No, no shoveling yet.  And, regardless of whether you’re calling it snowmageddon or snowpocolypse, it really is a lot of snow.  My only experience with this much snow at once was in Chicago in 1979 when I was barely old enough to remember.  The national weather service says they got 18 inches that January, though this description might be more accurate.  There is a picture of me sitting level with the top of a stop sign that weekend after plowing and I haven’t seen such dramatic snowfall since.

It’s still snowing (though less) and we’re just shy of 24 inches.  24.  Two feet.  That doesn’t seem like so much when you’re just thinking about it, but it means that cars are suggestions in a drift and if you stand in a dip, you’re up to your waist.  Charlottesville is a Southern city unaccustomed to snowfall.  On the plus side – everyone seems to be staying in (unlike DC where thousands of uninitiated snow drivers take to the highways at the first flake and stay out there til they crash and die).  On the minus side – there aren’t actually any plows.  More…tractors with plow attachments.

Tomorrow – shoveling.

Apparently we’ll be heading into the snopocalypse this weekend in Virginia.  In fact, we’ve preemptively declared a State of Emergency around here.  Since I’ll be the shoveling one, I’m wondering what the etiquette is on shoveling as a homeowner.

As a renter, I waited blissfully for some guy wrapped head to toe in grey all-weather gear to drive his snowplow around, slamming into hidden speedbumps and creating an excellent sheet of snow to form into ice.  When he was done plowing, he heaved himself into some snowy bank, unearthed his blower or shovel and trudged through the neighborhood, salt minion trailing behind him.  At some point later, I find my own shovel and haphazardly clear out the car.  The most snow etiquette I’ve ever had to consider is whether or not to put my shoveled snow into the empty parking space next to me.

Now, I’ve got a house, driveway, sidewalk and neighborhood to think of.  Sure, at some point one hopes the city will drive up the giant hill plowing and salting.  So let’s not worry about that.  And, given our excess of cars, we’ve actually covered the driveway quite nicely.  No parking spots to shovel into.  The sidewalk though, that’s my problem – front and back stoops, steps, path to car, front walk.

At what point do I need to be out there, clearing the way for my neighbors to maneuver?  Can I dump the sidewalk snow into the street or does it have to be on the grass?  Is there a rule about salting?  If I use the non-dog friendly salt that is the only salt in this town, will they torch my yard?  Will my own dog die after perilously licking his toes?

The city says I have 12 hours from snow cessation to shovel.  But what is the neighbor ordinance?  You know, the Tsk Tsk Tsk ordinance?  I guess I’ll find out.

Being a librarian wasn’t supposed to leave me wanting to come home and completely collapse. But this week has been absolutely exhausting.  All week I’ve been wondering is it Friday yet?  Because in this job, unlike my old one, a weekend nearly always repairs the week’s damage.  But it still isn’t Friday and it’s supposed to snow this weekend.  Which is beautiful and welcome.  On the other had, it will probably mean that my week goes straight through til Sunday since apparently everyone else in the world is incapable of working in slightly damp weather.

Wow.  Went on a bit, didn’t I?  Back to your regular programming tomorrow.

Today is the last day of our vegetable experiment.  All summer long we enjoyed the bounty of the season; heaps of lettuce in spring, peaches that ripened in the car on the way home and were almost bad by the time they hit your tongue, apples that looked like they fell off the tree and into the basket but tasted like they were polished with velvet gloves, late fall frozen blueberries and cider, and the sharp taste of farm onions and garlic.  The food collective we joined had a long season – from April to December – and today is the last day.

I don’t think we’ll hop on board next summer.  We couldn’t seem to find the right combination of feast and famine to effectively use all of our food (or have enough of it).  We missed the farmer’s market but felt like we couldn’t buy there while justifying the huge expenditure at the beginning of the summer.  The cost was heartbreaking for a few months.  Sure, we’d have spent it anyway, but we’d have spent it over time with a focus on the fruits and vegetables we loved.  We deeply enjoyed supporting local farmers, but would like to feel more connected to the food by buying directly from the farms that harvest the food and speaking to the people who grew it.  It’s a luxury we have, living where we do, and I’d like to take advantage of it.

We’re not walking away empty.  I learned an amazing amount from this summer and I’ll have the satisfied feeling that comes from lessons learned through cleaning dirt and eating vine-fresh fruits.

