It's snowing here. Pretty hard.
I thought I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye. My curtains are a little screwed up right now, so I thought maybe I was seeing some reflected police lights.
Nope, that was lightning, I discovered a few moments later when the beautiful roll of distant thunder hit.
Thundersnow! I've never experienced thundersnow before. I might have to go see if I can photograph some of it, only none of my cameras are waterproof or inexpensive.
Today's thing is based on yesterday's list. I'm not sure I'm pleased with today's written work, honestly. I was trying to combine my feelings on two events into one idea, based on inspiration on what I could write using the word list I had. I don't think it came together well. Perhaps those two, though inspiring many of the same feelings, are not enough alike to distill down into one short poem. Even so, here it is. Again, I edited it as I wrote it, but it's the effective first draft.
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As cars slip on the road below I consider cold.
Cold weather is one thing.
I can handle it.
But as much as I tell myself,
“It’s over”
Well, I’m not sure I like the feeling of
Cold Comfort.
I thought I had air-tight logic.
I'd found the solution
When I was exhausted.
Fire in my veins
Could leave me a burnt-out shell
And still I don’t appreciate that
Cold Comfort.
Sometimes I let my liver
Get the upper hand
And display some anger,
Some idea, some worry
Some suit against my joy,
While my mind gnaws on itself.
At least it’s over, I suppose.
Cold Comfort.
This becomes the test, I suspect.
A cold, grey moment.
The city brightening with the chill
Every wreck a trophy
Wearing the white, the now blinding lights.
I have stronger barriers now.
Cold Comfort.
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I am seriously considering making "rearranged the kitchen" as one of my projects for thing a day. Of course, I'd have to clear this with my roommate, but I'm starting to get frustrated.
There's a ridiculous amount of wasted space in our kitchen, mostly because it's up high. This isn't an unsurmountable problem, we just need a taller stepladder. There's also just a certain amount of inefficiency in where things are located.
The problem is that I don't want to piss off or anger my roommate. The kitchen works for her, clearly, so she's not going to be inclined to change it, I suspect. That's not entirely true. I doubt she'd mind if I put things up high, though she'd laugh at me since I'm so short, but an actual rearrangement might be tricky.
I at least need to do something with my pantry space and see if I can expand into the higher areas. I'm getting pretty tired of having to wander downstairs and out to the garage if I want to make something specialized. Furthermore, I'm having a very hard time finding things I own when I'm in the garage. I wanted to make pumpkin bread today, but my loaf pans are not to be found. I strongly suspect they are in the garage, but I went looking through my kitchen boxes down their and did not find them.
I'm not much of a cook, honestly, but I do better when I have tools and counter-space. Also, when the tools I have can be found (both not in the garage, and not jumbled up in the kitchen). I really, really want to become a better cook, and I have access to a kitchen that's really wonderful. I just don't know how to bring it to it's full potential for me without stepping on her toes.
I really like my roommate, and I recognize that there's a certain amount of accepting I need to do, since I'm renting a room from her. But I am wondering if there's a polite way to ask and see if she's willing to let me or help me rearrange.
I think it’s going to be an average day for me. It’s a bit hard to see the future, even just a couple of hours away, but going from past experience, I will be unsurprised if the day goes exactly as all the others have since I moved here.
I’m caring for a puppy right now. She belongs to my roommate, or my roommate belongs to her, however you want to look at it. She came to live with us when she was about eight weeks old. I’d forgotten how tiny they are at that age. And she’s getting bigger so fast. Today was the first day that she refused to go through her little puppy gate – I guess that makes it not average after all. We have to block of parts of the house to keep an eye on her, but the blockade in the kitchen has a puppy gate that we can use to move her to different parts of the house. Coming out of her bedroom today, she gave me a look that quite clearly said, “I want to be where you’re asking me to go, but I can’t do this. I’ve tried, and I don’t fit anymore. I’m confused; I’ve always been able to do this before.” I guess she’s growing up. She doesn’t understand that, though, and it’s interesting to watch.
She loves snow, though. Which is good, because we have plenty of it right now. It’s blowing and snowing outside. Having just moved north (far north, to me), I’m surprised that I can stand outside right now and honestly say, “It’s not that bad out.” The snow is definitely piling up, and I think I shoveled snow for the first time in my entire life yesterday (and the second this morning), but it’s not terribly cold or windy. I’ve seen some gusts, though, that make me glad I’m inside. They also make me wish I had a fireplace. I hold tight to that old, romantic vision of a fireplace, a book and a cup of hot chocolate. Instead, I have a puppy, a cupppa tea, and a laptop that runs very warm. It’s not the same, but it certainly works for me.
