Rhapsody in Blue

The voice-automated system has already cut me off twice. Three times. At some point, I just stop answering questions and start shouting, "Agent!"

It doesn't help.

Digging through my wallet, I find a membership card and another number, one for those in premier status. I call, navigate the system again and find that I may have more than an hour wait. In the meantime, I have bits of Rhapsody in Blue fading in and out of the Blackberry speakers.

I think back to high school and marching band. Doo dum dee doo… Bittersweet memories wash over me as I think about heading to the shower and taking the phone with me. The song will still be playing when I am done, sparkling clean and ready for bed. I think about taking the phone with me to bed. A break in the music and a voice beckoning might wake me if I start to drift.

I don't have a ticket with this airline. I just hope they can get me out of Dodge or DC, as the case may be, before the snow comes. I have... Strike that, I had a ticket to New Orleans for Wednesday morning but forecasts predict anywhere from five to 20 inches of snow on top of the feet that encase my car, walk, street and home. The city.

Anything more or less than a bright sunny day means I'm not going anywhere, even if I can figure out how to get to the airport, a prospect more up in the air than any flight in the region. I don't have a ticket with United but I call in hopes that they can take one or two or three of the vouchers or a handful of miles and get me out of town.

When I call Delta to request a move to Tuesday, I find my original flight already canceled, a fact that would have been nice to know sooner rather than later. The very nice agent with whom I speak moves me to a Tuesday night flight out of Dulles - a little less convenient but that one might make it out.

A couple of hours later, I receive an email telling me that the new flight is canceled and I am flying Wednesday again, out of Dulles, which wouldn't be a problem but for the fact that Metro isn't running above ground. Buses are not running. My car is encased in solid feet of snow and we're supposed to get more Tuesday night through Thursday morning.

I call again and talk to a less-helpful agent who doesn't know what I want to do. Or maybe she does. She understands. She just can't or won't do anything to help, so she puts me on a flight Wednesday at noon out of National and I can't summon the strength to argue. It will be canceled. Period. There's nothing to say or do.

I no longer want travel vouchers – I have three to use in the next 10 months. I don't need miles, with a quarter of a million stashed away in the coffers. I don't even need the money back. I just want to leave. I want to go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. To see my friends. To see the sun. I missed Christmas with my family due to inclement weather. I lost my seat and several hours on a canceled flight home from Frankfurt. From the sound of George Gershwin, I'll miss Mardi Gras, too.

Doo dum dee doo.

It's not the party, though, that I'll miss. If I don't get there by Thursday afternoon, I'll miss my friend's parade, which is the whole point of the visit. I want to share in this part of her life. I need time with my friends. I've had the event on my calendar for months. If I don't get there by Thursday afternoon, there's no point in going.

And I feel like crying. An hour and 45 minutes on hold and I fall asleep. In the morning, I start over with another 45 minutes on hold.

"I have a flight for tomorrow. It's already been canceled twice. Is there any way I can get out today? Can I go anywhere?"

"You flight is on time for today," the agent answers.

"My flight today?" I ask.

"Tomorrow," she replies. "Your flight is on schedule right now for tomorrow."

"And we're supposed to get 10 to 20 inches of snow overnight."

"We don't know..."

"You're kidding, right?"

The snow has already started in parts south of DC, south of me.

"I'm sorry I can't help you but have you heard about the Delta Skymiles American Express card?" she asks, moving into a sales pitch and I laugh.

"No," I reply.

"Would you like me to send you more information?" she asks.

"Not unless it can get me to New Orleans by Thursday."

I look into train tickets but with a 6:30 departure and 26 hours of travel time, on a good day, not to mention the fact that a one-way fare costs as much as a roundtrip plane ticket, there's no way.

And I just want to get in my car and drive out of the snow but my car's still covered and my road unplowed. I won't get very far. One of my coworkers hasn't left her apartment since Thursday. The federal government is closed for the second day in a row and the snow... It's starting again.

Doo dum dee doo.



