I woke at 6:08 this morning and checked my company’s emergency call-in number, hoping against hope that they’d call it a snow day. No dice. After collapsing back into sporadic sleep I checked again: glory glory, a new message dated today. But when the monotone voice said that the offices would be open (open! Never mind that the area schools were closed today AND tomorrow) — my heart and head sank, and I started the whole Monday morning cleansing and clothing and caffeinating process. Bundled way the fuck up, as the wind chill was something like 15 below, and slid-scrambled over snowhumps to get to the T station. (My hatred for cars hits its zenith in conditions such as this — you fossil fuel felons are toastily climate-controlled, so why can’t you wait for a numb-toed pedestrian cross the street when she has the effin right of way?)

When I descended to the subway platform, I saw that it was packed and overflowing with hopeful worker bees — many of them having trucked in via commuter rail — and I found a place to slouch near the scruffy guy playing a whacked-out slide guitar version of “Crawdad Hole.” The Duracells in his amp made donning the iPod a hopeless idea, so I pulled out a grrrl-power collection of short stories and waited, waited, eavesdropped, and waited. After about 20 minutes, a cram-packed train edged into the station. The busker said, “Folks, hop aboard — this is the second train I’ve seen all morning,” and the dedicated drones next to me corroborated that — they’d been there for more than an hour and shrugged off the possibility of boarding this second train they’d seen. I waited for another half-hour, people-watching more than anything. One young woman brought coffees to some coworkers and apologized for not bringing more for the people they’d befriended since she’d gone foraging. Waves of the dedicated employed arrived, expressions anxious when they saw the mass of hopeful contributors to society unable to get in and start contributing already. One young man, possibly learning disabled, told the busker that he was going to the Museum of Science. “Are you sure they’re open today?” the musician asked. “Yeah, yeah. They are open. I’m going.” His enthusiasm gave me hope, but the squawky female T official kept announcing delays: switching problems, a stuck train, weather-related problems. It didn’t look good.

I ascended the big-ass escalator to get a phone signal and tried my boss’s number and my voicemail a few times. Tried a few other people who worked in nearby pods, to no avail. I finally left an I Give Up message for my manager and headed home.

The blizzard itself this past was memorable, if only because I never thought I’d see another one this fierce what with the warming globe and all. My memories of the Blizzard of ‘78 are this bizarre mixture of fun (snow forts and tunnels! a week off from school! my favorite aunt staying with us, venturing out with a neighbor who had a 4-wheel-drive truck and bringing home two shoeboxes full of candy for my brother and me, plus previously unknown treats like Mickey Mouse ice cream bars) and terror (my mom, walking out to the mailbox, had her first heart attack just before the storm; she ended up in ICU in Indianapolis with my dad when the storm began and stayed there for a couple of weeks. She was the same age as I am now.) This time around, I topped off the pantry and enjoyed the chaos at the grocery — shelves half-empty, neighbors meeting up in the long checkout lines and chatting about the dearth of cilantro and their recollections of snowstorms past). I rented “Stevie” and “Europa Europa,” then cooked a giant pan of rigatoni with vegetarian sausage and mushrooms and obscene quantities of cheeses.

                                     .     .      .

All evening, I’ve been listening to the Decemberists and Neutral Milk Hotel, singing along, which has made me feel more guilty than usual for not playing guitar for something like two years. I should incorporate some callous-developing caterwaul time when D’s at rehearsal. It’s a little unnerving how blithely I let go of something that gave me so much pure and scary joy.