We’re at that point of the winter when the sounds of snow blowers and snow plows in the morning signal dejection rather than thrill. It snowed. Again.

It’s been months since I could drive around town and see oncoming traffic before entering an intersection, or throw a shovel full of snow high enough to have it land on top of the drift at the bottom of my driveway, or make it out to refill the bird feeder.

We’re at that point in winter when the snow on the ground is rarely white. Most of the time it’s steel grey, or at best the same color as the sky: the color of dead fish eyes. Even the leafless trees have lost their brownness and have slipped into some grey-brown state that tells you their souls have gone elsewhere.

Three more months of snow. Four till there’s any color. And “spring break” is just 6 weeks away, ready to mock me with it’s stunning lack of spring and its equally stunning lack of break.

Of course, the neighborhood children seem to be quite content. Some of the drifts have been hollowed out by industrious children, the 5-foot banks looking like hills inhabited by hobbits — little round doors and little round windows letting little round people in and out with their steaming mugs of cocoa. So maybe they woke up to the sounds of the plows and thrilled, for the umpteenth time this winter, to the idea of new-fallen snow.

It had been a bad day after a string of bad days. The high point of the day had been a nap, and I hate naps. The other high point had been a grilled cheese sandwich, and I’m glad I enjoyed that because it turned out to be the only meal I had all day.

7:30 rolled around and I roused myself to go put the recycling and trash containers out on the curb, feed the cat, find food for myself, and settle in to watch Masterpiece Theater before bed. Next thing I knew, I was flat on my back on the icy sidewalk and some annoying person was saying “Ow ow ow ow ow” in my ear. It took me a minute to realize that the annoying person was me, and that since it was me I’d be able to make that person SHUT UP ALREADY. It took another minute to realize that the recycling container had clobbered me on the way down and was still on top of me. And it took several more minutes before I managed to roll myself over, maneuver myself to my hands and knees, and finally stand up.

I decided the trash could wait until next week. So could supper, for that matter.

Today I’m fine as long as I don’t sit, stand, walk, or bend. Especially bend. Today I’m also scheduled in for work stuff right through until 10pm. Yippee!

New Years is a complicated day for me. It’s a holiday and a day to spend remembering spending time with friends the night before. It marks the close of the last year (a difficult one, for me, so I’m glad to see it go). It’s my sister’s birthday.

It also marks a day when people look forward to a new year with hope for things to come. Resolutions set, positive changes planned, somehow this arbitrary day marks a point in time when people can start over in ways large and small. And here’s where the other kind of anniversary comes in for me.

Three years ago today, I woke up feeling pretty under the weather and spent the day in bed nursing flu-ish aches and a headache and general malaise. A week later I remember telling a friend I was still so tired I was having to really talk myself into lifting my hands as far as the keyboard. Soon after that I went to the doctor for something other than a broken bone or a check-up for only the second time in my life.

Since then I’ve taken medical leave once, worked reduced hours for one summer, had my mom travel several hundred miles every couple of months to clean my house and stock my freezer,  pulled back from interesting projects at work, accepted generous help with everything from meals to laundry from good friends, and generally completely lost touch with the person I used to be.

So New Year’s Day is a hard one for me, full of anger and sadness that this thing, whatever it is, has swallowed yet another year — full of fear for the upcoming years.

Periodically, there’s reason to hope that this won’t last forever. When I pull myself out of the gloom induced by yet another anniversary, I’ll get back to the business of remembering that future hopeful periods may actually blossom into real health, and that a few past hopeful periods have resulted in improvement even when they didn’t cure me. I can read again, as long as it’s light reading, and I can do many interesting things at work again. I also know now, for sure and certain, that I have friends and family who care about me.

And tomorrow will be January 2nd, 2011, which will be a far less complicated day.

My family gave me a Wii for Christmas. A couple of days later I downloaded Fluidity (and had no idea at the time that it had just been released 2 days before). It’s the first real game I’ve owned and played since … college? Yeah, college. And it’s the first game I’ve played since Myst that had Myst-like appeal. Interlocking puzzles, puzzles in new worlds that help you solve puzzles in old worlds, scenery that you can manipulate, scenery that makes more and more sense the more you know about the world and its puzzles.

Yeah, I’m obsessed.

I’ll be doing my dishes and think “I wonder if I can get on TOP of the cable car. I bet that’d do it.”

I’m so impatient to solve all the puzzles, and I’m also so glad that there are about 100 of them and that I’ve only just made a dent. Most of all, though, I’m glad for the upcoming 3-day weekend.

Step One: The Nest

Make a nest for yourself in some comfy location with windows where you can watch what’s going on outside. You’ll probably see people skiing past your door to make it to the grocery store across the street, and you won’t want to miss that.