Tag: Travel Snow Washington DC

Sidestepping snowmageddon

I laugh. I cannot help but laugh as we do a funny sidestep, a crab crawl, down the sidewalk or what I assume would be sidewalk if not for feet of snow. Feet. With one in the narrow path of packed snow and one in a hole, we pass each other in the narrow space – path, hole, path, hole – and I smile at the absurdity of it all and the fact that we're trying to be nice, we're trying in the strangest of circumstances.

My friend has just left. He arrived barely hours after the snow started.

"It just looks like snow," he observes with the uniquely his mix of Canadian and Australian accents.

"It is just snow," I reply. "It's just supposed to keep coming for the next 26 hours."

And it does. More than 26 hours of snow.

"But it doesn't look like a blizzard."

"What is the definition of 'blizzard'?" I ask. "Other than the Urban Dictionary's 'great dessert from Dairy Queen'?"

"Volume of snow," he replies.

"More than 26 hours should count as that."

There's a pile of snow in the middle of my street taller than any man I know, and I know more than a few very tall men. The police come as I am clearing off my walk with the shovel my neighbors set on my porch when they left town. They, the cops, stop in the middle of the unpassable street, ran licenses of the cleared cars and knock on doors. They want to know who put the snow there.

A plow cannot clear and emergency vehicles cannot pass the enormous drift. Pile. Critical mass. They do not bother with me, though, as my Jeep is still covered in snow.

It doesn't matter – it will snow again by Tuesday night or so forecasters predict. My neighbors shovel around it as they work together to clear the street and pile snow on the white car across the street that's been there since September. And I feel guilty. I should help. We just have plans and my guest wants to keep walking. I should help. Meet the people in my neighborhood.

Instead, I silently thank the undisclosed neighbor who kept my walk clean and I shovel deep, heavy snow on the path to my front door.

"We're supposed to get more tomorrow," an officer says and I groan. "Ten to 20 inches."

"I'm supposed to leave town on Wednesday."

"You're not going anywhere."

He's probably right. Planes aren't going now and no plane will leave with more snow, even if I can get to the airport. The metro runs at a significant delay and between underground stations. I'm not going to make it. Even without more snow, I'm not going to make it to an airport over the river for a 6 a.m. flight. I'm just not.

I have made it out, though, over the weekend for Snowmageddon 2010. To the Capitol for a thwarted tour, to Chinatown in hopes of coffee, to the White House and back again. We bought tickets and missed a major snowball fight for a movie that never quite happened. We bought beer. Watched snow football and walked through the city. With my nose running, always running, and my hair doubled in volume due to the snow that clings to the shafts and turns to ice, cracking under my fingers and melting when we finally find an open coffee shop, we spend hours wandering. Wandering and talking, walking and drinking. Taking so many pictures. Layering. Unlayering. Laughing.

"We're suffering so much," another friend jokes over breakfast. She has faced snowpocalyptic conditions to come to my house for apple pancakes and banana bread, roasted root vegetables and fruit salad. Espresso. Mimosas. Music and conversation. It is the best Sunday morning I've had in ages and 24- to 30-inches of snow serves as a catalyst more than anything else.

It does nothing to stop us from going out Friday night or wandering for eight or nine hours on Saturday. Breakfast on Sunday. Superbowl. My friend in DC from Vancouver via New York cannot quite make it back where he needs to be when he wants to be there, but it doesn't matter. We push the movie a day, wander a bit more and spend time with my friends before he leaves on Monday.

And I get out. I take pictures. I fall asleep at the movies, in my chair, while typing, because we have done so much and I am exhausted from doing nothing at all that saps our time and keeps us running from one place to another in changing snow.

My knees ache from the world shifting beneath me, and my eyes hurt from the brightness. I'm hot as I walk home alone for the first time in days and I marvel at how the snow equals us, sidestepping and crab crawling, bundled and scarved and looking quite silly. My thighs hurt. I have fallen. I have frozen.

It is marvelous.


Tag: Snow Washington DC

Superbowl XYZ

I may have won money tonight but I don't know. I really don't care.

People at work had a grid thing and I bought a couple of squares, last minute, with no intention of winning at all, no attention to the numbers, no attention to the Who or the commercials. Just a couple of great plays, beer and wine with friends, and conversations.

A couple of friends went to the game. Friends from New Orleans. In a couple of days, I will see them in their hometown, if I can get out of the blanket of snow and ice and fly south for Mardi Gras.

