Saturday, March 03, 2007

The Fever Has Broken...

We were finally able to get out of the house today. Huzzah!

Again, being trapped in a house for two days is not such a bad thing, especially if you have heat, food, cable, and internet access. But Cabin Fever was definitely a problem in the last 48 hours.

I guess it's all a matter of perspective. I was talking with my parents today about the last blizzard in which we were trapped in the house. We couldn't get out for over a week. At that time, we lived in a very small, two-bedroom home... possibly less than 1000 square feet for the whole house. My aunt and grandfather had been stranded in a car about a mile away, and they hiked through strong gusts of wind and dangerous sub-zero temperatures to get to our house. Seven people were trapped together in that house, three of them were under the age of 7. We had enough food. We had heat. We were fine.

As I kept talking about it today, I pointed out to my youngest teenage daughter that we didn't have cable TV back then, nor did we have video games, VCRs, DVDs. My sister and I listened to our stereo/record player a lot, I guess... but that was really our only entertainment outside of the TV. It was a long time ago, and I don't remember a lot about it, but I'm guessing we played a lot of board games and just waited out the storm. And the thing is... I don't remember feeling trapped. It was kind of like a party for us, because my dad didn't have to go to work, and my grandpa and aunt were there to play with us, too!

Today, our first trek out of the house was to fast food. We only had about 40 minutes to get something to eat before dropping Daughter #1 off at school for a rehearsal, so fast food would have to do (not my preference, but what can you do?). As they stepped out of the car in the fast food parking lot, Daughters #1 and #2 jumped up and down with glee, screaming and laughing, "We're FREE! We're FREE!!"

What a couple of goobers.

BUT... my happy-time was just around the corner, because we made a quick trip to Target. AND... I spent less than $100. Woot!

Life is good. :-)

7 comments:

Nessa said...

Glad you were able to escape. I would love to have cabin fever. My daughter and husband are more socially oriented, so they would get a little antsy.

Jaek said...

I have not been fortunate enough to be trapped for any period of time because of weather. I'm always one of those who treks out for various reasons in the severe conditions. My school closed for three days a couple weeks ago due to a blizzard we had and that brought their twenty+ year closure total to 7.

I am glad you are now free, though. Where to next? Chipotle?

Stefanie said...

I was snowed in for a couple days, too, and found myself entirely surprised that I wasn't stir crazy with cabin fever. Frighteningly, what I learned from this week's blizzard is that I would apparently do very well as a hermit or a shut-in. I'm not quite sure what to do with this revelation.

wire said...

I would absolutely love to get snowed in for a day or two... or three. It'd be awesome! It'd be like a climatically enforced holiday playing RISK and chess, reading some books, watching movies and generally just relaxing. Bring on the snow!

M.Amanda said...

Congratulations on getting out.

I'm kinda agreeing with Wire here. Forced to stay in with my family and do nothing but play board games? Yee-haw! Sign me up.

lizgwiz said...

As long as I have power (and cat food and litter, of course), I'm okay with being shut-in for a little while. (The most I've ever gone is 4 days, I think.) Without power--that would be trickier, I think. A couple of summers ago I was stuck at home without electricity for 3 days--with a broken arm. That wasn't much fun, but fortunately the pain meds made it really easy to just sleep and sleep.

3carnations said...

I'm glad you were able to get out. I can't remember the last time we had a situation like that with snow...We've been lucky.