Belly-up to the lazy buffet.

Snow. I'm officially calling this my first real Madison snowfall. We had a dusting right before my birthday (much too soon for a snowfall in my opinion) and a couple of two-inchers at the end of the semester. Then it got fucking cold and the lake began to freeze. But then it got all 40-degrees and dry for weeks on end. My return to the midwest has been hailed with real snow.

It's currently still snowing, though I can't really believe that the small blowing flakes are contributing any more to the accumulation, which seems to be about 5 inches. When I decided that I was moving to Wisconsin, I used this new-fangled internet thing--which I hear is full of all kinds of facts--to look up Madison's annual snowfall totals. When I found the answer to be 5 inches, I was doubtful. The midwest is supposed to be full of snow! But how could the internet lie to me?? Since it's now January 15th and our total for the winter thus far is about 7 inches, I feel a.) relieved that the midwest will live up to its white reputation (and oh, how that applies in more than one way) and also b.) disappointed that the internet is not, in fact, a digital Delphi.

Snow is sweet.

So, yes, I'm back in Madison. I won't say much about my vacation. Except that I was surprised by own capacity for regression into the state of a sullen, angsty, family-hating fifteen-year-old. And that it's a good thing it took me most of my time at home to figure out how to connect my laptop to the internet, for this saved me from posting a ridiculous blog rant about hating my life. All I will now say in retrospect is that going home for the holidays at this age is hard. And that growing up has done a lot to contribute to a changed perspective on my family. And that I wish I had brothers and sisters. It's strange to spend the holidays with just my mother, as much as I love her.

I've done jack shit with my vacation. I need to learn to be okay with that. I always schedule myself more things than I can reasonably do, which leads to the ridiculous practice of making to-do lists months in advance. During the semester, while I'm buried under academic readings, I begin to wish I were making more progress on other, less soul-sucking projects. There's not enough of a sense of completion involved in academic work. It's cyclical. So I make fantastical, optimistic lists of all the things I will actually "take care of" when I have my time to myself. Things like, finishing the blanket I started crocheting two years ago. Building my website. Reading books for fun. Scrapbooking. Then vacation comes around, I look at that list, and think, ".............no?"

This particular to-do list has looked much the same for YEARS. These projects are all unfortunate enough to fall in the interstices between semester busy-ness and post-semester laziness. I will never do them.

So I have spent three weeks watching television. I feel a bit bad about myself at the moment, actually. I have read .5 books. I think I will go home right now and read. Or maybe watch a movie...

I keep telling myself I need this. That I must build up a good store of waste-of-life-ness to counterbalance the draining level of productivity I must sustain for the next four months. But I think I'm lying to myself. Because I kind of feel like shit. I'm not usually like this. All my life I have denied myself vacation time, and now I'm freaking gorging at the all-you-can-eat lazy buffet. And I can't stop. Someone please call for help.