What to Pack for the Women's March on Washington: Part Two/ the roller bag

My Equal Writes t-shirt from Shebooks seems like a no-brainer. Wooly stuff may not be necessary given the weather predictions, but I'm taking one sweater and some wool leggings, just in case. But honestly, it's gray and 59 degrees here in paradise right now; it's only supposed to be a few degrees cooler in D.C. on Saturday. Snow boots? probably unnecessarily heavy. A polar fleece hat with an attached balaclava?! Nah. It's weird though...that warm-ish weather. But lucky. Very lucky.

A few years ago, I barely made it make to CA between Snowmageddon and Snowpocalypse.

BWI airport in 2010 when the snowplow had to drive up to the roof of the parking structure in order to dump its load of snow on top of the pile.

View from my brother's front door in suburban Baltimore.

SNOWMAGEDDON

I was there.  

My brother was actually in that snowplow and drove it through the night at the mobile home park where he lives and works. It started snowing at 10:00 a.m. on Friday morning, and it didn't stop until Saturday around 3:00 in the afternoon. I was a little nervous about losing power and having to huddle in my coat and scarf, trying to keep my mother warm in front of my brother's wood stove, but we were lucky. We were warm and dry and had cable TV with movies on demand, beer and bourbon--and a fridge full of home cooking, thanks to my brother's girlfriend.

 Thanks to my brother's can-do attitude and his 4-wheel drive truck (the '57 Chevy is his "IRA"--not his everyday vehicle) I managed to get out of  Baltimore Washington International Airport last night in a brief window of clear weather and plowed runways even though the roads were a single-lane slip and slide with trees down under the weight of the snow. A back-hoe was on the roof of an airport parking structure when my brother and I pulled up in his truck. It was dumping snow on a 4 or 5 story-high pile shaped like the Matterhorn.

Now I am back in the Land of Too Much Rain. But I'm grateful for these experiences with Mother Nature that remind me how little control we really have in this life.

Ice-covered country roads, blizzards and deluges make me a weird kind of happy. They bring on a savoring  that is so full and sweet that it can keep me awake at night as I lie in my bed wide-eyed at the  power of love.

Here Comes the Sun

After six days of weather that made me think the perfect man might be a builder of arks, the sun came out yesterday morning.

The aftermath of the storm is that my street now looks like a papier maché project.















"Did you notice the mountains?" I asked a little old lady I encountered while walking my dogs.
"No English," she told me. (I think she was Chinese).
"Snow," I said and pointed to the hills behind her.
"No," she said, nodding her head yes.
"Snow," I said, trying again as I fluttered my fingers delicately and let my hands drift downwards. "Snow on the hills. Look." But I couldn't get her to turn around. It was startling to see the snow so close and it made me giddy to have no one to share it with. I restrained myself though as I finished my walk. I did not bound through the neighborhood embarrassing my dogs exclaiming about the snow.

Today, the second day of sunshine, there are still rogue puddles in the park that look like small lakes. But my patio  is now no longer a cesspool of floating dog poo. It's clean and dry, and the sandbags have been moved to the side so I can use my back doors again. Inside, my floors inside have been Roomba-ed for about the 50th time (does anyone else love their Roomba so much they talk to it? I think if they made little outfits for Roombas like they do for those plastic lawn geese, I might dress mine up.)

I'm so happy about the sun that I don't even care that Mr. Ex did not return my latest phone call which I made to him after my attorney emailed me on Friday, telling me that Mr. Ex and his attorney are still refusing to address the issues of his bonuses & reimbursing me for half my attorney fees-- and that they are still trying to divide the irrevocable trust. I'm not sure if it was desperation or optimism, but I called Mr. Ex up and asked him out for a drink so we could talk. Maybe mold spores have taken hold of my brain, but I really think if we were seated in a dark bar with Margaritas in our hands we could work this out.

Where I'm At & Where I'm Not

It's like...well...hot and cold, the difference between Vermont and Southern California. Here, chunks of snow are sliding from the roof in the winter sunshine and now there's a crater in the snowbank outside my studio window big enough to lay a body in. I haven't gotten used to the shroud-like masses that plummet past me and thump onto the ground. The maintenance crew here shovels the snow from the flatter rooftops in the complex, and with that image in my head of men on roof-tops, the falling planks of snow scare me every time. NO! I think, and look up expecting to see some crumpled human on the ground.  

I had some imaginings like that about myself some months back and now all of that seems like a very long time ago. I'm in a different state of mind completely one year and seven months since my marriage ended. But still, I feel I have to be careful--the way I am walking on the icy sidewalks here. Pay attention. Look out for the slippery spots. If I pay attention, I won't fall down.

Things About Snow that I'd Forgotten

1. It's really sparkly.

2. Snowflakes, as they fall, can look really raggedy.

3. Snow looks amazing on a red coat.

4. Snow makes a lot of things look good--old cars, dirty sidewalks, those ugly green plastic patio chairs....

5. It smells clean.

6. It erases memories of Southern California with Mr. Ex.

This is Snow?

I was hoping for the pristine. A white blanket. The covering of flaws and bleakness and something to coat the branches of the trees that stand naked in the winter wind. Last December, during my first grad school residency, I walked in the woods every night. But this semester after 75 hours inside, I ventured outside for the first time this evening. You could say I'm cocooning, but that's not really how it is. I'm inside. Interior. Thinking of how terrible I felt last year to be starting grad school without a support system, mourning the death of my marriage full out. (How did I manage that?) and somehow taking lecture notes and workshopping and getting to know people. I feel better this year. But I still want snow. Something to blot out the grayness. Something for the moon to reflect off of.