a sudden turn

It rained all day Friday, which was a nice break from the snow until I stepped in a puddle and trekked around campus all day with a wet left foot. Still, it was worth it to lay in bed that night listening to the rain against my sliding glass doors.

At 9 a.m., I locked the door behind me and my corkscrew umbrella leaves sprang into full cover. I hustled across the street and tiptoed across some black ice that was, no doubt, proof of the first snow in early December. My umbrella fluttered in the wind and I looked at my watch. Five minutes until the T arrived. A strong gust almost stole the umbrella from my gloveless hand, and I stepped off the curb and into a three-inch deep slush.

“Shit wet shoe,” I muttered.

A car whizzed past me and I jumped back on to the sidewalk to avoid its wake. Then the white sedan reversed, the treat of the tires throwing gray mush in the opposite direction.

“Ma’am! Excuse me, ma’am.”

I looked up and asked, “Me?” I’ve never been a “ma’am.”

“Yeah, hey, your backpack’s open. I didn’t want all of your stuff to fall out.”

I thanked him twice, and he nodded and said, “It was no trouble,” and sped down The Ave. toward the T stop. I slipped my right arm out of the strap and swung my green backpack to my left, resting it on my hip. It was wide open, wet notebooks and folders spilling out like a tongue from a mouth.

“Lame,” I whispered.

When the train finally arrived 14 minutes late, I sat near the doors, like always, and I imagined myself walking with an open backpack ten feet further down the road, fishing out assignments from the tiny lake accumulated between S. Street and A. Drive, umbrella rolling down the street, and hair soaked.

That man did me quite a kindness. Friday was happy.

at Heidi's request:

Thursday and Friday were the most beautiful no-coat days. I walked to school in 46 degree sunshine that I could actually feel and left my heavy wool coat and hanging in my closet. It was a brief but lovely break from the relentless Windy East Coast Chill.

It’s foolish to say that I had a hard week, because everyone has hard weeks. But I did, and I came home absolutely bushed. My body crashed, but my brain wouldn’t rest. The remedy? Around one a.m. I popped a Xanax and turned on The Devil Wears Prada and fell asleep before Anne Hathaway is reinvented into a chic Material Girl, which was a shame because I really do love a good makeover montage.

Between three and four that morning, I woke to the sound of branches cracking against my deck, to metal scraping on the pavement and tumbling down the asphalt of our charming street. In my drugged daze, I worried that the garbage cans might slam into the side my favorite green Volvo parked across the street, or that my deck would fall right off of the side of my house. I imagined it crushing my roommate J’s car, probably because she insists on leaving the backdoor unlocked so she doesn’t have to walk the 20 extra feet to our front door.

My eyes were too stubborn to fully open, too thick with medicine, but I could see my white cotton curtains fluttering at the heavy wind, a reminder that my deck doors are poorly fashioned. I turned to my left side and felt a cool breeze sweep across my face, and then my bed began to rock from side to side like a rowboat, a slave to the current. I listened to that wind all night.

When my roommate M walked into the kitchen the next morning, she looked as tired as I felt.

“Didn’t sleep?” I asked.

“No. You?"

“Not enough.”

“I kept waking up to the house,” she said and reached for her Cheerios.

“The house?” I asked through a mouthful of oatmeal.

“Yeah, didn’t you feel it rocking?”

“The house rocked?”

“Yeah. Old New England houses in the wind, they rock. You didn’t notice?”

No need for a rowboat or the salty Atlantic in 55 mile per hour gusts.

tweens are clever.

My bus route takes me past The Boston Globe and Boston’s WB headquarters. Or maybe they’re branches. At the very least, they look official enough to be important extensions. Occasionally, if the timing’s right, I get to witness flashes of various promotions for shows like 90210 or Hellcats where teenagers dress up, picket, and make choices they’ll most likely regret. If I’m really lucky, like I was today, my bus hits a red light and I get to stare in total disbelief.

This evening, girls and boys lined the sidewalk dressed as vampires to advertise tonight’s episode of The Vampire Diaries. Dozens of signs boasted heavy red and black ink, all with the same catchphrase: “Catch VD!”

Might wanna rethink the slogan, guys.

park it.

About a week ago, I tripped over a chair. To be fair, it was sitting on the street about two feet away from the curb and I was scrolling through the artists on my iPod. I walked away unharmed, intact, but puzzled about the placement of the faded green wooden chair. But it was snowing and cold and I was too nervous about school to think about the chair.

On my way from the T four days ago, I noticed another chair on the sidewalk, a neon pink camping chair that folds sorta like a tripod and is carried in a nylon bag. I’ve accumulated hundreds of hours sitting in identical chairs on camping trips and at ball games, and because it’s an outdoorsy chair, I thought, “There have been a striking number of birds nesting in and fluttering about our neighborhood, so…?” But it was dark and snowing, and I’ve been watching The Wire and am therefore afraid of everything, especially in the dark, and especially in the dark when my vision is compromised by snow. So I hurried home.

Such heavy snowfall in Boston has left little space on the streets. My neighborhood is comprised of a long, narrow road that loops, most of which is one-way. Cars drive too fast, typically, and too close to the curb. As the snow has encroached on the already modest street space, drivers have gotten more aggressive and more territorial, as demonstrated by Old Smoker Guy’s inability to wait for Middle-Aged Lady to back out of her driveway. He tried to hop the curb, but his sedan couldn’t make it past the preliminary snow bank.

Given the median-like snow stacked along the street, too many drivers and cars have been displaced. Instead of parking bumper to bumper, vehicles are separated by five-foot snow banks. And all I can think about is when they’ll melt and how the whole street will sound like water.

It snowed a bit on Sunday, and watching it from inside my home (still freezing, btw) was beautiful. Unexpected winds dove in and blew the snow off the flat New England roofs, shaking loose a gorgeous, dancing dust. The downside, I suppose, is that the city of Boston requires us to shovel all that beauty within a certain time frame.

I don’t mind shoveling the snow, so I’ve taken care of it since I got home. My roommate J, who I’ve tried to like but just really don’t, doesn’t think she should shovel snow because “I’ve done it once before already.” Well I’ve done it five times, so zip it. The point is that I tucked my sweats into my boots, slipped my gloves on, and grabbed the shovel.

For some reason at 3 p.m. this Sunday, the streets were absolutely deserted. No bodies, no cars, just snow. And chairs.

Chairs.

White plastic lawn chair. Broken bar stool. Navy square-back wooden chair. Neon pink camping chair. Wooden footstool. Markers. Chairs near the curb, not always on all fours, but staking claim to the precious blacktop.