Blizzard and Bustle.

We are drowning in snow and routines.  For starters, Marley is still involved in dance and gymnastics, and she's recently been invited to LEVEL UP! as far as all that cartwheeling and handstanding and vaulting go.  So she's still in a shiny leotard twice a week, but for ninety minutes one afternoon, and two hours the other, because she's also signed up to take part in a non-competitive, exhibition-type meet next month.  As in, my seven-year-old will be on the bouncy floor all on her own while happy music plays and she jumps and skips and twirls.  And then she's still taking a ninety-minute dance class, and she's a Daisy looking to be a Brownie next year, and now I have a scheduled kid on the verge of an over-scheduled life.

Which made Friday's blizzard and predetermined snow day a welcome winter respite.  I have no problem spending a weekend on the couch in February.  In fact, I go through the whole month feeling conflicting surges of defensive entitlement and shamed regret for wanting to, for my own slow moments and lack of ambition.  Last Friday morning, though, I had some justification for feeling lethargic.  I hadn't eaten since Wednesday night, and I had just finished drinking the last eight ounces of my gallon of colonoscopy preparation.  That's right.  A colon-flippin-oscopy.  Which was recommended by a gastroenterologist after I had visited with complaints that I will go so far as to describe as uncomfortable.  Please, let my digestive tract otherwise remain a mystery.

So, as the snow began falling on Friday morning, Todd and I left Bean and Toot with Heather and company, and we drove on to a nearby hospital for my appointment.  Which was, as my friend Kate had assured me it would be, wonderful.  She was so right: warm blankets, a delightful sedative, and repeated instructions to take it easy for the rest of the day.  And everything on the inside, by the way, looked just fine.

When we all finally got home a little after two o'clock, the roads were slow and slippery.  I had sea-salted butter on thick toasted bread right away, and then I got to work on a baked egg recipe I had found on Pinterest on our way home.  I brought the eggs and more toast to the couch on a tray, ate every delicious bite, and then slept so cozily and happily while the fireplace crackled and the snow piled up outside.  And that sounds idyllic, but don't forget, I had just had a colonoscopy, so my life isn't as charmed as all that.

The next day, things were back to normal except for the two feet of snow outside, more where it had drifted into the corners of our cape.  I reacted by baking.  First, a loaf of bread.  Then, an olive oil and ricotta cake, and last, some salted caramel brownies.  Under most snowy circumstances my instinct is to get something rich and sweet into the oven, but Saturday that was intensified by my mini-fast a few days earlier.  My friend Kate was right again: after a couple of days off from food, everything was ridiculously delicious.

And everything finished baking in enough time for me to run outside with Marley and Rudy before the snowy novelty worn off.  These two just kept plopping into and stumbling through the drifts, giggling, screaming, and pink-cheeked.  (Remember when Rudy hated the snow?)  At one point, they just ran at the wall Todd made with the help of our neighbor's snow blower and landed like a rejected Cirque du Soleil act.  (Thank goodness our neighbors shared that machine with us, because Todd would still be shoveling today if they hadn't.  I brought over some cake and brownies to say thank you.)

Of course, the snow is still piled up outside our windows, and I don't mind.  It helps me to rationalize staying in, and even though I know that global warming is a reality and that scary weather and dire consequences of consumerism are on the horizon, there might still be time to slow that down.  It's supposed to snow in the winter.  It's reassuring when at least some things are as they should be.