Snow Days

I live in Southwest Michigan. It's gorgeous here--summers by the lake, the leaves change color beautifully, and we have fantastic snow days. There are days when J and I LITERALLY cannot leave our house. Those are the days when we watch endless movies and marathons of bad tv, drink pots of tea and then move on to some phenomenal beer we've been saving.

It's snowing today, and we, like the rest of the country it seems, are getting hammered. We're supposed to get about 18 inches by tomorrow night. Ordinarily, this would delight me to no end, and quite honestly, it does. But my mom is visiting, and it limits our ability to do much of anything fun. So we sit, and I work, and we're watching The View, and I'm laughing hysterically about how angry the ladies are getting about the thought of Howard Stern taking over for Simon on American Idol. It's causing some serious belly-laughing, which helps on a snow day.

So today, and most likely tomorrow, I will cook, and eat, and drink tea, and maybe have a beer or two. In approximately 1 hour, I will start cooking the chili with the Venison sausage given to us by good friends. I will eagerly use dried beans instead of canned, because, well, I actually have time. I will move from couch to kitchen with ease and excitement, tasting and testing. And 6 or so hours later, we will eat it, and it will (hopefully) rock.

I will work, with laptop on lap (never a product so aptly named) and I will half-listen to whatever is on the television that mom is watching.

But for most of the day, I'll look out the window at a sea of sparkly white, and smile. Because it's days like this that make me so excited that we live here, and as soon as the snow stops and becomes a nuisance and turns brown and muddy and icky, I won't love it as much. But today...today it's remarkable.

Any snow day cures from the peanut gallery? What do YOU do on snowy days when leaving the house is the worst idea ever?