Riding the T

I love riding the T. The lives that you glimpse for a moment, share for a few stops. Lives that one can invent for people that you see, knitted from a scrap of conversation or a pair of scuffed, well-worn shoes. So many different lives: students, blue collar workers, professionals, young, elderly. Some sit as tightly wound as a spring, practically quivering with tension. Others read. Still others snooze. One very clean-cut young man used his train ride to nap, frankly snoring away. It's the same reason I love to sit by the window in a hotel late at night and watch the city pass by below.

Maybe I'm a fantasist. Perhaps I've watched too many movies. Still I love the idea that here on the T, the lives of complete strangers can intersect, even if only for a moment.

To be frank, my cynical side asserts, I've seen few exchanges between strangers. The two I remember involved very pretty young women...girls, really. One, whose crisply curling chestnut hair was pulled into a carefully careless updo, exuded a certain waifish, slightly bookish charm. The second channeled Alice in Wonderland Goes to College with her long, straight blonde hair held back with a headband. Both drew the attention of hopeful young men (and the eyes of still-hopeful, not-so-young men).

So the reality may be that on the T, as elsewhere, romance is reserved for the young and the attractive. Yes, the reality is that the T is an often crowded, frustrating system with (if reports are to be believed, unsafe) equipment and stations. I acknowledge this. My reality as an infrequent user is very different from those who rely on its caprices for daily transport. Yep. Call me an idiot romantic. It's also a place of infinite possibility.

Freezing nostrils

Now, this is the second time I've heard this. That indeed, it gets so impossibly cold here that your nostrils freeze. Actually, the moisture in one's nostrils freezes. This sounds really, really uncomfortable. The fact that an old college friend delivered this information just adds credence to the whole improbable statement. I say improbable because after all, this is New England and not Antarctica. We are no modern day Roald Amundsen. No one is going to say, "My God. She went to Boston and lived to tell the tale."

But then again, if you can't believe an old college friend, whom can you believe?

So a "happy holidays" from the Boston burbs. I'm hunkering down and readying myself for frozen nostrils and other assorted winter pains. It's a balmy 40 here today so the nostrils can breathe a sigh of relief.

"He's a lumberjack..."

"...And he's okay.
He sleeps all night and he works all day..."

Okay. No skipping, jumping, or hanging around in women's clothing at bars here. But my husband is doing his very best darned impression of a lumberjack, out there splitting logs from a felled tree. We don't have any andirons or fireplace screen yet. As soon as we get them, we'll have our very first fire in the fireplace.

"Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..."

All sorts of woodsy, nostalgic songs leap to mind.

Musical Tourette's, as a friend says.

It's darned cold, and we're embracing the New England lifestyle. Splitting logs. Plaid flannel shirts. Moose.

Just kidding. No moose here. Are there even moose in New England? And Will's wearing a Chuy's t-shirt, a shout-out to one of our favorite Austin restaurants. Oh well. One out of three. We're kinda New England-y.

My first snowman

Or snowman gone terribly wrong:



He wasn't supposed to look like this. Darn rain.

Survivor: Snowfall

If you were driving through my neighborhood this morning, you may have seen a woman clad in a magenta raincoat furiously shoveling snow. "Who is that crazy woman, and why in the world is she shoveling snow in the rain?" you may wonder as you carefully slid past.

Let me tell you. She is shoveling snow because she has heard the stories. If you don't shovel the snow immediately, it will melt and then refreeze into a sheet of ice. This last is always said with a verbal flourish implying all sorts of menace and doom. A sheet of ice! Yikes! Further, this sheet will last all winter because it will never completely thaw. If you make that first crucial mistake, you will be paying until springtime.

Well, this Texan wasn't going to make that mistake. Nosirree. This Texan was going to head out there no matter the weather and shovel that snow into submission.

As I started shoveling, I noticed irregular, very loud, dull thuds. Ahhhh...Large clumps of wet snow and ice were dropping from the very tall pines around me. Excellent. It was like playing a video game. Round 1: shovel snow before getting beaned by deadly snowballs. I felt like a Mario Kart character. All I needed was the tinny, synth music. If I got beaned by one of those snow/ice clods, would computer-generated stars circle around my concussed noggin?

Luckily, I never found out. Perhaps I should invest in a helmet? Now that would be a sight!

I noticed a couple of other things. One, I was the only person out there doing this. Two, where was I going to put the snow? It has to go somewhere. I started dumping the snow down the driveway, forming berms around the perimeter. Where my driveway met the snow, there were already little moguls of snow at the corners. Which begged another question: am I actually worsening the situation? Would these berms which would be more resistant to melting than a thinner layer of snow create future issues?

Well. No one to ask. And too late now.