State of the Union

The State of the Union is cold, dark, hungry, powerless and alone on night two after a brief spasm of heavy snow, nursing a scotch, sealed in four layers of synthetic and wool, babying 44 percent power on the iPad, listening to a fading radio signal of the Mark Levin Show, and contemplating the New Year in earnest. The family has been sent off to the warm confines of nearby relations. Most of the neighbors have abandoned their homes for hotels or the couches of generous neighbors on the other side of that invisible line that separates electrical jurisdictions. Listserv denizens contemplate class action suits against the power and cable companies for the inexcusable civil crime of leaving them . . . uncomfortable. Others fret about their pipes. More advice swooshes through the intertubes. It's 53 degrees in the den and 30 degrees on the porch. The emails roll in every five minutes. Who has heard what about the power, about the pipes, about the traffic, about the schools, about the garbage pickup, about the Metro, about the arborists?

But I want for nothing. All this drama and inconvenience and frustration with utilities and kivetching and kavalling is just so much soft suburban weakness. Two or three nights of dark, unrelenting cold IS GOOD FOR YOU! I don't want any information. I want the dark, the cold, the quiet, and the snow for a few nights. And the scotch. I really want the scotch.