Winter loves you. That's why it comes back every year.

This week Cleveland stayed inside while the rest of the country's winter caught up with us. I huddled inside my apartment, grateful to be working from home, watching the snow fall for days. I made a Bill Withers pandora station. I watched movies. The cats paced impatiently around me, waiting for attention. My friends came to me, and we drank. I didn't put on shoes for three days straight.

My thoughts are swiftly falling down the stairs like a runaway slinky, picking up speed. I attribute it to my general insideness. See, I like it this way. I like the slip-slideyness of the situation, my having to work a little harder to finish my sentences. It makes them more strange. The Life is the one where we have the freedom to go crazy a little, completely by ourselves, right? But I recognize the problem. I need to go outside more. Being hurt by the elements is part of living here, I would be starting the year off wrong if I didn't get a little frozen. Not having to clean my car off is sorta like being punished, if you think about it from the right angle.

This morning my friend and I got coffee and went to Edgewater, which is the best place to be on a clear day after a week of storms. The ice stalactites were formed on the breaker rocks, flash frozen on the pier like icing. It was quiet. Only a few other people stopping down there, a group of Indian boys who posed for pictures with the endless iced lake stretching behind them. A girl who jumped over the chain and walked out on the pier.

Did I tell you I like living on a lake? A lot. You do too. We all do. It keeps us here when nothing else should. It's strange and big and mysterious. It is the best thing about us, that we are lake people. There are giant fish under those frozen waves, floating back and forth, sleeping.

Out in the distance we saw an animal walking over the lake, a coyote Jesus, hunting the roosting birds. He was really far out there. We watched him for a while, because I thought for sure he would fall through the ice. He was careless, in the way that animals without moms are. He was hiking his way to Canada when we left. Lucky dog.