Jack Blizzard, Round Two

I’ll never again speak of “cabin fever” with my former flippant, tongue-in-frozen-cheek humor. After 4 days stuck inside, at the mercy of the Christmas of Ought-Nine Blizzard, Ray and I got out for a week or so to renew our connections with humanity, celebrate our postponed family Christmas, and let our hair down at several New Year’s Eve galas in Little Town. Our temporary freedom, though, makes all the more dismal the fact that today we’re going on Day 4 of Jack Blizzard’s Round Two. Our frustration is heightened by the knowledge that the county road grater hasn’t been able to plow our road, and our neighbor the tractor fairy, who will have to wait on the plow before he can dig out our drifted driveway, can’t get his tractor started. It was -20 overnight, so maybe if it warms up to a balmy -5 today, the tractor will turn over.

In this recent arctic blast (nighttime wind chills of -35), our furnace can’t get our drafty old farmhouse warmer than 59 degrees. We’re running out of wood for the stove that keeps our fingers from freezing into fists, and I’m now talking literary theory to the one remaining African underwater frog (I couldn’t get to town for an aquarium heater).

Ray, who is a peaceful, contented hermit by nature, has been happy as a clam. He has busied himself archiving his phenomenal LP collection, recording albums onto CD, recreating liner notes and album art for CD jackets, and downloading the CD’s into iTunes. He was up to 15,000 songs last I checked. But even Ray has had enough. He’s eyeing the fenceposts and barn siding now as visions of cord wood dance through his head.

Me, I’m a people person. I grew up in a full, noisy household (in the bustling city, no less) and spent the next twenty years or so raising my own chatty children. I do love occasional silence, and I adore the first 48 hours of solitude. At three days, however, I start to get a little tense. I pace just a little. I bake bread and make yogurt. I knit pointy wool hats much too tightly, until they curl at odd angles. By day four, conversational deprivation makes me hunt for someone to strangle.

These are trying times indeed. The parrots have learned to say, “It’s frickin’ freezing!” I’m sick of the word “hearty.” The dogs are stir-crazy. The peacocks are addicted to Meow Mix. I can see traffic on the Interstate a half-mile away, so I know people are out there, moving. I’m about ready to don the parka and start trekking through the corn stubble until I can flag down a passing truck and make a beeline for town. Groceries. Happy Hour. Civilization.

But we mustn’t give in to Jack’s little temper tantrums. So today, while we wait for impatiently for rescue, I’ll finish knitting a red paperback book jacket (Mom says I’ll be knitting ottomans and small appliances if I don’t get out soon). I’ll make olive Parmesan bread. I’ll eat the dark chocolate oranges I have stashed in the freezer. I’ll plow through another bottle of Malbec. I’ll dismantle the broken dining room chairs for firewood. I’ll pretend Pa’s on his way home with a rabbit to stew. Good work, Jack Blizzard, but you haven’t licked these prairie people just yet.