Trapped in the Snow

12:57pm... have been up for about an hour and a half. Went outside twenty minutes ago to shovel the walk, knowing it was a futile effort, but compelled by HOA rules to clear the walkway in case some old woman manages to dig through twenty feet of snow only to break her ankle on MY part of the sidewalk.

Total madness, and I gave it up as a bad job in five minutes. Now watching Lina, a one-foot Corgi, try to hop through a foot-and-a-half of snow and watching the E! channel: hopelessly insane people babbling like rhesus monkeys on crystal meth.

What to do with this day? I am singularly unprepared to be trapped in my house for 48 hours, despite running around in a terminal frenzy yesterday attempting to prepare for the inevitable. That was a bad episode - fighting against every stinking man and woman in the city limits trying to gather supplies and complete whatever errands they had left that couldn't be done with two feet of snow on the ground.

I snapped, coming out of the Giant parking lot and seeing a traffic jam that looked to be about twelve miles long, knowing that I had just thirty minutes to reach home, unload the groceries, and then go out again to get dinner for the evening... and realizing at that moment that I had forgotten the booze.

No more chances for liquor, now. We are well and truly shut in. The dog is already driving me mad - wanting to play in the snow, then wanting to come inside, over and over ad nauseum and whining whenever she doesn't get her way. Tim Curry is on the television now, just a sweet little transvestite from Transsexual Transylvania, a terrible distraction.

Can I use this time properly? Can I produce? The dog seems dead set against it. And I just know that when I finally get my head straight and get on a really good writing jag, the damned HOA will pound on my door with big sticks and demand that I shovel the walk.

We don't hold with reason here, they'll tell me. Do as we say, or get out of our neighborhood. We don't want your kind here.

--Dave

Author's Log

Completed an eight-and-a-half page synopsis, which is currently on an editor's desk awaiting review. There is no guarantee that the editor isn't on holiday right now, but if he is I wish him well. Why not? I'm in no rush, and everyone needs a good break now and then.

Currently working on an essay about "my success story", for a contest advertised on Writer's Market. The trick will be to avoid going on an ego trip, get down everything that actually happened leading up to now, and making it sound interesting. If I can do all that, then I will undoubtedly lose to some deserving single mother of three who is working on the next Harry Potter.

Current Reading

Just finished rereading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson, and I'm just now moving on to Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72. Thompson's outlook on politics is always enjoyable when things get bad in D.C., although it's becoming more and more depressing to reflect on just how little has changed in the District in the last 27 years.