At first, the Feeley family turned to board games - such a cozy, Norman Rockwell portrait of a snowed-in family. Mom and Dad vs. the girls, moving the pieces of Life, Sorry and Connect Four as snowflakes whirled outside their Parkton home.
Eventually gamed out, they beeped and buzzed their way through electronic toys, popped in one movie after another, and then fidgeted in front of regular TV. Lauren, 11, and Shannon, 8, even resorted to books before someone started touching someone's stuff and someone went into someone's room, and pretty soon Mom had to institute the dread "No Touch Rule."
After nearly a full week inside, the Feeley family and so many others across Maryland are realizing that whatever sweet nostalgia a snow day carries melts away after the first two or three of them. Out of food, creativity, fresh air and patience, they just want out. Out!
The diagnosis? A raging, regional outbreak of cabin fever.
"We've done everything we could do," Karen Feeley said Thursday, desperately hoping the family could escape by today for a ski trip. "As soon as that plow comes, the car is loaded and we're gone."
Thursday morning the sun was shining, melting at least a few flakes from the impossible piles.
People popped open their front doors and surveyed the damage. They hauled out shovels. They pulled on boots to walk around the neighborhood, going nowhere in particular but, most certainly, going somewhere.
A red-cheeked Bonnie Frost ambled out of Patterson Park, camera slung around her neck. She'd been trekking through the drifts, shooting pictures of the fairy-tale scene - the untouched snow with tiny ice particles that seemed to glitter like sequins, and the trees casting long shadows onto the otherworldly terrain.
Frost has been taking a lot of pictures the past few days. She shoots them and loads them onto Facebook, then shoots more. Essentially homebound for days with her husband and four kids, she and her family have done everything they could do that didn't involve a car.
As she puts it: "We're hanging around our block."
They walked to Safeway. They built snow forts. They did so much tobogganing and sledding, it's a wonder the hill near the Pagoda wasn't snowbald.
In the park, Frost and the kids found pieces of a broken blue plastic sled and made a game out of who could slide on the smallest fragment.
"We did that for a long, long time," she says with a sigh. "But it was fun."
Elizabeth Sinclair and Brian White were shuffling carefully through the slush and ice along Eastern Avenue. They were making their way home to Canton after a trip to Royal Farms, which was about the most exciting thing they'd done in days.
White popped open his bag, revealing orange juice and snack cakes. Not exactly fundamentals, but he just wanted something to do.
In Ellicott City, Terry Chiu's three kids helped her shovel and filled the house with music. Her oldest, Anthony, who's almost 14, practiced saxophone till his lips hurt, and got together with his school buddies to work on a big world history class project.
In Odenton, Sandy Vogel's kids lost themselves in video games and library books and then dug a snow tunnel to reach their friend next door.
In Cooksville, Chaun Hightower's 10- and 11-year-old boys crafted a basketball hoop with old game boxes and practiced their dunks.
Russ Hinshaw's kids have been playing Xbox, pretending to be Eskimos in igloos and munching on pizza. Living across the street from a Glen Burnie mall, they were also able to make it to the movies.
"Everybody is holding up well," Hinshaw says. "It gets crazier and crazier in the house after a couple of days. So far ... nobody's too crazy."
Parents who had kids with energy to burn were in luck if they had four-wheel-drive and lived close to Pump It Up, an indoor play area and guaranteed cabin-fever cure in Owings Mills. Instead of pinging off the walls at home, kids could fling themselves onto inflatable slides, bounce houses and obstacle courses.
On Tuesday alone, 150 customers were at the door, said owner Casey Baynes.
"The crowds have been crazy but fun," she said. On Tuesday, "we provided pizza and drinks for the kids and parents, too, so they didn't have to go out and get lunch."
Jamie Mason and her husband, Paul Stagg, tried to rustle up some more grown-up entertainment - the kind you can uncork with friends.
After working from their Canton home for days, Mason ensconced upstairs while her husband pecked away on his laptop on the first floor, they invited their neighbors over Wednesday for an impromptu "Scallops and Scrabble" night.
The couple made sesame-crusted scallops, poured a lot of wine and stayed up late. Their dentist friends scored big for the word "veneers."
Thursday night the two were off to the dentists' home for steak and Pictionary.
"I love my home, so I can easily get into nesting mode," Mason says. "I mean, I'd rather be in here than out there."
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