Folded tight like little secrets along thin limbs, rhododendron leaves clamp shut as another storm thickens the air.

Outside the front window I see next season's buds pointing upward through snow, wind, and clinging ice. Tapered points wait for a spring sun. Opening in the warmth and stretching pink petals to catch buttery sunlight, they won't remember winter.

Light fades into dusk then darkness, and I get ready for the bar. Hopeful faces walk in looking for promises. Looking for friendship, love, sex, magic, or happiness, they will find something, everything, nothing, and accept a beer or whiskey while they wait. A storm is coming.

At home with Lily's training collar dropping from my fingers, I let it coil on the floor as I step away from her. She sits and waits.

This is just the first step, Jerry tells me. He uses a light voice as if I am made of bubbles.

Life is in limbo while we stand around in our boots, wool hats, and worn mittens, waiting to fight off the sky with a stupid shovel. More snow is coming in.

Yesterday's baby blue sky curdled behind faint clouds. Darkness came. Hours later, Dawn crept over the horizon with a wash bucket, swiping away the darkness . Light brightened a pale off-white sky that snowed.

Lily's thumping tail got me up and out of bed.

I had been dreaming of an old newspaper owner that only visited my editorial offices a few times each year. He was always stiff, with a dark overcoat and briefcase. Will. He was not prone to smiling. He would wrap a fist beneath his chin and listen to a discussion, or interject by yelling.

In my dream, Will walked into the office, set his briefcase on a chair, and wrapped me in a vigorous hug.

Somewhere inside my head I have crossed wires.

Lily and I worked at our training and obedience today. Hershey shadows Lily. Bandit finds something to sniff, and Ozzy sits and snorts.

Post 201

Looking at a clear sky where Orion waves briefly, I see the next storm's clouds slipping in. They'll wipe away his stars like dust. I wait for snow.

Lily has not been out running for two days. She has to earn it and I have to teach her to earn it. She is learning to listen to me. I am learning to listen too. We are learning. Training.

How did the training go? A friend asked.

Like shit.

Oh…can't the trainer help?

Well, I have to do it, I said.

For days I watch styrofoam cups pile up in the trash. I have been here at work, but my mind has packed a little overnight bag and called a cab. An email from a coworker included the remark, I thought I was clear when I said…

No sense answering that.

Around 3 in the afternoon a descending sun sends a splash of gold across the hillside outside my window. Drifts of snow smooth its jutting stones and tree stumps left behind last year when chainsaws sent chips flying. The air smelled like raw wood, summer camp, the moist earth strapped beneath a bark that soaked rainwater from the ground.

The sun's beams unravel like ribbons across frozen crust and bounce through icicles as thick as spears. They light up in a rippling yellow and white, sending splintered colors across my desk. Reaching out to swipe a finger through pastels staining a page of notes, I stop and think about that email again.

I sit here in a cold, dark basement with Jerry's TV sounds coming down. A single lamp spreads a little pool across the desktop. It's enough. Lily pops up and drops cold paws in my lap. With her nose poking my cheek I turn to look at her snow-splashed face. With a little puff I send a tuft of melting white crystals to the floor.

Looking at Lily's eyes glistening in weak lamplight, I imagine each life as this bitty thing that we hold in cupped hands. I set mine down carefully tonight so I wouldn't drop it while I ranted at Jerry. Poor Jerry who lays on the ground in the cold and changes my water pump and adjusts the clutch. I slam doors and yell and swear. I cry. I ramble. I have done this before.

Is this all because of that email? he asked.

Well, probably. Stupid of me, but when I saw it crawling under my skin, I should have killed it then.

Why can't you just dump it on xxxxx at work? Why do I always get the bad part? he asks. How come I have to have the bad part?

When I am calm I place my palms on either side of the tender thing, cradling it in my hands again.

