Book of Marvels
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Prisoners of the Storm!
Here's the problem with having a blog: sometimes you're just hunkered down inside with nothing to say.
It's not that our excess of weather--Cleveland's snowiest winter since the late 70s, someone said--has completely immobilized me. I saw these fine racks of icicles on someone else's house when I was driving around yesterday-- for some reason, every house on this one block had icicles so thick they reminded me of prison bars. Or of teeth poised to snap off your head if you stick it outside.
And I was out today-- to the farmers market and the library, then out tromping when my dog-walking buddy stopped by. We let the dogs run loose in areas that are usually off limits to them-- in the playground behind the school and in the city park--and the dogs struggled to chase each other through snow that came up to their chests. They looked like big awkward bunnies, leaping from one dent in the snow's crust to another. Back on the street, they sniffed along the snowdrifts for evidence of other dogs and, for once, we could see it: the script of the other dogs' urine, visible in the snow. Like a message board, we said, or like a listserve.
But it's been a hunkering time overall, not a doing time, and I've been reading more than I've been writing. This might be a lingering indulgence from my daughter's visit two weeks ago. We had much serious preliminary conversation before she arrived about what we'd do together. An exhibit at Heights Arts? A musical at Kalliope? A handfull of gallery openings? Finally, we decided that what we'd most like to do is what we hardly ever do: eat take-out from Annie's Sun Luck Garden, lie on the couch, and watch DVDs. So that's what we did Friday night, all day Saturday, Saturday night, and part of Sunday. She introduced me to the wonderful Freaks and Geeks, a TV show that was cancelled after a season.
I have an unconscious and unreasonable code about watching television or even reading for pleasure during the day. I just don't do it, not ever, not even on weekends. I don't know if this is a holdover from being a kid who was frumphed at for reading too much (watching more than a tiny bit of TV wasn't even an option), especially if it was during the day--there were those in my family who teased me by calling me "lily white" because I was lying on the couch reading while they were outside water skiing or learning to golf. Or maybe it's just because I work at home and while I'm at home, I always think I should be working-- or at least be at my desk, doing something that looks like working. If I start watching a DVD or reading a book in the middle of the day, who knows what kind of calamity might be unleashed? The work will dry up, the checks will stop coming, and I'll have to auction off all my lustreware from occupied Japan.
But even after Jamie left, I had to keep watching Freaks and Geeks; I had to see how that one brilliant season played itself out. So I watched the remaining shows at odd times during the next week, and this sort of seemed to establish a gap of pleasure, right in the middle of the day.
It hasn't ruined me yet.
¶ 12:19 PM 7 comments
Here's the problem with having a blog: sometimes you're just hunkered down inside with nothing to say.
It's not that our excess of weather--Cleveland's snowiest winter since the late 70s, someone said--has completely immobilized me. I saw these fine racks of icicles on someone else's house when I was driving around yesterday-- for some reason, every house on this one block had icicles so thick they reminded me of prison bars. Or of teeth poised to snap off your head if you stick it outside.
And I was out today-- to the farmers market and the library, then out tromping when my dog-walking buddy stopped by. We let the dogs run loose in areas that are usually off limits to them-- in the playground behind the school and in the city park--and the dogs struggled to chase each other through snow that came up to their chests. They looked like big awkward bunnies, leaping from one dent in the snow's crust to another. Back on the street, they sniffed along the snowdrifts for evidence of other dogs and, for once, we could see it: the script of the other dogs' urine, visible in the snow. Like a message board, we said, or like a listserve.
But it's been a hunkering time overall, not a doing time, and I've been reading more than I've been writing. This might be a lingering indulgence from my daughter's visit two weeks ago. We had much serious preliminary conversation before she arrived about what we'd do together. An exhibit at Heights Arts? A musical at Kalliope? A handfull of gallery openings? Finally, we decided that what we'd most like to do is what we hardly ever do: eat take-out from Annie's Sun Luck Garden, lie on the couch, and watch DVDs. So that's what we did Friday night, all day Saturday, Saturday night, and part of Sunday. She introduced me to the wonderful Freaks and Geeks, a TV show that was cancelled after a season.
I have an unconscious and unreasonable code about watching television or even reading for pleasure during the day. I just don't do it, not ever, not even on weekends. I don't know if this is a holdover from being a kid who was frumphed at for reading too much (watching more than a tiny bit of TV wasn't even an option), especially if it was during the day--there were those in my family who teased me by calling me "lily white" because I was lying on the couch reading while they were outside water skiing or learning to golf. Or maybe it's just because I work at home and while I'm at home, I always think I should be working-- or at least be at my desk, doing something that looks like working. If I start watching a DVD or reading a book in the middle of the day, who knows what kind of calamity might be unleashed? The work will dry up, the checks will stop coming, and I'll have to auction off all my lustreware from occupied Japan.
But even after Jamie left, I had to keep watching Freaks and Geeks; I had to see how that one brilliant season played itself out. So I watched the remaining shows at odd times during the next week, and this sort of seemed to establish a gap of pleasure, right in the middle of the day.
It hasn't ruined me yet.
¶ 12:19 PM 7 comments
