February 11, 2006: IT'S SNOWING AGAIN IN DC!

We're in the throes of another Nor'easter here in the Dark Counrty, folks. I always seem to be blogging when there's snow on the ground. Coincidence? Child, I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm bound to the house and therefore am forced to be still and contemplative.

And I hate to sit still. When I was a kid, I was That Kid... you know the child who had ants in her pants, who was busy all the time..."frisky," I believe was the word my aunt used before she told my mother that I was, under no circumstances, allowed to return to her home.

As I got older, the physical friskiness was replaced by the mind that ran at warp speed while the body struggled to catch up. Think of that woman, Ann, in those Strattera commercials for adult ADD, where she's in this meeting and her mind is like a TV with the channels being changed like my last boyfriend with the remote control. But when it snows, there's no external stimulation to focus -- or not focus -- on, and I'm forced to sit and think about one thing.

Like this encounter I had last night. I don't know if I should call it a date. I don't think it was. Like how Oprah just realized, 20 years later, that she and Roger Ebert had actually gone a date (INSERT HUH?! HERE). I know what you're thinking...

For someone who writes romantic fiction, she's sure out of touch.

And I'll cop to that, because it's possible. Zane could write about all that sex, even though she was in a miserable marriage that just led to divorce, right?

I met the object of the encounter through a friend of mine. He's my friend's cousin. We'd done the phone and the electronic parrying and jousting, a la Devin and Chaney in What You Won't Do For Love and decided to "officially" hang out. He's very sweet, attractive, and intellectually stimulating. And with me, the way to my heart is through my brain. But when it come to men, I'm just weird. Like every woman my age, I've been hurt by men, at times badly. So, like anyone hitting her head against the wall, there comes a time when you stop. So I stopped dating and evolved past men... kind of like how humans may have evolved past having a tail. But you still have that coccyx... something that's there as a reminder. Metaphorically speaking, I've suddenly again become aware of my coccyx. And just like how snow disrupts and snarled up everything, becoming aware of your coccyx can disrupt your comfortable status quo... force you to think... reflect... want -- perhaps? -- for something previously you'd dismissed as a possibility...

It's snowing again in DC, people. Damn...