The puppy has finally settled down to chew on her bone. I’m thankful for this, as she was driving me batty earlier with her pacing around. It’s only been recently that she’s housebroken enough that I can trust her to signal me when she wants to go outside. Unfortunately, now that it’s snowing, she wants to go outside all the time. I can’t seem to explain to her that it’s better to be inside. But as the leader of the pack, I get to make these decisions. Most of the time. I don’t want her having any accidents, of course.
And, of course, as I’m typing the above, she gets up and starts pacing around again. I know she doesn’t need to pee, she just did. She just wants more space to roam. I can’t blame her for that, I always want more space. But she isn’t so well mannered yet that she can have the run of the house. I tried giving her more freedom a few days ago, and while she had no accidents, she did manage to start on the destruction of one of our welcome mats. That was the end of the extra freedom. As she grows up, she can have more. For right now, though, if I let her have the space she wants, I think she’d either go for the mat again, or try to eat my roommate’s dying mint plants.
She certainly has a thing for plants. My roommate had to move two of our outdoor potted plants because the puppy would run by them and grab and eat a hunk every time she went outside. Of course, this was complicated by the fact that both pots were frozen to the ground. We had to wait for a warm snap to get them moved, and we spent a great deal of the interim shouting, “No!”
The problem is that this puppy is one of the most food motivated puppies I’ve ever met, and given how food motivated most puppies are, that’s saying something. We can get her to do almost anything for food, but she also comes to expect it. And we couldn’t always prevent her from swallowing a hunk of plant, so she was being rewarded every time she stole a piece, despite our attempts to make it undesirable. I’m glad the warm snap came, but I’m concerned we’re not finding a way to make her leave plants alone. Perhaps when it’s not icy out we can move the plants back, and take her out leashed and on a corrective collar. A few quick leash pops, and I think we’ll get it through to her. She’s very sweet, mellow, and eager to please (even without food), so I expect we’ll find a way to communicate with her. It’s just a matter now of getting her to want to please us more than she wants food. With this puppy, that might be a challenge, but at least she does have an innate desire to please. I’ve met puppies that don’t, and it’s much more difficult.
Well, she went pacing around again, and when I finally let her outside, I watched the window panes. I’ve never before lived in a place where frost builds up on the windows. I feel as if I understand some of my English class readings better now. Somehow, I find that frost cozy looking – perhaps because it’s not something I used to ever have. Watching it all slowly melt, though, was incredibly fascinating as well. The little rivulets of water streaming around, slipping this way and that, until meeting up with another droplet, and suddenly speeding up, until so many have joined together that they are careening for the ground. It’s nifty to watch, but not so nifty to consider the consequences of all that ice building up right behind my back door. I’ll just have to make sure that I keep shoveling as needed. I’m not as good at is as my roommate, but I think my efforts help.
This work has been both longer and more “stream of consciousness” than I expected it to be. I hope when I put it up for review by random strangers on the Internet, it won’t be too panned for those qualities. On the other hand, it may simply depend on the first comment it gets. There’s occasionally a herd mentality on the ‘net, and it can result in everyone saying roughly the same thing. In effect, if one person says, “Whoa, this is good”, than the work is deemed good – whether it deserves it or not. Same for, “Whoa, this is crap.”
Of course, the most likely thing is that it will garner no comments at all. The other aspect of that herd mentality is that we all want to put something up, and we all want feedback (though some of us only want it if it’s positive), but then there’s too much to take in. And we rarely take the time to scout out other works. Thing-a-day should help with that, by bringing together a great different number of creative thoughts and works in one space, but even that is so large that it is hard to take it all in. I know that before I sat down to do my “thing”, I read through much of the current front page, but I wasn’t mentally able to go on to everything else that was posted.
I guess it’s just another sign that information, in whatever form, is flowing at us far faster than we can process it these days. I wonder what that means for us, and where we will take it.
One of my thoughts for thing a day is that I'd like to make food out of as many of those old "church cookbook" type of cookbooks I can get my hands on. Failing that, something that is at least reasonably obscure. I don't actually have all that many of the "church cookbooks", but I have a couple, and I have some obscure cookbooks.
So, for the moment, I've been looking through the Greater Albuquerque Family Child Care Association's cookbook, My roommate's Aunt J's cookbook, my recipe card book, the Red chile Bible, the Green Chile Bible, Virginia Bed & Breakfast Cookbook (probably the lease obscure of the obscure), and the Pie Town, New Mexico Cookbook.
Long ago, and far away, say about July across the country, I had more peaches than I could shake a stick at. And I decided to freeze some of them, so I could make peach pie in December, when I knew my friends and I would be craving something different. Little did I know that I'd be moving in December. So now thing a day is coming up, and I still have frozen peaches (hey, I was moving in the winter, it was easy to move frozen foods!). I also have a cookbook from Pie Town, New Mexico, and I know their pie rules. (I went to the most recent Pie Festival. The pie ruled so much they ran out of pie. Mmm.... pie....)
