i rang in the new year with an honest-to-god blizzard and the flu. if new year’s day is a harbinger of what the year will bring, 2009 is looking pretty cloistered…the plows didn’t even try to make it down our small street until this morning, so we had snow half-way up the front door and a wonderland blanketing the place. and, uh, me lying on the couch whimpering.

as i spent literal whole, entire seasons of 2008 lying on the couch, whimpering my way through bedrest and the Miss Cervix Universe Pageant…apparently 2009 was just trying to make me feel at home.

i did notice that a day of me stuck on the couch, unable to tidy whilst the toddler raged about amidst the Christmas detritus i’d hoped to spend the afternoon packing away, did not actually kill anyone. even my blood pressure survived. i found this mildly shocking…and a little disappointing, as it takes some of the urgency out of my directives to Dave to Put Things Away Or I Will Implode. oh well. he did bundle up the boy and drag him out in the yard to enjoy the storm, thus initiating him into his Canadian birthright of wintry freeze-yer-arse-off play and allowing sick mama and sick baby sister to sleep for, oh, ten minutes.

when they blew back into the porch, trailing snow like capes, Oscar’s cheeks were bright with that wet, rosy flush that comes from traipsing through thick, fresh snow, socks falling down inside your boots, nose running, skin so exquisitely cold it’s hot. just about exactly ready for cocoa.
O after snow

and i looked at him and thought, yep, after today i get off the couch. after today, bugger the laundry and that pesky control impetus, i go outside too.

that is as good a resolution as any, for a new year as clean and untrammeled as the snow, just for now.