This nest should be soft and squishy, should have a table nearby to hold your laptop, tea pot, tea cup, book, and phone, and should come with 3 or 4 blankets ranging from heavy (the weight is comforting) to fluffy (because, duh, it’s comfy). Remember that your goal is not to have to leave the nest for several days and plan accordingly.

If possible, your nest should also come with a cat, the needier the better. If you’ve just been gone for a couple of weeks on vacation and worked late hours the week before and after that vacation, all the better, because the cat will be at its neediest.

I also recommend having a lightbox on one side and a parabolic space heater on the other. Between these two things, it’s possible to trick part of your brain into thinking you’re lying on a beach while the other part contemplates the speed with which all life would cease to exist if confronted with -35F windchills and 1-2 inches of snow per hour on a regular basis.

Oh, and you’ll want to have some access to the local news. You can guarantee that people will be eager to interrupt whatever program is on, and do so frequently and breathlessly. You may get to see footage of football stadium roofs collapse, and you can amuse yourself by counting up all the times when the announcers and meteorologists tell you that they don’t know anything new, or don’t know what’s going on. Be on alert, particularly, for all the ways the meteorologists tell you they really have no idea how much snow is falling.

Step Two: The Food

It’s best if you have food in the house before the blizzard. Be aware that you’ll want to eat warm food during this time, and that you won’t want to eat anything white. I’ve heard you can sometimes rely on delivery for this step, but when they send plows out to rescue other plows, and then decide not to plow at all, it’s best not to rely too heavily on this option.

This goal may potentially come into sharp tension with the previous goal of having a needy cat, since there’s very little time for stocking the pantry if you’re working and on vacation pretty much straight for a month. Be forewarned.

If, by some chance, you happened to prioritize the project of making the cat needy over stocking your pantry, and if you happen to have very little beyond bread, cheese, and noodles in the house, it is possible to live through the duration of the blizzard on cheese and cheese-based food. Grilled cheese — mac & cheese — more grilled cheese. I also had some bananas, which were good but which were not warm and which were too close to white. (Please note that my bread was not white. Nor were my noodles.)

Step Three: Snow Removal

Do not underestimate this step. It will likely take you 2 hours to do what you thought you could do in 15 minutes. In fact, the best idea is to hire someone else to do it for you (unless you happen to own a snowblower and feel like making a fortune by showing up at forlorn neighbors’ houses, which I saw happening several times).

If you hire it out, be sure to have no plans. This should mesh well with the Department of Transportation’s urgent pleas to stay home, please, please, pretty please. It’s likely that the person you hired will have been hired by more than just you, and it’s likely that some of those people will be very testy about the snow and will demand that the poor snow removal guy come out every couple of hours to get rid of the new drift they see forming on their beautiful sidewalk. It’s also possible that the strain of all of the plowing and hauling and running back and forth to battle the drifts will cause the snow removal guy’s truck to burn out its transmission, and that he’ll feel pretty terrible about leaving you snowed in, even if you tell him that it’s ok, and that you really hadn’t planned to go anywhere anyway.

All of this works out even better if you are feeling pretty crummy and welcome the excuse not to go anywhere or do anything. The key is to get sick enough that you need a few days of complete rest without getting so sick that you need to go to the hospital, because then you’d have to go out, which would be a lot easier if you were plowed out.

Be aware that your nest will be an advantage when watching the city bring in the huge tractors that spew snow into awaiting dump trucks for removal to some field or other, but that the nest will be a distinct disadvantage as you watch the poor guy trudge up and down behind the snow blower looking exhausted and cold. You may want to have a windowless retreat prepared, and an activity (either something really engaging or something that involves being asleep) all set to keep you from contemplating the cruelty you’re inflicting on another human being. You will need this activity to last you for several hours, particularly if you’re on a corner lot.

Step Four: Don’t Take Out The Trash

Seriously. Do the cost-benefit analysis. On the one hand, you have trash cans that are getting full. On the other, you have trash cans that will need to be dug out after you’ve dug a path to them. And then you’ll need to dig a path to the curb, which you’re pretty sure is somewhere halfway between the sidewalk and the place where the plows stopped plowing in the middle of the street. Then you’ll have to get back out there to retrieve them when the garbage truck has finished with them, probably dumping them somewhere other than in the space you would have prepared for them.

I’m finding the slightly more full than usual trash cans in the house far more pleasant than the alternative.

Step Five: Be Proud

If people tell you they’ve gotten more snow then you, remember that you’ve had a lot of snow, plus a lot of wind, and it’s probably colder where you are. Impress them with your knowledge that it would only take 10 minutes to get frost-bitten where you are.

In general everyone else you know will have had more snow, or more wind, or more cold, but not all three together. If they have had all three together, distract them with pictures of baby animals.