What do you do on another snow day?

Winter wonderland

1.  First of all, relax.  You don’t have to DO anything on another snow day.  The Universe gives you permission to relax and lie on the couch all day–in your pajamas–if you so desire.  Breathe in, breathe out.  Simply BE.  That isn’t so hard, is it?

2.  Watch the snow fall.  Snow descends from the sky in such fascinating different ways.  As previously discussed, when the wind is a’blowin’, snow sometimes falls down and then ascends up.  Sometimes it scatters sideways.  This morning, cuddled beneath the white comforter in my jammies, it seems the flakes fall tenderly.  Can you imagine tender snow drifting downward?

Brown oak leaves dusted with snow

3.  Watch a brown oak leaf tossing itself back and forth on the tree in an almost frenzied fashion.  Some years the oak leaves refuse to fall obediently to the ground in the autumn like the more predictable maple and poplar leaves.  The oak leaves hang forth.  Perhaps their stems attach more steadfastly.  Certain leaves–maybe based on location–will shudder back and forth, back and forth, day in and day out, and never release.  Some days I long for the darn leaf to simply cease its struggle and simply fall.  Lately I’ve been interpreting it as a delightful dance with the wind, OK, a fast dance, a winter-oak-leaf dance.

4.  Enough pondering about oak leaves dancing!  You catapult from the couch and open Pandora on your Kindle Fire and find that 1950’s radio station and start dancing yourself.  Set the timer if you must!  Come on, baby, do the locomotion with me!  Move those hips, shimmy, shimmy, shimmy, faster than snowflakes falling–how’s that for a good snow day work out?

More oak leaves

5.  Later on perhaps, if inspired, you’ll grab the metal shovel on the front porch and clunk through the house in snowmobile suit and heavy boots to the deck and throw shovelfuls of fluffy snow (maybe six inches?  eight?) over the railing.  Don’t hurt your lower back.  Aren’t you glad you paused to stretch earlier?

6.  Play a teeny tiny game with yourself. Let your thoughts offer options about how to entertain yourself.  But don’t haphazardly follow a thought UNLESS you feel that you want to.  That’s key.  Follow your feelings on this snow day.  Only do what your feelings want.  If they want to write a blog, let them.  If they want to shovel the deck, let them.  If they want to read a book all day–they’re the boss.

7.  Eat a most delicious breakfast.  Simmer a pan of appealing grains–how about quinoa and buckwheat and oats?–before mincing some dried apricots and almonds.  Then allow yourself the sweet luxury of pure maple syrup, the sap of trees, upon your hearty grains.  Eat slowly.  Chew. Watch aforementioned dancing oak leaf or tender snow falling.

When tender falling snow blankets branches

8.  Check your email.  You may want to avoid staring at your computer 24/7 because you’ll miss the tender snow or what your feelings may be wanting.  On the other hand, you might stumble upon a friend’s blog–like Reggie’s new photo-blog down there in South Africa–and you’ll salivate over the fresh-baked bread, never mind that you’re full from that bowl of grains.  Wouldn’t you like fresh-baked bread?  Stacy, from Dream Tree Bayou down south in Louisiana, baked some last week, too.  Reggie mentions exotic South African jam in her comment to you and you’re suddenly ecstatic with the possibility that this exists in the planet, never mind that it’s not snowing in Africa.  Do your feelings want you to bake bread?

9.  OK, I’m going to throw out some random suggestions that might appeal to you.  Put together a jigsaw puzzle.  Go snowshoeing.  Simmer soup. Paint. Neveryoumind that you think you can’t paint.  Just play! Take photos of snow.  Read a marvelous book.  Watch a delightful movie.  Write for exactly one half hour on lined paper about something that irritates you. Ask questions of your irritation.  Ask it what it wants.  Engage with it.  Find out what it wants to teach you.

10.  Put on the tea kettle.  Press “Publish” on your latest blog post.  Curl up on the couch again with that big fluffy blanket and watch tender snow. Celebrate this space in your Little House in the Big Woods.  (Or in your sweet apartment in Queens or wherever you are when the snow’s falling outside and you can’t easily travel hither and yon…)

Would you readers like to offer some more ideas about what to do when you’re home bound on another snow day?