there is snow on the ground. goodbye outdoors, i will miss thee

My alarm rings for the twentieth time. It does not look like daytime outside. Gloomy, rainy and gray, the covers are more inviting than anything else. I close my eyes and pull Julia back into me. She looks so peaceful when she sleeps. It's the only time she will be still. Not even a moment passes and my godforsaken alarm is at it again, determined to ruin my morning. Ambitiously, the night before, I set the alarm for 7. It is now 908am and I can no longer pretend that it is too early to be awake. I step out of bed groggily, every cell in my body screaming for coffee. I look out the window again and the rain has turned into a hail. "This solidifies it, I'm not leaving the house again," chimes Julia, sitting up in the chair next to the window, watching plumes of smoke rise from her freshly lit cigarette. I spend inordinate amounts of time picking out clothes and fretting about my ever mounting classwork. As we gather our things to leave for the morning, I look outside again and the hail pellets have turned into dense, packed mounds of slush, falling thickly onto the pavement. I am hoping this is a fluke of some sort. We drive to Wegmans for groceries. When we come back out into the world, the thick slush is inarguably resembling the dreaded s word.

Snow.

December 1st. It is here.

Just like that, with the blink of an eye or the snooze of an alarm, fall is gone and winter has come. I think I may never leave the house again as well.