I've never gone for Mardi Gras. For Jazz Fest and Saint Patrick's Day and random weekends in the middle of every season of the year. Every season in Washington, at least. The weather's much nicer in NOLA, and I love it. The Confederacy of Dunces and Carrollton Station, Maple Leaf and Audobon Park.

I need to go to bed. I keep falling asleep. Twice during the film that I never would have seen if not for my houseguest, zoning during the Superbowl and as I typed the few words that I put to page, to computer screen...

And I'm tired.

This morning, I got up between six and seven to clean and cook and get ready for life and my place still isn't clean. We had a lovely breakfast, though... And I'm falling asleep. Again. Hours of walking in the snow has taken it out of me and I...

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaai

I am tired.

[I need to log off before I fall asleep, which seems rather likely in the near term.]


Tag: Life

Snowpocalyptic

Before:


After:


Words will come later. For now, I'm glad to be done with the wandering that put 151 pictures on one camera and 37 on the other, ice in my hair, trousers, and boots. The layers of clothes are in the wash, wine in my glass and photos ready to sort once the movie ends but for now, the lights are out, a movie on and my computer about to close.

It has been a very good day.

Tag: Snow Washington DC

Freshly squeezed

A nurse calls me back. I am carrying my clothes, my book, my hat, scarf and coat and clutching the gown to keep it closed. I can still hear the voice of the man who looks at breasts all day and I still feel modest.

The clothes I leave in the exam room as we go out to the scale and I have lost weight. I know that already. Even half dressed and still wearing shoes, I have lost at close to 50 pounds in the past 18 months.

18 months. That's how babies are measured, by months. Walking. Running. Starting to talk. Two pregnancies. How long it takes to grow my hair long enough to donate again.

Through blood pressure and temperature, we talk about bruises, falling and ice. The upcoming storm. Grocery shopping. The nurse reviews my documented allergies to meds and the pills that I'm taking and she leaves.

I read my book and wait.

And wait.

And wait.

A nurse practitioner I remember from years past comes in to talk to me, to perform a preliminary exam and it's weird, looking this vaguely familiar woman in the face as she kneads my breasts. She finds the lump. No bigger. No smaller. It's familiar to me. To both of us.

She leaves to find the results of my exam and I read. I wait.

The nurse practitioner knocks before re-entering and I cannot remember her name. Radiation tech: Linda. Nurse: Kim. Nurse practitioner... She just told me. I should remember the name of the woman who has just told me that I need additional imaging. Mass of tissue. The words don't really make sense to me but I shrug as if everything's normal and I head back to the dressing room, to waiting and more imaging.

And I'm scared. I don't know what's going on but I know that it's not normal. It's not routine.

Linda retrieves me.

"I thought you left," she says, laughing. "I went to find you and you were gone."

"I was… They told me to come back."

Left. Left. Left. Right. Right. Left. This time it hurts. Much, much worse. Mass of tissue. Calcification. Something shows jagged and white on the screen, something close to my rib and Linda tugs, trying to get more of my breast, my muscle, me on the plate but it wouldn't go anywhere without the rest of me. She turns my head and I lean awkwardly into the machine as she moves my necklace and tightens. Tightens. Tightens. And I want to cry.

Linda tells me to cover up as she opens the door and goes to find someone to make sure she has captured whatever it is that they want to see. The jagged white thing. I haven't quite covered until after the door swings shut but it doesn't really matter anymore.

There is something on my screen. I can see it in the images on the boxlight and the computer monitors and I want to stop looking. I don't know what any of it means, and I want someone to hold my hand. To hold me. I want my lunch and cell phone reception and to get on with my day. I want to pee.

Linda comes back with another woman who smiles at me and checks the images.

"You have it," she says. "See? The shape of it?"

She points at the screen and Linda leans in with a squint. She sends me back to the dressing room to wait. I read. I wait. I let the words "mass" and "calcification" slip from my mind. I have no idea what they mean, and Linda comes back to take me to another room, a room with low light and an exam table, a pillow and towel. She tells me to lie down and slip my left breast from the gown. She drapes a towel over me.

