Thursday afternoon.

Last night I went sledding. It was equally unplanned, random, and wonderful.

My Wednesday night class gets out late, usually between eight-thirty and nine, and I went to the building's library to check my e-mail before heading back to the house. To get to the bus stop I crossed over a large lawn below a steep incline - Pittsburgh's prone to those - and on the way, stopped to look at a broken shelter next to a tree. There was a large piece of metal next to it, and I realized that'd been the tiny shelter's roof.

I didn't want to go back to the house yet, so I went up the hill and slid down on my coat. At the bottom, I looked back at the roof, up the hill, back at the roof, and then realized I needed to dump my bag, trudge up the hill, and sled down on the metal.

Getting it up to the top wasn't a challenge: the snow was packed down with a hard ice crust and people'd been using the same areas for sledding before, so it even had something smoothed down for me to ride on. I set it down, kept my hands and feet inside, and pushed off. And off I was, sledding, fast and scary and free, just as good as roller-coasters, staring up at the reddish moon behind thin clouds and spinning around at the bottom and throwing my foot out to brake - and going back up to do it again.

I only did it twice. I didn't want to wear anything out or make it too ordinary. But for when I did it, just a bit, it made me so happy: knowing I could do this thing according to my ways and means.