Snowed under

There is only one thing on everybody's mind here in Edmonton, and that's the snow. It has snowed, and snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed, virtually nonstop since New Year's. Half a metre in the last ten days, more snow in 24 hours that we got in all of [name your month]: all it does is snow. As snow goes, it's beautiful - light and fluffy, not your east coast cement - but it is undeniably plentiful. Not only is it hard to keep on top of the (ever-diminishing) pathways to the door, but we're increasingly running out of places to put the stuff we shovel. To clear a little here is to pile a little more over there, until boom: avalanche.

Am I the only one who feels like this is a heavy-handed metaphor? We're snowed under outdoors and, chez Dr Zwicker at least, snowed under indoors. There is a tunnel on my desk to match the tunnels to my house. I remember the days of smooth clear surfaces with a kind of disbelief, the same sensation I have when I look at my ranks of capri pants and short-sleeved blouses (why...?). The new normal is that every day you shovel and shovel, and as the newly-shoveled backslides onto the newly-cleared, you realize that the only real solution for this state of affairs is to have started shoveling way, way back - in August, say, or June - when you knew a storm like this was inevitable and you could at least have read the book you have to review, or started that dissertation chapter, or, or, or...

The consolation is that everybody's in the same straits, and if facebook can be believed (and, really, when can't it?), there is a kind of pleasure in sharing this particular misery. Don't think snowed under. Think snowed in.