Things suffer to please the eye. As I stood watering the burlapped rootball on our Christmas tree with its spiked fingers that peek out the window at sunrise each morning, I saw that many of its shoots had been trimmed. We danced around it, celebrated, then pulled its decorations off and stashed it here on cold floor tiles. This likely plump shrub was pruned and shaped with careful snips and cuts.

And down there by that tree ringed with dried and fading holiday wishes, I worked with the dog trainer today. Lily writhed and howled on the pronged end of a choke chain.

She doesn't like someone being in charge, L. said. She is used to being in charge. You have to be boss, she told me.

She said, sit. Following the command with a yank and attempt to reposition Lily into a sit, Lily just kept struggling. Soon she was promptly responding to her commands and as obedient as hell with the blunt, yet spiked links gripping her around the neck.

So it starts.

Lily's potential is currently asleep and I am the blindfolded and stumbling ass that needs to wake it up.

So, so cold outside. It slips in and finds my fingers and toes, drawing away their warmth. Cold. It's nothing really, but lack of heat.

I can't watch movies about zombies, monsters, vampires, werewolves, witches, demons, ghosts, the Easter bunny, or things that crawl through sewage to snack on fresh guts.

Running from the living room where herky jerky, glassy eyed stiffs hunt down a bunch of people jammed in the corner of a warehouse, I yell, did they make it?

With a look of glee, Jerry hesitates. TV light splotches his face with white moving light, goes dark, turns light again. Yes, he said.

Oh good. A bunch of actors smeared with special effects and howling fake screams can all go home safely again tonight.

Scarier than made-for-television movies are this morning's dreams…I was trying to get a word together but could only manage to moan. My lips were paralyzed. Couldn't talk. In my dream I became aware of someone next to me. Looking up at the closet from the floor I realized I was crouched down with a man whispering in my ear.

Can you see him? the man asked. Some gray shape stood shrunken like a frightened little boy in the corner of the bedroom closet, his feet near my hiking shoes and his head drooped against his chest.

I have not seen him in so long, I tell the man. Trying to reassure the pasty, bloodless looking little boy, I want him to lift his head. I can only moan. I feel myself straining, sounds rumble around in my throat, but no words.

My mind skips and in my dream I rouse again. I see things sideways, as if I have my cheek on the mattress and look across the room at the old woman with heaps of flowing skirts where she rocks in a chair. Then, I see the little boy. He crouches in a pale little way at her feet where her skirts droop like a blanket. They swallow him like a tide meandering in to cover smooth stones. It is somehow imperceptible, yet fast.

Her old worn face flashes across his smooth, wan cheeks and his image appears beneath her wrinkled brow and gray bun piled with hair pins. Then he is gone or they are gone and there is just one person in the rocker, but I have faded again.

We are in a station wagon. I watch the colorful world flash by outside a back window, and nameless others are with me, including the bitch that's driving. Bouncing on a dirt lane parallel to a large storm pipe, I hear a deep, echoing voice yell, here! A woman is trapped inside the pipe, and we have just driven past her location.

Stop the car, we've found the spot, I yell. Not yet, snaps the driver. We aren't to the end yet.

Never mind the end! Stop! She is back there!

No!!!

Bitch, damn whore! STOP THE CAR!

I wake and Jerry tells me that I have only been restless and murmuring for maybe a few minutes. Who was the little boy? Usually the tangible stuff of dreams leaves a momentary sensation against the skin or butterflies in the gut that are coming from a part of the brain that keeps no memory. Usually, the dreamy things fade so fast, but this little boy is a familiar little one, or triggered a familiar sense of sadness or urgency or worry about what will happen to him. Who will help him? Why is he so pale, dejected, silent, with eyes cast at the ground as if his face were too heavy to lift?

This morning in the woods, as most mornings, I am very careful with Lily and Hershey and who has their tattered tennis ball. In deep snow we are confined to yesterday's deep ruts that we pound for a smidge more space. I worry that with one growl, and one nip for an answer, we'll be rushing to the vet again. I step outdoors with a fear that Hershey will be hurt. We thought about why we should buy a muzzle, and why we should not. We purchased a static shock training collar, but I am too wimpy to wrap it around Lily's neck.