The doctor comes in, expels thick goo on my breast and runs the wand over my left breast. Everything is OK. She thinks everything is OK. She says the lump is just a lump, the same as every other radiologist and surgeon before her.

Five minutes ago, I feared that I had the big C. Suddenly, I'm fine.

I head back to the exam room, which has been occupied and vacated by other patients, patients who limp, patients who need to head over to the hospital for biopsies, surgery, things that don't quite match the place that I am, and my exams pass quickly. Nurse practitioner. Oncological surgeon. I'm done. I have lumpy breasts, but I'm free.

And I head back to the dressing room to reclaim my clothes, donning the "Freshly Squeezed" tee instead of "Squeeze Me" and back into the lobby.

"Can I get validation?" I ask and I pause. "It's such a loaded request. Can you validate me?"

The girl at the desk laughs and walks away. I want to laugh, too. I'm OK.

"You have a nice day."


Tag: Health

Squeeze me

Looking around the room, I doubt these women would be amused by the "squeeze me" t-shirt under my sweater or the "freshly squeezed" tee in my bag. Breast cancer is serious business, but I have the shirts anyway. They make me feel better; besides, these women could have senses of humor.

In a couple of minutes, we'll be undressing together and shivering in ridiculous cotton gowns (open in the front) that never quite close. We will sit with purses in laps, flipping through magazines, and we will clutch at the necks in hopes of stopping the escape of random breasts.

We will all fail.

It won't really matter, though. Soon, each of us will stand topless in front of a stranger who positions our bodies, our breasts, against a machine. A small sticker with metal ball will be stuck to my breast to give a sense of direction and my shoulders arranged in an inhumanely uncomfortable position.

My face will flush as I shiver and heat will rival the cold for a minute as I wonder why they keep the space so chilly, why they don't offer deodorant for those who forget, why I didn't wear a cardigan but then I remember the tees. I have to work after this and my cubemates, employers and clients might be even less amused than the women in the waiting room.

Squeeze me. Freshly squeezed.

True, though, and not remotely dirty, I will wear them under my sweater before and after my fourth (fifth?) mammogram in as many years. A doctor found a lump ages ago. She found another one. Imaging, aspiration, biopsy and appointments with a surgeon based on a lump or two led to recurring appointments based on dense, lumpy breasts and family history.

I talk to strangers, to the other women, about the center and breast health and doctors. One woman sucks on hard candy as she wraps her arms around her chest and rocks. It is unnerving. I want to ask her to stop but don't know the words as she sucks. Loudly. And continues to rock. She tugs on her gown. She tugs on her hat.

I sit and wait. Smile. Brush the hair from my eyes and avert my glance from the breasts that escape, tucking my own back under the gown. I wonder about the voice that I hear, the man in the hall, and how he became a breast man. I have known many in my life but none who cared enough to get an MD.

A woman calls my name from the hall. I go out to meet her. She shows me into a room and wraps a lead apron around my waist before leaving to answer a doctor's question, the man I saw leaning into the hall from an exam room, the man I heard. He isn't my doctor.

The woman comes back, introduces herself, Linda, and asks for my name. My date of birth. Linda's daughter has a birthday three days after mine. She tells me to slip my right breast from the gown and the positioning starts.

"Impressive," I think as the plate lowers to flatten, to smash, the plate with clear plastic, the big one with the ruler that looks more like inches than centimeters. "Seven."

I thought my breasts had shrunk with the weight loss but I don't really remember if I exceeded seven before. Maybe a little. I gasp and wince as she tightens.

"Look up," Linda says. "Don't breathe."

I haven't inhaled since she started tightening. I haven't taken a breath for several minutes; there's nothing to stop. And the process repeats. Right. Left. Right. Left. Left.

"Can you hold this?" she asks, meaning a breast, and I do as she "straightens the skin." Any pride that I have seeps from my pores as I stand there, holding my own breast with a quivering smile.

It isn't the imaging - that part isn't bad - it's me. The thoughts that run through my head even as I pretend that it is just a routine exam because it is. Routine. Even if I am a little young for it. At the 3-day walk, I learned the greatest risks are being a woman and growing older. I just have the added bonus of a family history and so, my breasts alternately smashed between plastic plates.