• Pumpkins will not grow when it is wet.  Tomatoes will not grow when it is cold.
• Cold, wet summers cannot be predicted and everyone feels the pain in their pocket and in their mouths.
• I prefer onions from Georgia with a hint of sweetness.
• Peels come off of peaches when they are less ripe, but pies are best made with the ripest peaches.  Go figure.
• Green onions will contaminate the entire car if you don’t wrap them up.
• Don’t expect apple season to last as long as it does in the grocery store.
• Forget citrus.  Eating locally involved no oranges.
• I don’t like to eat more than one squash per season.
• I used to think Bibb lettuce looked romantic.
• I never want to see a Bibb lettuce again.
• Fresh cider pulled straight from a vat brought straight from the orchard – yum.
• The end of corn season broke my heart.
• Red Sails Lettuce is the best sort of lettuce.
• I love wandering through markets and setting a menu based on produce.
• It rained all but two Wednesdays between April and December. Two.
• It’s not as fun to bring home wet green beans as you think.
• I like cauliflower when mashed with salt and butter.
• I love eating, and vegetables and the process of food but I missed my garden.

I’m an introvert.  It took me a long time to admit that.  Well, that and it doesn’t really go with being manic (which, totally under control, thanks).  So after years of being “bubbly”, “perky” and “smiley” kill me now I’ve evolved into someone who laughs, is happy, smiles and who needs a minute, please.

This week has zapped every last ounce of energy I have.  Being that it’s only Tuesday, I’m afraid the rest of the week is going to be a little long and/or deadly.  My wife deserves my eternal gratitude (or at least tonight’s gratitude) for letting me come home, head to the basement and quietly sit under a blanket while the tv hummed.  You wish you were married to me, I know.

Those 30 minutes of quiet made a tremendous difference in my attitude.  My headache faded (more on acupuncture coming later), my mind relaxed, my shoulders loosened up and inside I folded in on myself.  That sounds a little like crumpling but it was more like being a morning glory, tucking away the blues and purples at night and folding wide open in the sun.  Today was about the tucking.  Maybe also tomorrow and the next day and the next and…

Well, well, well.  Times have changed, haven’t they?  I’d say I didn’t know what caused it, but I do.  It’s all this pure countryside living.  Either that or the fertility clinic we went to this summer.  I know, I didn’t tell you it was coming.  Think of it this way, we didn’t really tell anyone.  Not even our parents.  Okay, ESPECIALLY not our parents. And now we’re in trouble, knocked up, in a delicate condition, pregnant.

D, in particular is pregnant, but isn’t that what you say?  We’re pregnant?  It’s amazing how early a woman’s body quickly belongs to the collective once she’s bearing a child.  I give myself a good mental smack every time I think it in an effort to psychologically give her her body back, but I’m thwarted at every turn.  For example, several people took the liberty of hugging us today when shared the news.  This is work folks, we are colleagues, we don’t hug.  Don’t even get me started on the way many pregnancy books manage to marginalize both the mother and any partner she has that isn’t her straight, American, husband.  Like I said, don’t get me started.

You might have questions.  How, in fact, did two hot, sexy women such as yourselves manage to conceive the miracle of life? We selected sperm from a bank, we shipped it to a doctor, he injected it into her uterus twice (once in August and once in September), she got pregnant.  Here’s what we didn’t do: we did not tell our other “trying” friends the number of our donor (I’ve heard that occurs), we did not take any fertility drugs and we did not tell people we were attempting to fertilize an egg.

Honestly, we’re still a little queasy about the idea of thwarting evolution at all, but have opted to become glassy-eyed with baby thoughts instead of considering the damage we’ve done to the human race by electing to use artificial means of conception.  Well, she’s queasy for entirely different reasons.  So, details: she’s 13 weeks, due in late June, we’re not going to find out the sex, and I won’t be numbing your eyes with baby chat here.

Two things – check out the page at the top titled “Plus One”.  If baby talk is your thing you can find me at Counting Chickens.  That’s it for this pregnancy public service announcement.

Points for not shunning me.

I have vines growing from my ears.  Twisting, turning, thick green vines curling out of my ears, around my lobes and looping gently over my shoulders.  I must.  I’ve swallowed the seeds from thousands of tangerines.

When I was little, my grandparents babysat.  For lunch, my grandfather ate tomato soup and one tangerine.  He ate on a television tray in his glassed-in sunroom and he did it whether it was winter or summer.  I’m not positive there was even a tv in the room which makes me wonder if it was me he was watching over lunch.  Incidentally, for breakfast he had blueberry muffins (the sort that came from a box with a can of blueberries) or blueberries in half and half with a spoonful of sugar.  For dinner, he had applesauce with his pork chops and cranberries with turkey.  I wonder if he had fruit with every meal.

The tangerines were just that, not today’s clementines.  They had seeds and popped with juice and had a bare minimum of stringy pith.  He peeled, picked out the seeds and ate each slice.  I peeled, pulled off each bit of the pith and ate the slice, seeds and all.  To this, my grandfather would say “If you eat those seeds, you’ll grow vines out your ears!”

