But this, right now? This isn't *real.*
The sky is bluer than it has been in a couple of weeks. And I guess that power is out for a bit over 100,000 people in the area? Yesterday it started to snow, and going in for my paycheck I complained as it splattered on my cheeks that I wished it could decide to be snow or rain, not be this in-between thing. The weather service called for one to three inches, enough to soak my feet, too much snow for me to really quite believe in even if I've seen it four or five times now.
I got my check, did my errands. Rob came home so I hiked up to his place as the weather resolved to finally be snow, little flea-flakes that didn't soak me so badly. Rob took a nap, and I curled up beside him in the dark room, reading and writing online.
Three hours later, we sat up. Out the window I couldn't see Oakland's lights from across the river, and even the lights of Carson Street, half a mile away, were dimmed to only little gold gems.
"How much is there?" Rob asked in sleepy reply to my whistling "holy crap."
I looked out the window on the other side of the room, down onto the neighbor's fence, which I usually use to reckon depth. "Um. From up here I must be wrong. Looks like--five, six inches? I must be wrong, we're only supposed to get three at most. I'll look when we get downstairs."
It was late, now, but the idea of taking Tess-dog for a walk in the heavily-falling snow was a pleasant one. We decided we'd walk her down to Carson, take her into the Lava Lounge, since surely no one else would be out in this to mind it. Suited up in aging Swedish grenadier's greatcoat, thermals and loose trousers, shirt and sweater and hoodie and scarf, and headed downstairs.
Upon opening the door, a foot of snow collapsed on the step.
"Hoooly, shit." Rob said in that way he has, things carefully pronounced and musical.
Outside...perhaps this is boring to you. Perhaps the absolute transformation a landscape goes through when it's had two feet of snow dumped on it, and more is falling fast, is something that you've seen so often as to have it be commonplace. But to me, this is evidence of miracle (though miracles are certainly not nice things).
We walked to Lava--it took us perhaps half an hour, that ten-minute walk--with Tess-dog having to swim through drifts that occasionally came up to her chest. The roads were absolutely still by necessity, no car being able to get through it, but here and there we'd find hollering clutches of grad-student aged snowball warriors. Tess thought she was in heaven. I couldn't stop looking at everything--the trees with their webs of snow, the stairs down to the road which had been transformed into slides, the roads and parking lots that were now deep-soft fields of unmarked snow. When we got to the lounge it was packed, loud and full of people dancing to Rush, but we brought Tess in anyway. She instantly made dozens of friends and spent the evening being petted on a near-constant basis. Rob got his Yuengling, I had a framboise and watched the snow fall through the windows.
On the walk home, three hours later, we passed a group of snowboarders who were taking turns being dragged behind a jeep full of punk kids. It looked incredibly fun, but I wanted to get inside and rest, all the snow-walking having been tiring. In the last block, a very steep hill with Rob's house at the crest of it, the stairs were so thick with snow that I couldn't tell where a step was or wasn't. Eventually I threw myself sideways through a break in the railing, dropping four feet into three feet of snow which caught me like a loose-strung trampoline, all squish and gentle bounce.
Looking at it now, as we're shortly to look for a mid-afternoon breakfast, I find it no more believable. In daylight it's not as extreme, brightly-lit fields being common underneath the sun, but still it just doesn't look real. People live in this! All the time! People get used to this, plan their lives around dealing with this strange thing that falls from the air and piles up on their houses and cars. But after more than five years of Pittsburgh winters, it still seems like a dream to me.
discontent
tentative
tired
calm
uncomfortable