Snowbound Lament.

It's chilly out there, is what it is. The Sunday Roast has come and gone, a quick filet that was only a little on fire for only a little while, a baked potato, a little steamed broccoli. If the kid is intent on killing you, go simple: Red meat, red wine. Various dinner-table bubble-bath bargains. Be finished with it all, get the big one to bed, get the wee one sleeping on the sofa next to his sleeping mom, pour a drink, put on the hi-fi, clean the kitchen, check the weather.

The fancies say rain on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday. The geeks you've been following since January, the guys with fancy computers and angry semi-grammatical facebook pages, say a foot of snow in that same timeframe. The thing: they've been right three times in a row. Do you want to be socked in with a manic toddler, pissed about his brother's arrival on the planet? No. No no and no. But: can you still be you and not hope for cataclysm, for that selfsame foot of snow, for a power outage and the need to move the whole family to the woodstoved shed?

This is the lament of the new father, second verse—I no longer know for sure what to hope for. What I did do: take the problem child to the grocery, buy eggs and milk and bread. If this thing comes true, I'll already have it, won't have to fight the lines. Though, damn, I love the lines, always have. I love Christmas Eve at the bookstore, and I love the night before a storm at the grocery. I like needing a carton of milk but not needing to panic. I like being near all that odd, misplaced fear.

So bring on the snow. Or don't. It's March. We'll either bloom the rest of these daffodils or we'll pile snow into the bog garden that is the backyard. Or, hell, we'll do both. The fancies, regardless of forecast, want sixties for next week. If the geeks and the fancies both are right, we'll probably hatch mosquitoes in the snowdrifts—and if that's not enough apocalypse for you, then I've got a three-week-old baby and a fairly, though hopefully temporarily, damaged Toad you can borrow until you're satisfied.