If you, like me, see the wonderousness that could be possible from this combination of items, I bet you're just drooling right now. I've found a good pie crust recipe, though I may need some pie stones. What I haven't found is a good looking peach pie recipe. I know they're in here. I had peach pie at the pie festival. It was tasty.
I bet you, like me, are saying, "Go to the index, woman! Peach Pie awaits! PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Problem: I went to the index. It's in page number order. The GAFCCA cookbook is in aphabetical order by recipe name rather than major ingredient(s), but that's at least 90% functional. This index? Not so useful. I can't just look up peach pie and have three to five fabulous recipes for peach pie.
Woe is me. Now I have to look through the whole cookbook. The whole Pie Town pie cookbook. Clearly, my life is tragic.
As my roommate was flipping through the OnDemand channels today, she settled (briefly) on a movie called, "The Weight of Water." It looked interesting, but I wasn't really able to sit and watch. I'd like to catch it at some other point though. There was an actress in it who may have been Elizabeth Hurley, or may have just looked like her out of the corner of my eye. I didn't recognize or think I recognized anyone else.
One of the things about doing “Morning Pages”, as suggested by my neighbor Artgeek, is that it strongly urges you to get away from the chaos of the house and take a moment to write three pages worth of stuff down. The stuff is fairly unimportant (one link she gave me said it was even permissible to write, “I don’t know what to write” over and over for three pages), but the process matters. The idea is that it will help you clear your head and unleash your creativity.
I’m reading a lot about that right now, as I embark on reading, “Getting Things Done”, by David Allen. He also has suggestions on how to clear the head and allow yourself to be creative, whatever your endeavor. However, I find his book starkly intimidating. It’s a puzzle to me, and while some of what he says makes a bucket full of sense, much of it feels reminiscent of reading a foreign text. Sometimes I think my brain is hard-wired for disorganization, no matter how frustrating I find it. Hell, looking at my little room right now, I really wonder about that! Looks like a tornado hit it, but by the end of tomorrow it will be completely tidy. There should be a way to keep it looking like that all the time, but I haven’t managed it. Nevertheless, it is my ongoing ambition to try! In previous incarnations of my life, a half-hour dedicated to tidying my space might merely have resulted in a small dent. Tomorrow, it’ll look nearly sparkling. I call that progress.
Back to the subject at hand – “unleashing creativity”. When I was in Kenya, I loved mornings. It took about a week, maybe two, to get into a rhythm of waking with the sun at 5:30am (and my roommates loathed me for it, despite the fact that they could, and did, sleep through anything). However, the returns were worth it. Trillions of times over. I was the only student consistently up at that time, possibly the only person, and usually I was even up before the cook crew (a rotating group of students, and my original motivation to get up that early). I wrote so much more while I was there, and truly developed my interest in photography.
How much of that was just the fact that I was on a study abroad to Kenya will remain forever a mystery, but the truth is that I am certain a significant amount of it was also the rhythm of waking with the sun and having all of camp to myself. I allowed myself more silliness, for no one could see. I allowed myself more writing space, because I wanted to miss nothing. And if I wanted to take a picture of that millipede, by god, I could. (It was huge. Totally awesome, and I don’t care how many people question my sanity for photographing it.)
I found it amusing, though, because I am a nightowl, through and through. Here in the States, it’s not at all unusual for me to be up until 2am or later. I pay for it the next day, but it’s still very much an inclination for me. Some of it is that I can’t wake with the sun consistently, as I did in Kenya. A dawn simulator has helped tremendously, and I recommend it to everyone.
My night habits have only increased, though, since moving to my latest destination. I now live with a wonderful roommate, her cat and her puppy. Unlike my roommates in Kenya, I am not as prone to sleeping through anything. In the middle of the night, I can sleep through some things, but not everything. As the morning inches in, though, it becomes tougher and tougher. And if there’s one thing I cannot sleep through, it’s an alarm. Even if it’s on the other side of a wall. Especially then, actually, since I can’t turn the damn thing off.
So I’ve found that those moments of peace come for me these days, at the end of the day. In some ways, I guess they always have. I’ve enjoyed mornings when I’ve felt able to truly wake up for them, but it is difficult for me in my NorthWestern quarter of the globe. True dark to fall asleep to is all but impossible (especially where I am now), and as the seasons change, so does sunrise. Mornings are just as much a struggle as they ever were before Kenya.
Furthermore, in my current house, there’s no way to escape the chaos first thing. Even were I to wake up earlier (which is quite questionable, given my predilections), I don’t think I could get as much done before the obnoxious 6am alarm that is my roommate’s first (of many) wake up sounds. That thing goes off forever. And, eventually, the puppy wakes up. And then it’s attempts to get her to pee and eat and behave. Sometimes it feels like I’m hiding in my room! Even lying in bed, there is no escape. I have an extreme desire to jump out of bed and fix whatever that obnoxious noise is, or to help my roommate with whatever dog training thing she’s got going on.
