i'd go sledding if i could open the doors
February 16, 2003, 11:39 pm

If everyone hadn't left last night, I'm fairly certain that twenty friends and close strangers would want to kill my family and I by now, or at least kill each other. Yep, the entire film crew would have been trapped in my house for at least the next few days.

The wind has made the snow waist-high on my front door; our back stairwell is nearly filled to the top stair with snow, exuding such a high amount of pressure we're afraid the glass will shatter any second. Across the street, our neighbor's dog looks mournfully outside from their bay window, sorry that it can't step outside for fear of drowning (is that an appropriate phrase) in snow taller than itself.

It wasn't really supposed to start until 5:00pm tonight. My sisters, being the shrewd, calculating witches they are, skirted off to their respective boyfriend's/friend's houses with promises to return before it started. I woke up and there was nearly a foot on the ground, added to the four inches or so still around from last week, well, we're already at 16 inches.

I was supposed to: take movies back to Blockbuster, get my script from my car, and mail my car payment. The governor of Maryland has issued a ban on any non-essential vehicle on any state road, my car's doors are no longer visible let alone accessible (the tires and headlights having long been engulfed by the mounds of ice/sleet/snow), and I although I'm sure it stood there once, I can't see our mailbox next to our driveway...I can only tell we still have a driveway because there are four cars peeking their windshields above the snow dunes.

The Blizzard of '96 was a delight because not only was I exempted from my semester exams, but since I was a graduating senior at my high school, I was excused May 23rd from school and snickered as my sisters were forced to go until nearly July. We're past our alloted snow days, which means that we'll not only have a shortened spring break (only 2 days now), but we'll be going to school AT LEAST until June 26. This winter storm, to say the least, is bittersweet.

I am left with the daunting task of figuring out what the hell I'm doing with the One-Acts (they were supposed to be this week), Charlie Brown auditions (Tuesday), county-festival submission (Friday), and field trip/bus information (I was going to take care of it Tuesday, but obviously can't now).

Turning off all the lights in the study, the view outside my house features porches that no longer exist, trees that shake off any accumulation greater than a few inches, and our window screens that have spider-vein patterns of snow trapped in their wires. The plow tries desperately to hack through our street, but it is taking much longer than it expected: the snow is too high.

But it's glittering and luminescent and gorgeous. In all its as yet undisturbed glory, it's easy to forget how much trouble this snow is causing.