puffs

I went to an interview today in the middle of a blizzard.  For the past three years I’ve had a commute of at least 30 miles each way to work, so this morning when I had to drive across town, a grand commute of three whole miles, I would’ve done it through hail, tornadoes or burning hell fire.  A little snow is nothing if I can score a job with a five minute commute.

Maybe it’s the excitement of the mad snowstorm outside that’s ruining my concentration today, because I can’t settle down and focus.  I’ll sit to write an email and then I remember I need to make a phone call and then, oh right, I have to write something and send it off and ooh lookie, the View is on.  I’ve been bouncing from one thing to another all day and now I’m surrounded by half-completed projects and nothing is done. 

When I got home from my interview I was cold so I decided to heat up a cup of coffee from the pot I made this morning.  I put it in the microwave, started it heating and then wandered off and forgot about it.  An hour later I remembered the coffee so I heated it up again and…wandered away and forgot about it.  The third time I heated it up, I forced myself to stand there in front of the microwave for the one minute and forty-five seconds it took to heat, and as a reward for my concentration I got a nice hot cup of sludge.  If only coffee could scream, I wouldn’t forget about it.  I never lose track of the baby…

But the snow is exciting and I’ve been waiting for it for weeks now.  Ever since I accumulated all the snow gear it will take to play with the baby out in the snow.  He has a snowsuit, boots, mittens and a hat.  The woman next door even donated an old baby sled she had from when her child was little.  I’ve been tempted to do a trial run with the sled, but a 25 pound baby in the bottom of a sled with no snow to ensure a smooth ride presents a logistical problem. My neighbors would probably complain about the SCRAPE SCRAPE SCRAPE GRRRRIND racked of plastic gliding across frozen earth out in front of my house.

Last year at this time we had a huge snowstorm.  The baby was only a few weeks old, so figuring out how to take him outside to play in it wasn’t an issue.  Though I do remember one slap-happy conversation with Eli when we were talking about jumping off the back deck into the six-foot snowdrifts below.  We were discussing how much fun it would be to go flying through the air and then we’d disappear into the snow and a puff would rise up behind us like the splash from a diver.  This is how I always imagine things in my mind, removing physics and turning everything into a cartoon.  The reality would be more like a quick fall through the air and then crumpled broken bodies lying under a heap of snow with two stupid people praying that someone would hear our screams and call a paramedic.

So as things sometimes go when you’re sleep deprived and have spent weeks under the sadistic control of an angry ten-pound mini-tyrant, we looked across the room at the baby sleeping peacefully, all swaddled up in his bouncy chair.  And for a moment we exchanged a look that said we were both imagining the delicate puff the baby would create in the snow.  And how it would be way better and much more exciting than our adult puffs.  We thought about it just for a moment.  And then we were responsible and walked away from the door and no one jumped (or got thrown) off the deck.