Month: November 2006

…and by morning the new snow and ice had receded enough that the few dirty patches of snow look like they could be the remnants of Monday’s storm. If I hadn’t looked out the window last night, I might not have known.

This snowfall is fresh, a light even coating over the few smudges that are left from the night before last. Each flake casts a shadow on a car or on the street or sidewalk before it lands.

The street is quiet. No one walks past during the time that I stand by the window. There’s only one trail of footprints on the sidewalk. No tire tracks.

But now I sit and write this and I hear voices pass, excited and chattering.

Tricia and I met with a midwife in Kirkland yesterday. Tricia had an appointment set up with an OB clinic a couple of weeks ago, but they canceled at the last minute and rescheduled us for December, almost up to the start of the window when we’ll be able to have the quad- blood tests done. We both felt good about the birthing center, and we’re going to go ahead and stay with them.

It was snowing a bit on the way over and it really picked up by the time we’d finished.

Tricia had driven in from work, I came over from Seattle. So we left in separate cars, driving right into rush hour traffic on the first snow day of the season. Tricia made a left turn out of the parking lot through a gap in the traffic that closed before I could follow. So I turned right to go around the block. Cars were getting through traffic lights at a rate of one or two per green. I spent an hour inching my way around the block and onto the freeway, my worn wiper blades skidding on every fourth swipe.

My experience on this drive was so different from that well-documented snow day that Mike alludes to here. I imagine that the neighborhood was out tossing snowballs and skidding around on the sidewalks and that a dozen fresh-faced bloggers were out taking pictures. When I got home two hours later, Tricia was tossing a salad. We ate dinner and then watched graphic videos of babies being born.

Slate:

Correction, Nov. 15, 2006: Due to an editing error, the original version of this piece suggested that interbreeding humans and apes might produce half-human, half-monkey babies. The offspring of such a union would be half-ape, not half-monkey.

Dog owners stand motionless in the rain. They both wear green parkas with the hoods up. Their dogs, on slack leashes, are in no hurry.

There’s a Starbucks right in among the offices on the fortieth floor of a skyscraper downtown. At this height the shape of the building twists the wind around so that raindrops drift like snowflakes.