I return to the dressing room where I'm told to gather my clothes. I put my bra in my purse. My deodorant. The tight t-shirts that are vaguely obscene.

They have (or had) nothing to do with mammograms until now. I have "amazing boobs" or so I have heard. I have heard something similar for most of my life, a fact that embarrassed me when I started wearing a bra in third grade and when dirty old men leered lecherously at a very young me. I didn't mind as much when I grew into and learned how to use them.

I have "amazing boobs" that someday I will lose to gravity, lack of support or cancer. They're all fairly likely, except maybe the one in the middle. Long after the third grade and well before What Not to Wear, I learned the importance of a good bra.

With a good bra in my purse, I wait and I wonder if the third will happen sooner rather than later. I should know in no time at all. For now, at least. The waiting will end and I'll shed the thin cotton gown. I will have my results and an appointment with the surgeon who has offered such sage advice as considering a bilateral mastectomy and having babies for the sake of breast health.

Next year, I will do this again. And the year after that. And every year after that for the rest of my life. With two hours out of my life, maybe three, this morning will give me peace of mind for most of the next year to come. The walk in October will do the same.

I just need to wait for a while longer for a stranger with braces, an oncologist, to feel me up and tell me that everything's going to be all right because it is. Everything's going to be all right. In an hour or two, I'll walk out of here freshly squeezed.


Tag: Health

Too much

Sometimes, life is just too much. Tomorrow, I'll probably feel different but maybe not. In the morning, I have to get up and go to the doctor without deodorant, lotion or powder so that I can have my breasts smashed between a couple of plates while I twist my body in an awkward embrace of a cold metal machine. Shortly thereafter, an oncologocial surgeon will poke, prod and palpate while offering bits of advice.

"You might want to consider a bilateral mastectomy," she offered a couple of years ago followed by last year's, "You should consider having babies. They're good for the breasts."

I have no idea where she'll go from there but I'm sure I'll find out. As long as she doesn't say "cancer," I'm sure I'll be fine.

After the appointment, I have to figure out how to pick up a box of books for the kids at the shelter, transfer it to the office and drop off my car while still making the meeting that I wasn't going to be able to make, even in the best of conditions. In the meantime, my workload has increased with promises to double in upcoming months, but I'm not thinking about that.

I've had volunteering events every night of the week. At the end of tonight's, a man kept mewling like a lost kitten because he didn't like cats and the facility man who came to give us the seven-minute warning put his cat down over the holidays. The facility man equated the loss to the death of his parents, and the mewling, the meowing, wasn't funny.

It made my head and heart hurt as did the letters I read from so many prisoners. As I sorted, knowing there was no way we'd answer all of them. As I looked at the pile of packages knowing that soon we wouldn't have anyone available to help with the shipping and I didn't want to take it on again. Not alone.

And I took home a stack of letters to process, a stack of old letters, because people kept putting them in different places and we would find ourselves answering newer sooner than later and we'd find ourselves tossing requests because we simply didn't have the money, the manpower or time to read through each of them. To answer the requests that practically begged for books.

And I listened to public radio as I drove home and my ire irked as I heard the president's recent speech and commentary from callers.

"We're not a country of Republicans and Democrats," I mumbled as I got out of the car. "We're a country of Americans and if I had a voting member of Congress, I hope she'd vote for the issues rather than party lines."

And I had turned into a mumbler. Someone who mumbled as she slammed the doors of her car in the still dark night.

And when I took out the trash, I found boot prints in the snow on my back porch and I worried because my back porch lies well within my fenced and gated back yard and I hadn't been out that way in a week and a half, since before the last snow or the one before that.

And…

It was just too much.

In the morning things would be better or after the appointment or when I went to read books to the kids and one crawled into my lap because one always crawled into my lap. That's just what happened when I read to them and everything would be all right.


Tag: Life

Another side of the job hunt

My heart breaks a little with every click of the mouse, every attachment opened, every word, and I just have to stop.

I have spent the better part of an hour, maybe two, reviewing resumes, hundreds of resumes, in response to one position, and I know that every resume represents more than words on a page. It is a person. A family. A life. And I know people who have been out of work in the past year and I know people who have been out of work for the past year.

