morning, as we opened gifts over and between the wreckage of our breakfast dishes and stocking-gift remnants, Jack ran back and forth from his room, using the same (reusable--ha) "go-green" grocery shopping bag to "wrap" each of his gifts. Everyone gave and was given wonderful, personally chosen gifts. Our dog got an identification tag (finally), two squeak toys, and a piece of pork skin from which most of the fat had been rendered. She would not put it down for anything, for fear that we might have changed our minds. Our cat got some catnip and a catnip-scented carpet scratcher with a dangling feather attached, to which she attached herself for quite some time. She's rather difficult to shop for. We were quite excited that she liked it.

The rest of Christmas day, for the most part, passed in the usual fashion--beautiful, full of family and excellent food (and eggnog!), and then it snowed. We had been fearing a travel-restricting storm appearing before we woke on Christmas day, but the system rolled gently in while we were leaning back in our chairs and exchanging secret santa gifts all over my aunt's warm and comfortable city home. We left probably around 4:30, and I exited the house from the basement door, which opens under the porch and leads one up a set of brick stairs and out into the back yard. Walking from the cheerily and warmly lit basement out the shadowy door and up the stairs into the gently falling snow was like walking into a fairytale. It was absolutely breathtaking.

This is getting longish. Please hold for a post on Scotland, which I will write in about two minutes unless I change my mind. It happens.

Small surprises.

I've been noticing over the last few days that David's name is like honey. I'm not sure I particularly like to say it, but sometimes I just hold it in my mouth and taste it. I'm not pining, I'm not upset. I'm not planning on doing anything. I'm just thinking.



I stopped by to drop off my hours sheet and some keys I no longer need with some family friends, and found out that one has breast cancer. I am stunned. She wants me to tell my parents for her. Is there anyone in the world who is worse at delivering bad news than I am? I hope she will be ok. I want her to be ok. She has surgery just after Christmas.



My father has a cold. He sounded so weak and tired over the phone. He has been sick so much this semester. I want him to be well. Of course, that's pretty much always my wish for him.



It's snowing! Barely, and it's too warm for snow, but still. Snow!

Update

David finally made it to our house at 5:23 this morning--it took him nine hours to drive 125 miles. Was I really at Sara's just yesterday? It seems like a week ago. Long night. The good news though is that I don't have to work today. The bad news is that I only slept about 2 hours, woke up to call in to work, and then never could fall back asleep. And now I have to make chicken salad for 40 people.

TGIWTF.

Work was decent, though I'm still struggling a bit with the "this is a teenager job" issue.

Came home and got sucked into the $*&^ cable instead of doing what I needed to.

Got into a family-wide fight over some firewood that didn't get picked up. That's a long story that I don't really want to go into, but what I do want to go into is that I am so completely sick out of my mind of wanting to die every time something goes wrong. I'm not trying to be dramatic. I don't want to be dramatic. But do you remember when you were little and you were told that the way to memorize something is to do or say or sing it over and over, so that the path gets worn down in your head? So that it's easier to go there, to remember? I never wanted to do that with this, but the fact remains that the path to "life's not worth the effort" or "dying would be such a relief" or "I can't handle this; I can't handle anything" is worn down. It's like a rut that I'm driving alongside, and every time I hit a bump in the road I fall straight into it. It's so worn down that I can go from 60 to 0 in about 2 seconds, any time I let my guard down, any time I get too tired or stressed, any time something goes wrong, catches me by surprise, hits a nerve. It's hard not to feel like my long-term chances of survival drop every time.

After I finished the bout of hysterical crying and suicidal episode that followed said family-wide fight, I talked to Sara on the phone for a little while (actually, that wasn't really after, but toward the end, but whatever) I went and helped my family pick up the last of the stupid firewood, then drove through the snow to Sara's for Hannukah. I was (and absolutely still am) feeling a little weak and low and fragile, but for the most part it was fun. Ami was there and it was great to see her, and it was fun to be with Sara and Eva and Brian and others, but I'm just so tired, all around. I left to drive home in the then 4 or so inches of snow, about 5 or 10 minutes before Chloe texted me to say not to try to come home. I made it, but it wasn't much fun.

David left from Front Royal around 8:30. He's now about 40 miles from here in his little tiny car in stop and go traffic, and we have 8 or so inches of snow on our back porch. I was going crazy crazy until he finally texted me and let me know he was alive and in traffic, maybe 40 minutes ago. I was afraid he was broken down or dead or still up above Fredericksburg, and that if I called or texted him he might crash or slide off the road, and that if he did, he would die and I would never forgive myself. So the text was a big relief. Anyway, we're making plans to hike out to him if he gets stuck coming off the interstate. Good times.