...snippets and snowflakes...

Snow is falling as I write this.  Falling in clumps and clusters, mixed with just enough ice so that it fills the air with sound.  A cross between the crinkle of cellophane and the splatter of oil in a hot pan.  I've opened a window, just a crack, to let in the sound and the cat is intrigued...ears pricked...but too lazy to uncurl herself from my lap.

I should be on task.  I should be in front of another screen,  scanning and analyzing and correcting.  But the snow is falling, and the sound of it drowned out my busy-ness so that I abandoned my work.  It drew me from my desk, to stand in front of the window, hugging my sweater a bit closer round and gazing into the swirl.  

I watched it fall, ears full of the sound of it.  Noting the way it clung to the branches of the pine and tumbled past the barren forsythia.  I watched as the road,far below, turned white.  I gave myself the time to watch the snow fall, knowing that it might be brief.

Finally the chill pouring in from that barely cracked window broke through the spell, and I shut it again.  The cat barely twitched, having fallen back asleep.  I gathered her up in one arm, my laptop in the other, and settled down to write.  She, protesting the scene change, turned round once and again...pawed my lap into sufficient softness...and tucked her head in for another beauty rest.  I think the tap-tap-tapping of my fingers on keyboard keys must be a lullaby to her.  

The snow is still falling, and I wonder if the school will call for an early dismissal.  I wish it would.  We'd have cocoa and popcorn.  We'd shovel the walkways and tumble back in, frozen and dripping.  We'd take time to curl up with books.  Place the cat right between us.  Interrupt one another with excerpts that made us laugh or that confused us.  He'd shove his chilly toes right up under me, and I'd shriek and groan accordingly, cuffing him gently with a faux frown before burying his feet under the blankets.  

It's quieter now, and as I look up from my typing I see that the snowstorm has waned.  Steady, still, but thin instead of thick.  The clumps fall slower, floating without ice inside to drag them down.  So much for that phone call, I think.  So much for that wish.  

It's back to work I must go and I start to shift, protesting cat now thoroughly out of sorts at this final interruption.  Shifting her from lap to bed gets me a disgruntled "Mrrrow" and she tosses her head at me, stretching one paw as if to say "Here I stay".  She's a tyrant, this one.  A spoiled princess, knowing her place at the head of our household.  

I think...how to finish?   I've work to get back to.  Deadline to be met.  How I'd rather sit here with a lap full of warm purr and the snowy scene to entertain me.   

Time's up...

~Leanna