Foreclosure. Bankruptcy. Severe depression and suicidal thoughts. I wish I were making it up. Any of it. All of it. Financial support from family members. From friends. Financial support from the state. Healthcare. The lack thereof.

All of these race through my head as I scan through the email, the poorly-formatted cover letters and rambling resumes. I look for key words. I look at the format and length and ability to communicate and I hear the voice of the person behind those words. The thoughts. The lifetime time summed up in a page or two or seven.

And it breaks my heart.

I don't know what to do with the girl three years out of college who sent seven pages or the not-so-recent college graduate who just wants a job. The theater major applying for a job in mathematics. The woman demanding twice as much as we're willing to pay. The many, many, many applicants asking a fraction as much.

For a while, I sort. I read. I reread. I close and categorize and all the while, I want to cry because we only have one job. One position. And only one candidate will be right or right enough.

So after a while, after an hour or two, I close the mailbox. I send resumes to a coworker who works on the team, and I turn to the TV, to mindless entertainment because I don't want to do it. I don't want to decide. I want to stand on my porch and try to take pictures of the snow. I want to watch TV and wrap birthday gifts. I want to get ready for meetings in the morning while pretending they won't actually happen.

I want to bury my head in the sand, in the snow, because I already have a job. I just wish finding someone to work with us wasn't part of it.

Tag: Work

Over winter

I am over winter. Over unshoveled walks, ice slicks and banks of snow in crosswalks. Freezing in my own house to the tune of exorbitant utility costs and working late because the office is warm. I am over wanting and needing to stay in the house. Feeling fat. Lazy. Eating untold pounds of potatoes, gallons of soup and loaves bread. Unfreezing pipes with a blow dryer.

Done.

Finished.

Over.

Unfortunately, winter's not over me.

It's just the first of February. The groundhog has yet to poke his head out and look for a shadow, and if he's smart, he'll just stay in his burrow under a blanket or five, curled up with a good book, because it's supposed to snow again tomorrow. And this weekend. And for the rest of eternity or so it seems at the moment.

Life would be much harder if I lived somewhere else, in one of the places that my family lives. Minnesota. North Dakota. Norway. My great-grandmother lived in an 8x10 sod hut as 21-year-old homesteader at the turn of the century but that is not me. My roots run deep and strong, my stock hearty, but I am done.

In a week or so, I will escape to Louisiana, to New Orleans and my first Mardi Gras, which should be warmer, I hope, but travel vouchers issued in response to snow-canceled flights cannot help. I don't want to escape. I want to feel at home when I'm at home without a hair dryer in the kitchen to unfreeze my pipes.

My sense of wonder has ended. I am tired and cold. The smell of wet wool lingers even when I'm not wearing it and I miss my silk dresses. I miss dresses, in general, as I try to figure out the wide-wale, plum skirt that's too short for winter and too thick for summer. With a casual misstep, a quick blink of the eye, I'll miss its season entirely, yet I try. I've worn it a few times, shivering. I tell a stranger on the Metro, someone wearing something other than black, that she looks pretty and she sighs.

"I'm ready for spring."

In a few short months, "hazy, hot and humid" will replace "wintry mix" on the morning news and we will, I will, complain. It's just hard to imagine as I pull layer after layer over my head, losing the ability to bend my arms and any visible indication of gender to bulky drab shades of thick winter fabrics, to corduroy and gabardine, velvet and wool that makes me itch. I long for the comfort of cashmere, of angora, knowing that it would only make me miserable.

I am miserable but there are things I like about this snowy season. I know there are, and I struggle to remember them, to focus on something other than the chill in my bones.

Snow angels. I have my own yard, I can make them. I could. I should. Maybe I will.

Snow angels and soup and hot chocolate with marshmallows. Thick woolen hats that make me look silly and mittens. I like mittens. Balling my hands into fists with my fingers keeping each other warm. Bright woolen coats. Orange and red and green. Buttoning up to my chin. Burying my chin a chunky knit scarf or the neck of my coat, peering at the world with barely visible eyes. I like the weight of a pile of blankets and the way they stay put even when I move. Snow on the skylight and snow on my eyelashes. The days getting longer. The clear night sky. The smell of woodsmoke in the wind. Three-day weekends. The way the world stands still when it snows. The quiet, white world.

