Let It Snow

Winter has been toying with us — bitter cold days followed by a thaw that felt like spring. Maybe it's finally getting serious. The local meteorologists are excited, predicting blizzard conditions on Friday with up to two feet of snow in the Boston area. I'm not sure I believe that since they've let us down so many times before. But it's pretty clear that we'll be getting something this time. I will be pleasantly surprised to see more than a couple of inches — and, if so, I promise not to be too cranky as I struggle on unshoveled and dangerously slippery sidewalks in the days and weeks afterward.

Haven't seen a sight like this in a million years.

I know I'm asking for trouble, mostly for the sake of taking pretty photographs on my daily five mile walk. I'm not looking forward to the added challenge of staying upright and keeping my feet warm. But I'll manage, as I did during the past two winters that I kept up my walking routine. (I realize I'm lucky that I don't have to commute to work in bad weather, freezing at some windswept bus stop.)

Possum is noisily licking the wood floor outside the kitchen as I write this; he wants a second supper. I've told him that I'm unmoved by this trick of his, but he persists, figuring that he's wearing me down. He might actually find a little food stuck to the kitchen floor (and he'd be the one who put it there since he's a sloppy eater.) But he knows I wouldn't see his histrionics if he went in there. So he suffers a short distance from my desk.

Like many New Englanders, I believe that our winters should be romantically snowy and beautiful. These days, Boston looks dingy and drab, partly because of all the blowing and drifting sand the city poured all over the streets the last time we thought we were getting a real snowstorm. When it's windy, the stuff decreases visibility, gets in your hair and coats your teeth. A foot of snow will make all the difference, sugar-coating the mess and making the dying holiday decorations look a little less forlorn. (Nothing can salvage the Christmas trees that are still sitting in certain local living rooms like twinkling declarations of seasonal affective disorder — including the big one on Beacon Street, across from the Public Garden.)

I have a pot of bones and vegetables simmering on the stove, slowly transforming into chicken soup. I bought a couple of long corduroy skirts in pretty colors at the Anthropologie sale, and they are easy and comfortable over leggings or woolly tights. With my stumpy-looking shearling boots, a heavyweight turtleneck, ancient shearling jacket, and plaid muffler, I look like I just arrived from a small village in Eastern Europe. But I'm warm.

So bring it on.