We had every intention of being productive yesterday. We had our topic picked out, a fresh pot of coffee percolating – yes, we’ve gone back to using a percolator – and a block of time set aside to write Friday’s blog.
If you lived where we live, you’d already know why this post is arriving a day late. Friday was supposed to be the day of the Bomb Snow Cyclone. According to the weather apps we trusted, our city was on the brink of a meteorological event of cinematic proportions. Our designated “writing time” was set aside while we fell into a state of mild suburban panic. We placed bags of ice in our freezer, filled a bathtub with water, dripped faucets, set up a bed tent, and made sure we had enough nonrefrigerated goodness to survive a nine-day loss of power while the roads were impassable.
As this is being written, none of the promised badness has come to pass.
The irony is that this all came exactly one week after the Great Ice Storm That Wasn’t. That was last week’s blogpost. Then we were warned that our town’s infrastructure was about to crumble beneath a glistening coat of icy doom. We spent two days obsessing over snow shovels and fallen powerlines, only to wake up the next morning to… a slightly damp driveway.
(The image to the left? How we imagined our struggle against the elements versus the reality of us eating cold beans in a bedroom tent fort. Inspired by the great paperback cover artists of the past.)
Fool Us Twice?
You’d think we’d have learned our lesson. But when the words bomb, snow, and cyclone appear in the same forecast – and you’ve never heard those words combined in a forecast before – rational thought goes sideways. Instead of drafting paragraphs, we were inventorying D batteries. Instead of polishing prose, we were building a tent fort in the house’s smallest bedroom. Gotta keep that heat in, you understand.
And, just like the week before, the sky remained stubbornly—almost insultingly—clear. No blizzard. No cyclone. Not even a courtesy flurry so far. The weather apps still promise wintery whiteness. Later.
It’s always later.
There’s a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from preparing for a disaster that never arrives. It’s part relief, part confusion, and part “Wait… we spent four hours doing that when we could have watched The Night Manager written our blog?” Our corner of North Carolina appears to be sitting inside some sort of weather-shield bubble lately, which is excellent news for th power grid (and viewing The Night Manager) but terrible for our word count.
Going forward, we’re making a pact with each other: unless one of us sees a penguin sliding down street, we stay at the keyboard. Mostly. Because, honestly, it’s kind of fun to read inside the tent fort.
If you lived where we live, you’d already know why this post is arriving a day late. Friday was supposed to be the day of the Bomb Snow Cyclone. According to the weather apps we trusted, our city was on the brink of a meteorological event of cinematic proportions. Our designated “writing time” was set aside while we fell into a state of mild suburban panic. We placed bags of ice in our freezer, filled a bathtub with water, dripped faucets, set up a bed tent, and made sure we had enough nonrefrigerated goodness to survive a nine-day loss of power while the roads were impassable.
As this is being written, none of the promised badness has come to pass.
The irony is that this all came exactly one week after the Great Ice Storm That Wasn’t. That was last week’s blogpost. Then we were warned that our town’s infrastructure was about to crumble beneath a glistening coat of icy doom. We spent two days obsessing over snow shovels and fallen powerlines, only to wake up the next morning to… a slightly damp driveway.
(The image to the left? How we imagined our struggle against the elements versus the reality of us eating cold beans in a bedroom tent fort. Inspired by the great paperback cover artists of the past.)
Fool Us Twice?
You’d think we’d have learned our lesson. But when the words bomb, snow, and cyclone appear in the same forecast – and you’ve never heard those words combined in a forecast before – rational thought goes sideways. Instead of drafting paragraphs, we were inventorying D batteries. Instead of polishing prose, we were building a tent fort in the house’s smallest bedroom. Gotta keep that heat in, you understand.
And, just like the week before, the sky remained stubbornly—almost insultingly—clear. No blizzard. No cyclone. Not even a courtesy flurry so far. The weather apps still promise wintery whiteness. Later.
It’s always later.
There’s a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from preparing for a disaster that never arrives. It’s part relief, part confusion, and part “Wait… we spent four hours doing that when we could have watched The Night Manager written our blog?” Our corner of North Carolina appears to be sitting inside some sort of weather-shield bubble lately, which is excellent news for th power grid (and viewing The Night Manager) but terrible for our word count.
Going forward, we’re making a pact with each other: unless one of us sees a penguin sliding down street, we stay at the keyboard. Mostly. Because, honestly, it’s kind of fun to read inside the tent fort.
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