break your neck for some substance
this is temporary sanity, an exercise in vanity
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Once again, Natalie was back at her favorite place to spend her down time - Lake Michigan. However, she wasn't sitting in her favorite place. Today was so bitter that the usual group of rocks that she sat on was too cold for her, so the woman chose a nearby bench instead. Sure, it probably wasn't too much warmer, but it wasn't quite as cold as the rocks either. It didn't really matter which was colder though, because when Natalie moved her eyes away from the book she held in her lap and down to the snow covering the ground around her boots she figured it was about that time of year when she should start staying home for her "down time." It was getting too chilly to sit on a bench for an hour or two reading. She frowned a little to herself and shuffled her feet, listening to the crunching snow beneath her feet. She didn't dislike snow at all, it was beautiful, but Natalie hated the cold.

The girl turned back to her book, finding it hard to focus on it now that she was aware of the weather. It was easy when she had first sat down and hadn't thought about it before she started reading, but now her thoughts were distracted. By the time she made it to the bottom of a page, Natalie realized that she did not remember anything that she had just read and had to go back up to the top again and start over. That was usually a sign that it was time to pack up and leave, but she didn't want to stop in the middle of a chapter! Call it OCD if you want but that was one thing Miss Kovac couldn't make herself do. It was a pain when she read Gulliver's Travels, because before she started she didn't realize that the novel wasn't separated into chapters, but rather into books. That meant that she had had a whole lot of reading to do before she could set it down. It was worth it though, she supposed.

Trying once more to become reinvolved in her book, Natalie was instead distracted by the sound of crunching snow beneath a runner's feet. She didn't look up, but began wondering in the back of her mind why someone would go out for a run at this time of year. Probably for the same reason she would come out and read a book at this time of year, huh? While she pondered that thought, the runner came and sat down on the other side of the bench. Natalie quietly grabbed onto her purse beside her and pulled it closer, almost instinctively. Still, she did not look at him, she didn't want to. The girl was not a very social person, and had a very hard time around people she didn't know. Most of the time she covered up her insecurity by becoming a snot. No matter how much she hated it, she couldn't help it.