Place Post #2 Snow, Snow and More S-No

I feel that I've drained all descriptions of cold, snow and miserablism from my wary fingers.  It snowed again yesterday, in a way that made most school kids cheer until they realized, as my brother did, that it wouldn't last long enough for any kind of delay or closing.  As I mentioned, I'm sick of snow, both in describing it and my experiences interacting with it in my backyard.  I'm going to write from a carved out little patch in my memory that not too far from the rectangular bathroom zone that my brother and I dug out for our dog (the one that she completely disregards and comes back inside completely covered with snow).

It's weird, the things you think about when your all alone scuffing through a place you've been so many times before, especially when you're wishing that you could be in that place five or six months from now.  It would be June then, and I've had many great Junes in my backyard.  I've built and a few years later tore down a wooden swingset, I've pushed the lawnmower back and forth, creating perfectly straight (almost sports field worthy) lines and patterns, I taught my brother how to hit a baseball, golf ball and throw both a baseball and a football.  What I came to realize is that this isn't just a yard simply stepping out here is like passing through a gateway into memories and experiences that I didn't know I'd even had, or at least at the time I didn't think they were significant.

As flakes fall around me, sporadic and lifeless like nuclear fallout, The white blanketed ground reminds me of setting up the large white tent for my bon voyage party.  The concept of a bon voyage party in itself is ridiculous, but the extent to which my parents carried it out prior to my departing for Scotland was equally asinine, and for some reason I always end up doing the work for parties that are thrown for me, but that neither here nor there.

It's the day before the party and this enormous tent has been delivered to our backyard as a pile of disconnected aluminum poles, a few yellow ropes, so ground stakes and what looked like a folded white tarp.  May I just mention that there weren't any directions, my dad has a doctorate and little common sense and my brother a scathing tongue without a filter.  It was not prime work conditions by any means and we were crunched for time with a thunderstorm scheduled to role in before dinner.

My dad tried to make sense of the unmarked poles and refused to listen to my advice even though I'd set this tent up the week before as a part of working for Penn State Altoona's maintenance and operations staff.  Each time he incorrectly assembled a certain combination of poles, my brother made a smart-assed comment and I wiped the sweat from my brow with the back of my forearm.

I figured it was better to leave my dad and brother to annoy each other.  It was really a matter of who would reach the tantrum stage first and storm inside so that I could actually get some work done.  I unfolded the tarp and laid it out.  I put together the frame and tried to ignore my brother making another jab at my dad about how many degrees does it take to put together a couple pieces of metal.  I had almost the entire skeletal system put together when the first bit of lightning flashed across the sky.  That was all the cue my dad and brother needed to high-tail it inside, but I'm a little more stubborn than I should be when it comes to adverse weather.  I wrestled with the poles my dad and brother had been arguing over and just as I assembled the last leg, the white tarp took off with the wind.

It rolled like a tumbleweed across my yard and into the neighbor's yard.  I dropped the poles and chased it down to the accompaniment of my brother's laughter and my dad yelling at me to get out of the storm.  When I finally wrangled the tarp, and let me say this was no small feat because I literally had to use my entire body to ball in back up into something less parachute like, the storm was raging.  The skies had opened up and the thunder rumbled, but our tenting would have to wait.

I think about this now as the snow looks vaguely reminiscent of that tarp, but I can't wrestle this blanket.   I can't get it back in order.  This is another thing I guess I'll just have to ride out.