S'now Comfort

Spring semester: day twenty-four

The snow has stopped, but not before closing everything down in the area (again) for today -- the local pizza places aren't even open, and the mail never came down the street yesterday (that I saw, anyway). The university closed down for today, again, before 4PM yesterday, and the storm has now moved off to the north and east, leaving a bunch of cabin-fever-stricken Kansans in its wake.

Me, I'm fine; I don't like leaving the house any more than I have to anyway. I have realized, however, that like it or not, I'll have to make a nice little jog to the gas station for cigarettes if I want to be able to concentrate on anything over the weekend. I have enough left to get me through the evening or so, but they're running out faster than I expected them to. This is probably because I've been sleeping weird hours and have been awake a lot more than I normally am when I'm off (which, yes, is really weird). In a pinch, I also have my electronic cigarette, but it's definitely not the same in comparison -- my last disposable one is in my desk at work, and I'm using my old cartridge-based one right now, which always makes me cough and irritates my throat if I use it too much.

I have come to the conclusion that I have to dig out whether I want to or not; the snow isn't going to melt off for at least another week or so, and there's just so much of it. It's not like I have a plow or snowblower or anything like that, so I have strapped on my eight-pound, steel-toed Caterpillar boots, am wearing three layers on top and two below the waist, two pairs of thick thermal socks, and soon I will be shoveling my driveway out. More snow is moving in on Sunday and Monday, as mentioned before, which means that this next week is likely to suck, again, for any sort of travel -- even a shopping trip. If I have to, with a little elbow grease I'll be able to get my landboat of a car out and about to get some necessities, but I don't foresee that happening any time before absolutely necessary unless my neighbor on the farm next door uses his tractor to plow the street again (which he did the last time it snowed like this two years ago; awesome guy, he is).

Last night, I showered and trimmed my beard -- the only trim it's had for the past five months -- and once I'm done with the driveway (or at least passably done) I'm going to put away my laundry and take care of some other household chores before I settle in for a weekend of reading and studying. I have to order some books from Amazon, but there's no point in doing that until the weather clears up enough out here for them to actually start shipping things again.

Daisy, off and on, thinks she's getting sick again -- she's had an intermittent sore throat for the past several days, along with a general feeling of nausea and fatigue. Last night, she was feeling a bit better, but still. I feel bad for her; her immune system isn't great. This would be the fourth or fifth time she's been ill on some level since the two of us have been together, and she's miserable when she's sick (she's the kind of person who stares at me with puppy-dog eyes and repeats, over and over, "I'm dyyyying.") I keep telling her that she needs to get on a vitamin regimen and stick to it, even though she hates taking pills. I still think, to this day, that me taking vitamins all the time is what keeps me from getting sick -- keep in mind that every day I'm on campus, I'm not only in close teaching quarters with 50 students, but in and around the department with all of the other professors and GTAs who have a ton of students, as well. I don't get sick often at all. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been really ill over the course of the past four or five years. With Daisy, I'm as supportive and helpful as I can be when she's sick, and when she's sick and at home, there's not a whole lot I can do other than let her rest.

Despite the fact that I'm enjoying my time off, I've become a little restless, actually. I wouldn't call it "cabin fever" per se, but I am becoming bored with what I have to do around the house. This is a problem because once I become restless, nothing will alleviate my boredom or disgruntlement. I don't want to watch a movie or play a video game, there's not a whole lot to clean or cook, and I know that if I try to start reading or studying for comps, I'll not absorb anything -- it'll all bore me even more. Instead, in order to try to change my demeanor a bit, last night I took a notebook and a pen out to the living room and started writing. What I ended up with were very rough drafts of four new poems, including one written about (and for) Daisy. It's the first time I've been able to write anything new, anything of substance, in weeks. I envy those poets who can sit down with a notebook and a pen for four hours a day, coming up with new things to write about, because I've never been able to do that. I'm not that kind of poet (or that kind of writer in general). Most of the stuff I write, nobody wants or cares enough to read -- hence why it's all done here in the blog.

The only other thing that seems to somewhat stall out my restlessness or boredom is keeping my earbuds in my ears playing my podcasts as much as possible. It takes my mind off of everything else if I can focus on one little thing while I'm taking care of work or chores. I can't do it while I'm working on school stuff, obviously, but if I'm doing laundry or cleaning, it sort of dulls the monotony. Staying warm helps, too -- after the snow went through, the temperature has dropped like a stone, with means my furnace has been running overtime. It's getting down into the low single digits over the course of the next few nights here, which isn't exactly the best sort of weather for all of this stuff melting off, as you may have guessed. It's going to be really cold while I'm shoveling off the driveway in a bit, that's for damned sure.