5 posts tagged “winter”

Snark is working at his computer on the sofa, with his knit hat sitting companionably next to him like a deflated small animal. We have a programmable thermostat that will automatically let the temperature of your house plunge to something cheap and uncomfortable while you're out or sleeping, and heat it back up in time for you to care. The idea, of course, is that you save money without actually suffering any deprivation. However, we set the times back when we both went out of the house to work every day. Since then, things have changed, and he works at home while I'm at my office on campus. You might think that he would adjust the settings to reflect this fact, but instead he likes to try to muscle his way through, and I often come home to find him wearing a hat, a scarf, a coat, or all three. I'm sure he'd wear gloves too if he could type with them. Then I turn up the heat and make fun of him, and he slowly sheds the extra garments. The result is that bits of winter clothing can often be found in unexpected places around the house.

Now he has just idly reached out and picked up the hat with one hand as he stares at the computer. He's put his hand in it like a mitten and is twirling it around and around. Now he's dropped it back down again, and it sadly looks much more deflated this time around: no longer companionable, just defeated. Oops! He's picked it up again and put his hand back inside. He gives it a number of little quick shakes, then puts it back down. All of this seems to be entirely unconscious. His gaze remains fixed on the screen, and his face gives no indication that he has noticed the hat at all. It's just something between Hand and Hat; he takes no part in it himself.

Oh! I'd been spending some time trying to articulate the special variety of ennui and encroaching mortality that has been plaguing me lately (products of this effort not worth keeping for posterity) and while I was engrossed in that, the hat somehow made its way right back onto Snark's head.

Observing all of this has actually been very cheering.

And now Snark has just offered to get up and make us cocoa, and the cat is scrabbling at the door asking to be let out (he'll regret it, it's turned back into winter out there). Melancholy provisionally averted, domesticity ascendant.

We finally shoveled out the driveway yesterday -- the landlord had been just parking at the bottom and we don't drive during the week, and so none of us pulled it together until the weekend. Alas, the bit where he pulled in and out each day was good and packed down, and still is. I have a special loathing of shoveling packed-down snow obtained in my middle-school years, when I was always sent out to shovel the front walk after it had been trampled on all day. And though I am certainly puny now, I was even punier then, making the whole endeavor protracted and pathetic, much like my adventures mowing the bumpy lawn with my mother's very dull-bladed hand mower. I do not think it built character, I regret to report.

Anyway, the three of us got it pretty well cleared out yesterday afternoon, and then it snowed some more in the night. So Snark and I had to give it another go-over by ourselves before we could take the car out for shopping this morning. That was some heavy snow! Also, for a good bit of the way there is nowhere handy to dump it, leading to lots of damp dense shovelfuls hucked up and over a five-foot fence. Turns out that though I am not so puny as my twelve-year-old self, I am also not particularly in shape for so much upper body activity and now I feel like an old old man. Creak, creak.

While we were hacking away exhaustedly at the ice at the end of the driveway, a neighbor from a few doors down began to make conversation about our landlords' new pet. "How's their puppy doing?" I found it less than delightful to be called upon to make small talk just then. What do I know of how their puppy is doing? Fine, I suppose. Like a puppy. Like someone else's puppy that I care about not in the slightest. PLEASE LADY LET ME FINISH THIS UNPLEASANT TASK IN PEACE. I think I grunted politely enough, so maybe I did aquire a little bit of character somewhere back there.

Since then I have read a bit, cooked a bit. The big hit of the week I think will be eggplant in Manchurian sauce. This is along the lines of a particular Indian "Chinese" (which I believe is about as authentically Chinese as chop suey) dish called Manchurian Cauliflower. Instead of battered fried cauliflower florets, in this case, we have eggplant cut into one-inch cubes, salted, rinsed, tossed in olive oil, and roasted in the oven before being dumped into the delicious glossy gingery tomatoey orientalist sauce. Smells and looks lovely.

My friends, it has been cold. It has been really quite fucking cold, and on Monday my eyelashes froze together. In December, it was not cold. It was creepy how not-cold it was. But now, now it is cold. In London, where it is not nearly so cold (but nor is it supposed to be) it snowed, and I am told that on NPR a man on the London street remarked that this was "deuced inconvenient," perhaps because he had escaped from a Wodehouse novel or a Harlequin romance.

I tire of the cold.

The people across the street decided to fire up the grill, out on their second-story porch, in the driving wind and freezing cold. Flames went leaping up, and we thought their house was on fire. I realized what was going on while Snark was on the phone with 911. "Sorry, false alarm," he said.