At the bar I see J. who looks worn from so much time plowing the streets since the sky collapsed, dropping more than two feet of snow on top of the 10 inches of several days before. Snow and rain today make the mess soggy, and tonight's chill will freeze the world into a sloppy heap of snow as solid as cement. More snow is coming. I feel like the little boy, just standing with arms dangling and nothing to say.

A friend, C., had come by with a town backhoe and chomped away at piled snow. He spent extra time outside my driveway moving the heaps and pushing the mounds of snow away. With it he took a couple of Rose of Sharon bushes and other shrubs. I told J. about it as I cracked his Corona Light. I was laughing. Those plants were buried.

He thinks he was doing you a favor, J. said.

I know! I love him for it. Please don't tell him about the shrubs!

It's easier to replace plants than feelings.

Looking at summer photos of sunshine clinging to flower petals that ooze warmth like melted butter on my fingertips, I glance at the two feet of snow outside. We're screwed, and will be screwed again with snow and icy rain by morning.

The bar owners took us out for margaritas tonight. I melted onto the stool after less than one taquilla-filled goblet. I told them, today is the day of the many layers of loser that keep me wrapped…but not warm. Lily could care less.

Who could imagine that 2011 would begin with an avalanche?

While I wipe down a spilled beer from the bar a friend asks, hey, does that Bronco have a plow?

Yup, I answer.

What size?

Shrugging, I stretch out my arms and say, maybe this wide…bout this tall. Goes forward.

Where is it? he asked.

I smile. I dry the bar. Well, it's at home, under two-and-a-half feet of snow…

C'mon! You could make so much money with that plow! More than here.

I told him, yeah, but there's beer here. And booze. And it's dry and warm. But no dogs….

A few minutes later I am out in the nearly zero-degree night crouched beside his golden retriever. Scratching and praising him, the dog sops it up, snarling the happy snarl with his golden lips ruffled, hid ribs leaning hard against my legs.

Thursday night I realized my mood had curdled and hardened into a lump. Everyone was annoying. Everything was intolerable. I poured, I chilled, I strained, I popped bottle caps. I wanted everyone to leave. Go home, go away, leave me here to clean up without you saying, did you finish the drawer yet? You stocked?

Screw off, I kept thinking. May an open door suck you into the parking lot, and may frigid wind blow across your ass. Thank you.

The next night I am saying sorry for my mood yesterday. Sort of joyless and boring. Sorry.

What was it?

Stuff on my mind, I say. It grows ugly with time until I can't look anymore.

To my friend in Pa. who apologizes for dusting off and stretching out a great stress reliever, I wrote: Hey, the F Bomb is satisfying every time. So are the looks on well-dressed faces. Don't smear your lipstick over it ladies! Then again, I don't think she wants her youngest to use the word properly in a sentence in kindergarten.

To another blog-acquaintance with young children I said: I read your story and Erin's and I think, I have no kids. Why is my life hard? I guess "hard" is just a consequence of things we want to make better, that refuse to play along. Damn bricks, really.

Problems are these immobile bricks I can't dislodge.

Jerry dissolved one in the minus-zero darkness at 6:45 this morning: as the dogs bark like mad, Jerry sat up in bed and said, the furnace just quit.

What? Why are the dogs barking?

The chugging noise from the furnace, he answered.

How?

Since I had come to bed after 5 am, I was soon asleep again. He had gone outside to dig out the oil tank and find the problem. Maybe the fuel gelled or the lines froze. Downstairs today near the furnace were his tools and contraption for work -- his magic wands that create hot and cold where you need them, large or small. Our furnace is now firing like it should.

We bought a static training collar for Lily today. It's meant to help me prevent a future of stitches in the vet's office, but I suspect I'll be using it to keep myself awake.