Moydan, Februanny 17, 2003





Ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window-frame

Tell me about it, John Greenleaf Whittier! Jeez!

Oh, hi, reader. Let's go to the picture window together, shall we, some 11 stories above the at-least slightly fabled Eisenhower Valley, arm in arm in arm, if you please (surely there's at least three of us!) and admire the sixth-biggest snowstorm in Washington, D.C. history. Shall we? (That's it, scoot! Ha ha!)

Now, you may be wondering why I'm sighing contentedly with arms thrown backwards in a voluptuous yawn. (Weird, huh?) I mean, why, precisely, am I extending my beflanneled tum-tum before me like this as I arch my back in respiratory ease? (Any ideas?) Or, to put it another way, why are my eyes twinkling in the predawn glow of the I-395 street lamps as I make facetious muscles with first my left arm, then my right, while contentedly murmuring the words, "Yes, yes, yes! This is what I'm talkin' about!" Are you stumped? (as the wise-guy shipmate asked young Ahab after his first run-in with Moby-Dick.)

Well, apart from the fact that I'm a certified loon, I'm doing all this because I love snow -- and doggone it, we've received at least 2-feet worth of that commodity over the last 24 hours, not to mention the fact that it's still snowing, until a body wonders how it's going to so much as travel to the local food store today! I mean, just look at those cars in the parking lot! (Or rather, look at those heaps of snow that betoken where those cars are now buried!) Fortunately, my personal body can walk to the apartment complex's 7-Eleven, and if my body gets desperate for diversion, it can even trek (albeit Dr. Zhivago-like) to Purple Potamus to rent a video -- but make no mistake: I am snowbound this morning, too, insofar as I can't imagine going into "work" today.

Unfortunately, my boss may have a better imagination than I have in this regard; in which case, I'll probably end up hiring a cab to take me over the river and through the woods -- to grandmother's office building, we go:

"What time-sensitive projects you have, Grandma!"

"The better to make you come out in the snow on a day when, by rights, you should be at home sipping cocoa and watching 'Tales from the Darkside' on video cassette, my dear! "

In fact, do you know what? I'd better betake myself (beflanneled tum-tum and all) to yon bathroom with a view toward showering, lest the doleful summons I'm expecting bear fruit.

Can doleful summons bear fruit? Well, if they do, I hope there's at least enough to garnish a bowl of cereal, for now that I bethink myself of it, I haven't even breakfasted yet -- which, all the more reason for me to "get with the curriculum" and take that shower at once! Now, do I hear?

Meanwhile, you site visitors stay put over there by the picture window (isn't that somethin', huh? two whole actual feet of snow?!) whilst I close this EXTREMELY satisfactory journal entry with another quote from "Snowbound":

Our buskins on our feet we drew;
With mittened hands, and caps drawn low

Hmm, that hardly brings a sense of closure to my diary entry. (Has anyone seen my buskins, by the way? I thought I left them over here by the radiator to dry out....)

I'll tell you what, let's conclude with the closing lines of the Whittier poem -- if only because they remind me of my icy trek to the candy aisle of 7-Eleven last night, during which I would have done well to have worn a hat! (Brrr!)

(You know, buskins: size 7 1/2, I think. I'm sure they were over here by the radiator!)

The traveller owns the grateful sense
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,
And, pausing takes with forehead bare
The benediction of the air.