November 2006 Archives

Nov 30, 8:20 PM (ET) By DANA FIELDS

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - The first major snowstorm of the season blew across the Plains and Midwest on Thursday, grounding hundreds of flights, closing schools, glazing highways and threatening to dump up to a foot of snow on communities that had basked in balmy weather only days earlier...Coming on the heels of near-record high temperatures, it rolled through Kansas on Wednesday, coating tree limbs and power lines with half an inch of ice.

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They aren't kidding. I ran to the store Wednesday in a tshirt and jeans and a sweatshirt jacket, and was very comfortable in the sunny, unseasonably warm weather. An hour later I returned to my car in pouring rain and bitter cold, to find it covered it in ice. By the time I got my purchases loaded up and myself out of the rain, I was seriously painfully cold. Real pain. Real cold.

I guess I'd forgotten what Missouri was like. Pictures

I just stay busy. Drop pumpkin ravioli off, steaming hot, at elementary school for Bri's special recognition lunch, as she won't eat the hamburgers provided. Run to vintage shop for costumes. Meet H. for lunch. Get to grocery store and back. Memorize lines, dress (do hair and makeup) for three girls for play rehearsal. Be Doris Walker for two hours. Have M. over for dinner. Apply for jobs online. Write a few thousand words of novel.

Get up, send kids off to school. Visit Mom and brother. Get the mail. Apply for jobs. Write. Go to wine party with K. Catch a movie with R. Spend the night with S. Do the laundry and mop the floor. Cook dinner for children. Make brownies and popcorn. Bedtime stories. Memorize lines, perfect performance. House on Tuesday, trivia on Sunday. A glass of wine, a sushi dinner. Cook, clean, laugh, cry. Write.

And you, you were just someone to cross my web.

The weather last night was that if you realize just before retiring to bed, past night into early morn, that trash pickup was coming, you could dash downstairs where the bags were waiting, out from under the rising curtain of the garage door, through the audience of crisp leaves which would titter and scatter about your ankles, in nothing but a tshirt and athletic fitted capris, barefoot, looking cute, and giggle as you trotted carrying trash thinking on the briskness beneath the moonlight. So perfectly, pleasingly autumn.
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The weather today was clearly winter, all dull grayness and a threat of snow that never came but taunted and bullied everyone into false hopes and fears. A dash today through the parking lot to rehearsal evoked giggles--mixed with pain.

Last night as I was driving home I saw a large buck in my yard. It was so perfect in its beauty that it seemed, for a moment, to be more probable that it was a statue of a deer someone put in my lawn while I was away than the live majestic thing I seemed to be be staring at. Eye to eye we looked at each other, he and I, until this piece of art calmly turned and walked away into my backyard. I don't know if he was real, yet.

Magic