An Open Letter to Mother Nature

I'd like to sleep late tomorrow. So, if it's going to be snowing like this, please to be snowing enough to cancel school thank you very much. Early. So I can turn off the alarm and go back to sleep.

And wander outside with my broomstick and (no, all you Potter fans, not that) sweep the snow off the satellite dish at regular intervals so I have internet access. It's kind of the key to the whole satellite thing working. Huh. Imagine that.

Well, all my other Portland peeps, from jaylake to mme_publisher, have already written about the snow. Personally, I'm with mme_publisher: if it snows again overnight and it looks like it did this morning, I'm just going to say SNOW DAY! and forget about it. I have a cold. Or as we used to say back in the olden-time programming days (and I mean olden, even back before C++), "I've got a code in my node." And that's of no interest to anybody at all.

So. Universe. Why is it snowing in Portland in March? I thought we were going to get away with things this winter, blast it. This morning, Hannah's school was delayed for 2 hours. The massage school, however, was not delayed. Our students had their final practical exam today. Couldn't really miss that, could I. So thankfully got the details worked out and made it to the massage school only a half-hour late. Not too bad. By the time I left there, the snowflakes were so big they looked like falling plant spores. (Who gets the reference?) And once I got a few miles further south, it was rain. Now it's snow again, and pretty good snow too.

Attention those of you in areas that normally get snow: I know this doesn't sound like anything worth mentioning. Hell, I grew up on the east coast; I grew up with snow. But now I live in the temperate rainforest and I don't like the snow any more. It chills me. I'm turning into Sophie. I'm getting old before my time. Give me a soft chair by a warm fire and a good-looking boy to look at and...

Wait a second. That's not me. Never mind.

So, I'm usually a really diligent "respect all life forms" type of person, but I make an exception for cockroaches, mosquitoes, and boxelder bugs. We have a bad boxelder infestation right now and when I sit here at night typing wonderful things with which to regale you all, the boxelders like to join me. They like to join my in the manner of a really awful low-budget horror film by landing on my head or crawling up my legs or buzzing right by my face. So right now I don't really feel the least bit bad watching this one stuck on its back that can't turn over. See, normally I would be reverent and help it turn over. But that one just crawled on me and I'm mad at it for invading my personal space.

Sigh. I just can't be perfect, I guess. Oh, wait. It turned over. Now it's crawling off. And it will probably try to land on me again. And we'll be circular and do this strange little dance all over again.

Can you guys tell I have a really bad cold? It's affecting my brain. I feel all Kafka... well, let me put it this way: when my younger sister was in college, she took her junior year abroad in York, England. I went to visit her there in April of her junior year and while I was there, we took a trip to Amsterdam. While we were in Amsterdam, we went to a place called the Milky Way, which was a private nightclub. It had many different rooms, and in one room they were showing the film version of Kafka's Metamorphosis in German with Swedish subtitles. And. It was Amsterdam. It was a hash bar. It was one of the more surreal experiences I've had. And... my brain feels about as awake and aware now as it did that night.