I spent my long weekend snowed in.

I heard a passing mention of ‘we’re gonna get snow this weekend’ sometime on Wednesday and promptly scoffed.

Snow, you say? It’s not going to snow… and if it does snow, it’s not going to stick… this is Portland! It rains, or freezing-rains. It does not fluffy-white-perfect-for-snowballs-making-snow here.

Well color me wrong, because this is how Snow-pocalypse-mageddon-14 started late Thursday morning. Whoops.

At work, we stood at the windows studying the traffic below and trying to gauge if we should leave now or wait it out to see if it stopped snowing like usual. We checked to see if we could see the traffic on our bridges back over the Willamette… fyi, I couldn’t even see mine though the snow clouds. I decided to bail at 1:30pm and take my chances on beating the ‘omg-there’s-white-stuff-falling-from-the-sky-i-have-to-get-home-right-now’ panic-traffic.

BEST DECISION EVER. (Snowpocalypse related anyway)

I got home just as people were starting to report bridge closures, slick hills, and white-knuckled driving in 2 mile an hour traffic. I patted myself on the back for making it home so easily, then I realized I should probably bundle up and walk to the store to stockpile food, because I had absolutely nothing in the house (unless chocolate syrup counts as a food, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t).

By the time I ventured out a couple hours later, there was already a couple inches on the ground with no end in sight.

Had I thought through my snowstorm grocery trip a little more, I might have thought to dress up a little bit because I have never seen more single men in the grocery store at one time — I know this because they were all ringless, and stocking up on pizza and beer. Ignoring the fact that 95% of them were probably 5-10 years younger than me, I think someone should come up with a Snowstorm Singles Grocery Store Meet Up group. Seriously! Oh, is my i-don’t-want-to-be-a-single-old-cat-lady desperation showing? Sorry.

Moving on…

The city shut down on Friday so I worked from home, assuming this would all be over by Saturday morning — because this is Portland after all, and I apparently only bought enough groceries to last me though Saturday morning.

And the snow kept falling. And falling. And falling. And falling.

I do not know how you midwesterners and east coasters do it! By Saturday I felt trapped and restless and I trudged my way through non-shoveled sidewalks back to the store for more Starbucks and comfort foods groceries because I could not spend one more moment alone stuck inside my apartment.

The snow-walk (and Starbucks!) did my spirit good, so I happily spent the rest of my weekend sliding into a food coma and watching marathons of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Burn Notice, and Leverage.

At least I made a patriotic berry dessert to watch some of the Olympics!

And the freezing-rain finally showed up Saturday night (I was right!), because nothing says Portlandia quite like six inches of beautiful fluffy snow, covered in a half inch sheet of ice.

Did you have a fun/exciting/relaxing weekend?

Sometimes, you just need a break. A long one. A break from pretty much everything, including all things social media related. A time to regroup, rethink, reprioritize, and reboot. A time to clean, and redecorate because you’ve lived in the same place for four years with framed art leaning against walls. A time to shut down all your online dating profiles because — I don’t even want to talk about it right now. A time to just, be.

And by you, I mean me. And by break, I mean five months of nothing but alone time, family time, reading time, and why-can’t-I-work-from-home-all-the-time time. It’s been fantastic. But it’s also the time of year when I barely see daylight (go to work in the dark, come home in the dark) and my depression starts to worm its way back into my life and I have to try really, really, really, really hard to stay positive. Last winter I made it through unscathed; this winter, not so much.

I watched a futuristic movie once, about a classroom of kids preparing for their one day a year outside in real sunlight (instead of in front of sunlamps because the air is so bad). But when it comes time to go outside, a group of bullies locks a girl in a closet and you watch as everyone else plays happily outside, and all she can do (after screaming to get out without anyone hearing her) is watch a sliver of sunlight grow and then fade from under the door.

I think about that movie a lot (probably more than I’d care to admit), because it pretty much sums up how I feel in the winter. Like everyone else is out having a happy-go-lucky time and I’m stuck in my depressive gloom only catching glimpses of metaphorical sunlight. I’ve learned to hide it pretty well, but yeah, it’s really like that.

So, the biggest thing I’m trying to remember, is that the daylight hours will continue to get longer and longer and the sun will eventually shine again. Actually, that’s kind of dramatic — it has been shining here, I just haven’t seen that much of it! I’m thinking I should try to figure out how to move south for the winters…

That’s why I’m showing you photos of summer camping trips instead of anything I’ve done in the last 5 months… because I really just need some green trees and blue skies right now. There’s a reason they’re my favorite colors.

Another thing I finally realized is that I miss my little space on the internet… is anyone still here? :)

One of my favorite movies is You’ve Got Mail. I love Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks together, but mostly I love it because it’s about writers and books. Seriously.

I’m super lucky that Portland has an amazing independent bookstore called Powell’s. It’s the “largest independent new and used bookstore in the world” and if you’re coming to Portland for FitBloggin’13 in June, I highly suggest you get lost in it check it out!

Saturday I was running errands with a friend when I remembered that I needed to pick up a book I had on hold – Michael Pollan’s new book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation. He was in town for an author Q&A on Tuesday, but because we weren’t able to attend, Powell’s was nice enough to hold the books for us! We were getting ready to go into Target, but decided to high-tail it to the book store instead — that’s how nerdy we are!

The thing about Powell’s (or any bookstore really) for me, is that I can not leave with just one book. I can’t just go in to pick up a book without wandering the isles first, where I will inevitably find at least one other book that I suddenly can’t live without. Hi, my name is Tiffany, and I’m a book hoarder.

Case in point?

Actually, since I’d already paid for Cooked, and my friend bought Blog, Inc. for me, I guess I did technically only buy one book. I win!

Powell’s also has a separate Home and Garden store that is filled with lots of fun little accessories, which is where I found a full table of owl amazingness…

and then a few things that are just too weird awesome to even try to explain…

Did you do anything fun this weekend?

*I just signed up to be a Powell’s Partner affiliate while looking for the link to ‘Cooked’
**I did not buy any owl stuff… or the gummy bacon.