Crazy Crap Item #24: The part where I realize this is not what I imagined my life would be

The other night, I was walking home from Chicago Women in Publishing's holiday party, and it struck me with great force: This is not what I expected my adult life to be.

Let me back up a bit.

This thought stole upon me as I walked down the middle of my street at 1opm. It had been snowing since the afternoon -- our first big snow of the season -- so there'd been precious little plowing or shoveling. Tire ruts make for the easiest way.

The first snowfall is like a holiday. Everything's bright again. Everyone is running late everywhere. Conversation is easy, even with strangers. Lawns and sidewalks are re-born as smooth expanses of white, pristine and inviting.

The wind had died down, and the flakes drifted down like manna. The street wasn't quite deserted. I passed a gang engaging in snowball warfare.

I didn't join in, but I could have. The holiday party I was returning from was ... shall we say ... well lubricated. It concluded with a wine tasting. The cold could not touch me.

So here I am, California native, wandering down the middle of a street. A marvelous fact: How did I learn it's ok to walk down the middle of the street on days like this? A car sneaks up behind me -- I can't hear it because that's the other effect of new snow, every sound is muffled -- and the driver lightly taps on the horn. I step smartly out of the way, no ill will. It's a smooth, instinctive exchange. We're sno pros.

Which makes me think: In what possible alternate reality would I ever have imagined my adult life like this. I remember imagining snippets of my adult life when I was a kid; usually just brief scenes or conversations, markers of where I might be. Often, they were set in the 1940s. Always in black and white. Which is odd.

But they never involved an adult Kay wandering through snow-clogged streets of Chicago.

And then it strikes me. I could make a snow angel. I'm tipsy enough. It's not that cold. I'm sure my lawn is smooth and inviting. And what's more, it would be the last thing I need to make my transformation into this new person I am -- one whose lived in the midwest for 15 years, whose adulthood does not involve a cast strangely reminiscient of Myrna Loy and Jimmy Stewart.

So snow angel it is. I fall straight backward onto my now glistening lawn, dimly surprised at how trusting I am off all this fluff. The snow is light; big flakes so weightless they don't even pack when they fall. I nestle in for a moment, then flap my arms and legs, the way I've seen small, bundled children do it in the movies. The snow squeaks as I push it aside. Drunk-cautiously, I raise myself up, careful to put my boots inside the boundry of the angel's skirt, and leap to the sidewalk. I don't leave any footprints.