DIANE MAKAR MURPHY To cure cabin fever, make the most of your time

I have just finished reading Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables." That is to say, I just finished off 502 5-by-7-inch pages of type with no pictures.
It is now, officially, the coldest, most house-bound winter in recent memory.
My dog concurs. As I write this, it has been four days since he has been allowed to do anything more than his "business" on our severely abbreviated walks.
I usually take Zeke on one- to two-mile sojourns through the neighborhood two or three times a day. Since the thermometer mounted to the front of our house cracked in half and fell into a pile of ice on the frozen ground outside the window, Zeke is now led to the curb and immediately back, preceded by human groaning.
"It's your turn."
"No, it's your turn."
"My turn? I took him this morning!"
"I took him this afternoon."
And then, when he finally finds a master, accompanied by human cheering: "That's a good spot, Zeke. Go! Go! Zeke. Go! Go!"
(Thank heaven no one helps ME to the bathroom like that.)
Zeke is also encouraged, on these icy days when nose hairs crinkle, to take himself to the bathroom. He is released into our fenced back yard with this shouted instruction, "Go in the corner!" When he started returning with a limp, because little bullets of ice were clinging between his toes, we took to putting his little red boots on him and shuffled him out all the same.
Going shopping
On occasion, if Zeke seems to be getting listless, like his owners, we stick him in the car, drive him to Petsmart, and pretend to shop. He likes to smell everything, and we like to put Harley Davidson dog hats on him. On one such trip, and to my shocked dismay, he lifted his leg on a storage box. Don't tell me that's not fun for Zeke.
When employees notice we have done a third lap of the store, we buy a $1.99 chewy bone and leave. It's not Mill Creek Park, but it beats frostbite ... (Did I mention our thermometer froze to death?)
Zeke isn't the only one combating cabin fever, though.
I am, too.
It's a startling revelation to go to the library and realize you have seen all the videos and DVDs they have. OK, not really ALL of them, but certainly three or four hundred of the most popular. (Sometimes I stand and count the titles I've seen and imagine how many hours of college I could have acquired in the same amount of time. Dr. Murphy! Dr. Murphy, you're wanted in the operating room!)
Cleaning, baking
What's more, the house is clean. Now, I'm not talking about neat here because we generally do that. I'm talking about clean. Yesterday, I mopped the floors that would shortly be patterned with dog prints anyway. And I didn't care. It seemed like a terrific thing to do since it was 8 degrees outside.
I also baked a cake from scratch -- the first cake I have ever baked without the help of Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker. I took a lot of time with it. I placed canned cherries between the layers and made a cocoa icing to drizzle on top. It was gorgeous. (It tasted awful, but that's not the point I'm making here. I had time for it! Maybe next winter I'll have time for cooking lessons.)
Now, the piano is starting to call to me, and I've actually been doing yoga on a daily basis. And I'm starting to think, "cabin fever -- maybe this is a good thing, after all."
I love the warm weather, and I love the freedom it gives you to walk or cycle places. I love taking the dog on long excursions through the neighborhood, and I like sitting in the sunshine. And I like lying in the sun with a good trashy summertime book.
Summer reads are romance novels or crime thrillers, but the winter is for classics. And cold, cabin-bound winters, are for reading big, thick classics and lots of things you wouldn't do otherwise
Les Miserables? Not really.
murphy@vindy.com