The Past Five Days

I used to think blogs were silly. I still do. However, I've decided to give it a try, since I enjoy writing and am sick in bed with a wretched cold and a brutish cough; and besides, being open-minded to giving things a try only did any harm when some people decided to vote for Bush a second time.

The last time it snowed more than two feet in Virginia was in 1997. In fact, that year we got three feet, and my brother and I tunneled through the back yard and over the garden wall until we may actually have been in danger of turning into moles (that's another story). This past week, snow was predicted. I, as a Virginian, get excited over flurries, so you can imagine my enthusiasm when all sources were saying we could get up to two feet.

As is my wintertime tradition, when it started to snow I assembled a storm-kit involving disney movies, hot chocolate and a Harry Potter book before setting out for my best friend Tera's house to get snowed in. I arrived on her doorstep, rosy-cheeked and peppy, amid the first innocently accumulating inches of snow. Little did I know that I would not leave for five days, held captive by four inches of solid ice on the roads; nor had I any inkling that the next morning a scheming, evil rhinovirus would pounce upon my unsuspecting sinuses.

That first evening, Tera and I walked through the muffled dusk and drifting snowflakes, feeling as if we'd stepped into Ethan Frome (except without a conniving hypochondriac wife who will stop at nothing to ruin your life and all prospects of future happiness, and without forbidden love, and without horses, and without a creepy cat . . . so basically only the landscape. Give me a break, it was gorgeous out.) The comfortable happiness of besties reunited for a long walk in the boonies made me finally feel I'd come home, two full days after returning from school in Ohio.

The next morning, though, the only snow-like substance I could see was a white, fluffily menacing cloud of tissues ("I will chafe your nose until it falls off, BWAHAHA") in which I was irretrievably engulfed for the remainder of my stay at the Morris household. The whole family was remarkably goodnatured about it all, but I was so out of it that, when asked whether I'd prefer coffee or tea for breakfast, I replied "yes . . . please," and promptly went back to sleep.

At any rate, after five days I am back home and ready to make cookies and chocolate truffles, come hell or pneumonia (knock on wood). Just . . . don't anyone else eat them, or get within five feet of me, for that matter.