Hip Waders Strongly Recommended

I blacked out yesterday and came to with my hand in a bag of Trader Joe's Movie Theater Popcorn, a veritable bucket of chili on the stove in what could only have been a limbic, Pavlovian response to the mysterious white that has stitched up the city - emergency! they say. The only emergency I can see is that I tripped over some bliss and fell into a pile of tiny gloves mittens scarves boots hats coats left drying by the fire from this bonus vacation that turns our tiny house into an island or maybe a boat. Adrift in drifts and jewel earthtones warm inside with winds that buffet - buffet! I say - and mix with tiny squeals and sliding cardboard on forbidden ground - the driveway and into the street. Today nothing is forbidden, the fruit has been frozen and covered in a sparkling white dream where the outside world, bereft of grownups, is theirs to conquer and build and throw and wallow and slip-slide-sled. The boundary lines have been blurred in the ice and the world slips open just a little bit more. "Come in when it starts to sting" I sing and busy myself with soups and mugs of hot things for impossibly red faces and the hair! That glorious hair all matted wet and tangled up plastered places escaping upward from crowns and it's the hair of happiness. Tying knots in yarn with sticks and making more things to get wet and loved, pausing to add wood to the fire, sip my coffee, revel in the presence of my truly better half, my everything in this unexpected leisure of emergency! We listen for sirens and say silent prayers for those without their own boats or islands of warm woolen hand-knit comfort and fires and cocoa and assorted soups. At night the city holds its breath - its groaning, sighing, chirping dream state ceases and falls soundlessly asleep, buried deep in the cold. We lay and listen to the silence and further evidence it's only us and ours and now. We watch the scrolling tide of cancelled, postponed otherness - outside things on other planets than today. We walk the blurry lines to fill our bags with tasty things to comfort, keep us warm. I am regal in my cape - a carriage coat from the turn of another century, passed down by great aunt who's recently gone. I wear it, warm, and think of her and smile. I smile in my bowler hat, my hot pink rubber boots. Ridiculously warm and ridiculous, I sweep the tops of banks with its length. My footmen are brightly colored monkeys, my handsome prince carries my parcels and I am the queen of 12 blocks. I blacked out when I contemplated this life. This blessing of wonder and speech and the thousand million tiny web-like threads which some would break for some loose change jingled on top of a heap. I speak, I write, I think - I have these luxuries - this tiny bright candle of magnificence in the darker tides of human history. On other days I tremble to think of that tiny light quietly whickering away bit by bit in laws and bills and hate and greed. But today, I came to in order to celebrate. This is so much more than words. It's so much more than me. It's so large, this life that fits in my tiny house with a sloping driveway. So large and so brilliant I grasp only wisps and whispers of its magnitude.

Flotsam and Jetsam

I have very little capacity for small talk. I listen politely and smile, answer direct questions when asked, and then usually blurt something vaguely appalling that stops conversation dead and then abruptly walk away after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence. Yet people still talk to me.

I have a deep and abiding love of the U.S. Postal Service. I mail things as often as possible and see the postage increases as an opportunity for new stamps. One of my dreams is to be on the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee.

I used to drive a green 1973 Chevy Impala. I was on a first name, hugging basis with the tow truck driver. Sometimes I really miss that car.

I was thinking about Heraclitus the other day. When he said "you cannot step twice in the same river; for other waters are ever-flowing on to you," I'm not sure he was talking about being a mom. He could have been, though.

I dated a guy once who complained about my vocabulary. "Why can't you just talk normal [sic] like everybody else?" He asked me to marry him. I said no.

My Jaybird was all excited after school yesterday because as part of their Social Studies unit on communities, they are building a city and writing laws. The mayor of Seattle sent their class a proclamation recognizing their fictitious community. "Mama! I was so excited I cried a little!"

I really want to learn how to rap. I think that would help with awkward social silences.

I cried a little during an episode of Curious George this morning. George's friend Betsy has chicken pox and misses a performance of her favorite opera, Hansel and Gretel. George re-enacts the opera for her using finger puppets and makes a finger puppet that looks just like Betsy to play the Dew Fairy. It was just such a thoughtful gesture for a cartoon monkey to make.

The Hooligan explained to me how his "brain was acting funny" on the way home from soccer practice yesterday. He said he kept seeing flashes "like at school picture day" coming out of the traffic lights. I assured him he was probably hungry and tired and we'd take care of it. I spent the rest of the evening worrying that he had a brain tumor.

I am much more comfortable delivering a soliloquy on stage in front of hundreds of strangers than I am mingling at a party. A complete stranger that I met in a park when I was 16 told me that was because I am a coward. For a long time I believed him.

Sometimes when I'm doing housework, I make up poems in my head to keep it interesting. My favorite is "Piles to Fold Before I Sleep".

I religiously read instructional signs and follow them - stay off the grass, do not touch, no food or beverages allowed, take one. The one firm exception to this rule is any sign indicating where I can or cannot park and for how long. For some reason those are completely invisible to me.

I have a recurring nightmare that we find out my daughter's verbal acumen and bright personality are the result of a brain tumor that's pressing on her temporal lobe. We are given the choice of operating to save her life but sacrificing her personality and speech or letting her go on as she is, knowing she will die young.

One time when I was nine, I fit 227 candy corns in my mouth at once.

When my husband and I got engaged, I read somewhere that the top three reasons for divorce are fights about money, in-laws, and children. We agreed to never fight about those things. So far, so good.

I write extremely silly cover letters for job interviews. I figure they should know up front what they are getting into. Sometimes I even get hired.

I had lived in 6 states and 3 countries by the time I turned 18. I never feel quite at home anywhere, but I feel quite at home everywhere.

First semester of my freshman year in college, a close friend of mine died from a brain tumor that had been quietly growing for years. A few hours before she died, she and I had a spectacular collision on the softball field. A lot of people blamed me for her death. It wasn't my fault.

I dated a guy once who asked me to tell him all about the strangest place I'd ever lived. I took the next hour and told him about Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. I don't think that was what he was going for. He also asked me to marry him. I said no.

Whenever I log into Twitter, it reminds me of a semester in college when I told the advisor I was interested in "Urban Planning" and she signed me up for mechanical engineering courses. I wanted to plant flowers and stage theatrical performances starring homeless people. I found myself in classes surrounded by people who spoke a language of symbols and numbers that were incomprehensible to me.

I don't mind appearing vulnerable, but sometimes I mind appearing strong.

Ten words I hear almost every day that just make me fall in love with my husband all over again: "I'm on my way home. Can I pick anything up?"

My daughter likes to play "The Stranger Game". She invented it when she was 3. She pretends she is an orphan who has turned up on our doorstep and creates a whole back story for herself as she "meets" us. I think she is practicing for the day she will disown us all.

My mom sent my son a potted plant for his 5th birthday. He tore open the box, looked at it for a second and then said "Oh. That's not what I was expecting."

I have a recurring nightmare of being trapped in an endless public restroom. It's one of those up and down sort of nightmares because sometimes I bump into old friends.

I dated a guy once who told me he "had a vested interest" in my taking my lunch break at work because his was next. He asked me to marry him. I said yes.