I’ve always been stubborn.  It’s no wonder there are vines growing out of my ears.

Stick it out til the end. It’s worth it.

Bucking the trend, we just got a subscription to the local paper.  There’s not actually much paper to speak of; a total of two sections with about 8 pages each.  The two sections?  The A section (including all local and national news) and Sports section (including local sports, comics, Dear Abby and the crossword).  As an aside, the crossword is an amateur event, involving questionable and repetitive clues. Since we decided to get the paper for the crossword and the coupons, I don’t know how long this paper subscription will actually last.  Wow, I just turned 92 while you sat here and watched.  Son, get me my bifocals and I’ll give you a quarter!

I tell you all that to tell you this, the obituaries hold a place of honor on the second page.   The second page.   I’m completely unable to read the paper without spending time pursuing the obits because of their startling placement. And there aren’t the obituaries I’m used to – tiny two-inch columns with a smiling black and white picture and the bare minimum of information.  These are the obituaries you spend time writing before you die.  The laudatory life list that remembers you not only to friends and family, but to complete strangers who tear up at your well-lived life.   Oh…that’s just me.

So in the morning we read about “Sassy” and Arnold “Tex” Stewart and Sue Elizabeth Sarah Moore Midgett.  I’m not sure where the Ted Johnsons and Alice Maxwells live, but it isn’t here.  We learn about where they’ve come from (Orange, Roanoke) and what they did (mechanic, Navy, cook). We find out what their quirks were (“visitors scuttled to the balcony to prevent being killed by a tower of books” – no, I’m serious) and where to send flowers.  The dullest part is usually the preceded in death by and survived by bit.  It’s the most mandatory though and the most common content. I usually skip over those bits when I’m reading about Sassy and Tex to my wife over cereal.

I skipped over them…until I got to Aubrey.  He had a list of precededs and surviveds and particularly caught our attention with the mention of his grandchildren: he apparently favored one, Stevie.  I’m not sure how the other kids will feel about that.  I almost moved on to the next obit until I realized that, not only was Aubrey survived by his wife of 25 years, he was also survived by his special bed partner “Tina”.

Oh yes, they did. I’ve attached the photo.  This is a cached version since, as you can imagine, the official obit was replaced the following day with one that didn’t even whisper the name Tina.  Sure, you could argue that Tina is a faithful hound, but I suspect that Tina is the special lady, nay, bed partner, who was responsible for faxing this piece of work in the first time.  I think we’ll keep the paper.

The best thing about this season has been the absolute lack of travel.  Seriously folks, the closest I’ve come to taking a trip has been watching jet contrails spin off into clouds.  I don’t know about you, but fall usually triggers a series of family visits interspersed with lines at the airport, bulging suitcases and hours spent in traffic.  This rigmarole goes straight through til January and then we get half a year’s peace.

I never thought I’d see a year in which we didn’t have to travel.  This year, my parents brought the circus in October.  Our closest friends came to us for Thanksgiving and we’re spending the winter holidays in our house alone.  D’s mom is coming on the 26th but until then, it’s peace and quiet.  It’s more than peace and quiet.  It’s amazing.

One of the great things about Charlottesville is the proximity of everything to where you are right now.  That’s a generalization, of course, but on days like today it seems true.  Work is within biking distance from my house (though I admit we drove today.  Okay, we drive everyday.  But I biked twice.  In the summer.  And then it was too hot.) and the parking garage is a short walk from work.  Between work and the garage is a restaurant.  And, amazingly, it’s a restaurant that we like that isn’t too expensive and doesn’t make us sick.  I would go every day if I could.

In fact, we don’t go as often as we could.  Usually we go for a weekend breakfast and, very occasionally, we stop in for lunch.  With the small staff, there’s always a welcoming smile.  At the risk of sounding a bit Cheers, it’s the most friendly, comfortable place in our radius.  Despite not being there every week, the host always has a chat with us and a couple of the wait staff have memorized drink orders for us.  There are a ton of other restaurants to enjoy, but not all are within walking distance and almost none make us feel like friends.

I’ve never had a place like this and I’ve always wanted one.  Mostly, I’ve lived in big cities with anonymous life.  Not a big drinker, so there’s never been a local bar.  I’m too shy to form relationships at convenience stores or markets.  If something was within walking distance to both work and home, it was a fast food restaurant or a gun shop.  Hey, I’ve lived in some interesting places.  As a bonus here, one of the staff is gay, coupled and at a similar place in life.  That’s like buried treasure, y’all.

So Charlottesville, I know I’ve given you a hard time about your shopping mall and your weird socio-economic strata but I promise to never sass you about your southern hospitality.  It’s nice to be home.