They fill my mind, these little half-formed thoughts of what I like about winter. The smell of snow, my eyes hanging on Orion's belt, black bean soup. The knap of a velvet. The sound of ice cracking. The sound of nothing at all.

And as I remember about a million and a half little things I love about winter, I realize I might not be over it yet.


Tag: Winter

Frozen, outside and in

Freezing at home, I see that the thermostat reads something like 40 inside. 40 downstairs and 43 up. I duck outside to check the walk that an unknown neighbor has shoveled (for which I am grateful as I never really think about buying a shovel until the snow starts falling) and back in again. Normally, the juxtaposition strikes like a slap in the face, cold outside and heat in even though it's not really all that warm in my place, but this time it doesn't. It's only marginally warmer inside than out and my heart sinks a little.

The pipes in the kitchen have frozen, the ones leading to the sink, at least, and I jack up the heat hoping it helps, wondering if I should call the landlord and what she would do. The lack of water seems an excuse not to cook for the week but the excuse weakens, crumbles and breaks. Upstairs, the water keeps running and I find myself bouncing between upstairs and down, washing my hands, washing vegetables, worrying about falling again.

I cut up potatoes that are starting to wrinkle and roast them. I chop onions and peppers for black beans and rice and start cooking. More onions, more peppers, carrots and celery for soup. I use water from a pitcher in the fridge and prep the ingredients for soup. Clean up will be hard unless the pipes thaw but I'm not sure what else to do.

Random thoughts run through my head, memories that have come much too late to save pipes from freezing but indelible images nevertheless. Hours and hours of ShopVaccing my bedroom after a burst pipe in the spring. The steady drip in the church bathroom, the church where mom worked throughout my childhood and the church where I grew up. In the bathrooms that smelled vaguely dirty and clean all at the same time, the taps were kept open all winter long. Hand-lettered signs reminded churchgoers not to turn them all the way off, and I know that I should have kept my own dripping with below-freezing temps, but I am still figuring out my new house.

The heat should have been running at a higher setting, despite the tendency to kick into overdrive and auxiliary mode, despite the fact that last month's bill floated somewhere near $300 regardless of how little or how low I ran the furnace. Insulated drapes might help. Rugs in the kitchen. Something. Anything. But for now, the pipes are frozen as is the water inside, and I pray they don't burst.

I need to figure out the spot between liquid and solid and try to thaw them with a hair dryer that dates back to my college days. I need to eat. To sleep. To recover from something that seems to be bringing me down, wondering if I should cry, curl up in the fetal position or vomit. Snuggling up in my Snuggie in the chair and a half, I consider at least two of the three – curling up on the couch in the fetal position clutching a sick bucket. Tears might come later and something is wrong with my body.

Pain from falling down hard wooden stairs radiates throughout the rest of my body; for two sleepless nights, rolling to the left generated a sharp, bitter waking. Or maybe it was just shivering in the cold for hours on end while volunteering. Or the cold inside my own house.

40 degrees downstairs and 43 up.

And I crawl around on the icy tiles of the kitchen floor, taking hair dryer to pipes, moving the stove and aiming back there, swinging dryer by cord to get where I can't reach. The hot water frees but the water won't drain. I free up the outtake and move toward the cold. Eventually, all seems right in the world of my kitchen, all but the floors, and I let my landlord know of the freeze.

I need to cook, to eat, something other than cappuccino and cereal and humus and goat cheese on homemade bread. Baking more bread, running the oven, may help with the pipes but the couch beckons. The couch and a movie and a little bit of sleep as pain takes the driver's seat.

Snow canceled Saturday night plans as well as those Sunday morning and afternoon with parties postponed and friends socked by unplowed streets. I watch a movie or two, superb indie flicks recommended by a very old friend or a relatively young friend whom I've known for ages but not at all for most of the years between 13 and now. He makes movies and gave me a few ideas of films that resonate, that make me think outside my little world of blanket and couch and sick. The snow can't take that away.


Tag: Snow