Dancing with Myself

For crying out loud, what's a girl to do?

Despite what may go down as the two longest days of my life, I have a dubious (at best) list of accomplishments to show for so many hours.

I'm on my fourth book, Bill Buford's "Heat," having crushed "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" (classic '50s post-WWII tale of former soldier's adjustment to new suburban world order), "A Gift from Brittany" (memoir of young Chicago artist who decamps to Paris in 1960, marries fellow artist and moves to French countryside for love and loss) and "Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages" (1983 assessment by strident second wave feminist about why sexless marriage are flexible, not abnormal).

I love to read, but this is ridiculous.

My refrigerator is dazzling, the cleanest it's been since it was delivered two years ago. While far fuller than usual with snow foodstuffs, I doggedly removed every edible bit of it, scrubbed the inside down and returned everything to its place. Mind you, that's my second Suzy Homemaker endeavor of the weekend, after the top to bottom bathroom scrub down.

Don't I get a golden apron pin for that or something?

Last night, I made a big pot of chili (mind you, using light red kidney beans because Kroger was out of the dark ones by Wednesday) so it could sit for a day melding before eating it. Warming it up tonight, I stirred up a batch of corn muffins, an excuse to go through half a stick of butter in the name of dinner.

I'm just showing my solidarity with my walking friend who laid in provisions yesterday at Sub Rosa, Stock, Rostov's, Sugar Shack and Kroger and then emailed me saying, "I figure I will come out 20 pounds heavier by the end of the weekend."

We're kindred souls. I'm well aware that the rest of that pound of butter in my sparkling fridge isn't going to eat itself. Hot chocolate is the drug.

My usual walking was supplanted by even more useless snow shoveling and car clearing because I desperately needed to do something physical and, to put it bluntly, walking was a bitch. Ten hours of that noisy wintry mix last night made for deep, slippery surfaces and cars spinning out dangerously close to where I was trying to walk. Twice.

Thank you, no, I don't think I do trust the snow navigational skills of students behind the wheel and those were the fools who were out in cars this afternoon.

In what can only be an acknowledgement that some people are spending the day trolling Facebook, I got four friend requests today. Four! Apparently when there's nothing else to do, you can always look for new friends.

Being the Luddite that I am, I retaliated by sitting down and writing a long letter, not that I expect the Postal Service will be operating any time soon. I haven't had mail delivery since Thursday and, needless to say, I did not get my Washington Post this morning.

Sigh. I can stand a missing Saturday paper, except I know it bodes poorly for the likelihood that I'll get my Sunday paper and that will be missed.

Sort of like real life at this point. All I can say is, thank heavens for music, because eleven new CDs are what's keeping me going at this point.

Loud music, muffled by all that snow.