Combine all of this with a wonder-woman on the East Coast who tends to be a nightowl herself, and the fact that all of my friends are an hour or more behind me…
Well, nights are just my time. I, at this point, journal in the mornings and at night, most of the time. The night journal is not always long hand, the morning journal is. I haven’t figured it all out. I want to get up and pee before doing morning pages, but it feels like I’m available for the world the moment I open my door. It’s hard to make a 15 week old puppy understand that I’m not around when I’m standing right there!
I tried this morning, after having read about morning pages last night, to actually have my wake up. Pee, brush my teeth, make some tea. From the links Artgeek gave me, this was acceptable. Except, it really did toss me right in the middle of it all. Oddly, though, I wonder if it was more like what the morning pages were supposed to be. Seemed somewhat like what the “collection” phase of “Getting Things Done”. It was much more scattered and like notes to myself than I feel previous entries were. I don’t much go back and reread old journal entries, so I can’t swear to that, but it’s a feeling. I was spacey enough that when I went to get dressed, I managed to pull on clean underwear, socks and pants, but then wandered out to the kitchen in my night shirt. And didn’t even realize it until about halfway through morning pages/dealing with insanity. So, I wasn’t entirely clear headed.
The nice thing about the room being messy though, is that there are a lot of books out. Since I’ve felt so long like I’ve lost my direction as a reader, having 12 books out and about feels sort of homey. I’m only in the middle of six of them. Though I think I’m not going to finish number six. And I may return number five. Number seven, though, goes with number four, and number two is a book on writing. Number one is GTD, and number three is a nice fantasy novel I’m looking forward to and I promised a friend I’d read for her experiment on me. Number eight is the next book in that series, so will be tucked away soon. Number nine was one I thought I’d read snippets of this evening (was a toss-up between that and the writing book), so will also be put away soon. Number ten is a book on local foods, also soon to be tucked away. Eleven is a second book on writing I just got, and twelve is a book I just finished that was both a light-hearted read and a study for working on my own book in that genre.
Feels like home.
Post Script: After shutting down the computer, and using this as the evening’s journaling exercise, I went and put away about four of those books.
I used to keep a tape recorder by my bed, until it felt like my creativity was mostly dried up. It got used once in a blue moon, most of the time, but every now and then there would be a streak of babblings. I lost it in one of the more recent moves.
The thing is that bedtime has always been a stupidly creative time for me. I lie down in bed, turn the lights out, and toss and turn trying to fall asleep. At that point, my brain goes into hyperspeed, and sometimes inspiration comes tumbling out. It frustrates me because I can't hold onto any tired inspirations through sleeping, but if I recorded all of them, I'd take forever to get to sleep. And I'd be tired the next day. So, usually, I'd let them go.
The tape recorder was for making a recording of one or more wild dreams I'd wake up from. They always seemed to be a good basis for a story or two. I still have writings in the works based on dreams from long ago. Too bad one of my hard drives failed with no backup, and the original of one of them is lost to time. Luckily, I had worked with the idea enough that it's taken on a life of it's own, and it's not without some record.
Last night, I would have really liked to have had my recorder. The first time the lights went out and I was inspired to record poetry, I gamely turned the bedside light up a bit, and wrote it down. It took a much longer time than I had wanted it to. The second time, though, I was exhausted and very close to hoping I'd just remember this morning. Eventually, I caved into myself and wrote it down too. I have paranoia that the first will be written off as angsty or high drama, and the second will be considered just stupid. I'm okay with the second being silly, because it's certainly not deeper or more meaningful. But I don't want dumb. However, no matter how they are regarded, I'm going to toss them up here for now. In the order I wrote them last night.
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Hindsight is 20/20
I look back on that last night
I remember it all
The people
The feelings
My memory is crystal clear
And ohso foggy
I had my feelings
Conflictions
Others swirled around
Easy to get
Opaque
New information has come to light
And now the last night
It looks so different
I scream, "I wish I knew this then!"
I bellow, "No, I don't!"
All is quiet outside
It's easy to believe things
Would be so different
So perfect
My new life a factory direct
Picture perfect jigsaw
All done up for the frame
There are so many reasons to believe
And so many things it's easy to discard
It's so easy
To use hindsight
And new info
To say I was wrong
Fuck Hindsight
I stand by my decision
It is mine and hindsight
Cannot have it
The consequenses that are so easy to discard now
Would have raged
A reign of terror on my life
Self inflicted
Yes, I do wish that lovely fantasy world I see
In Hindsight
Could be real
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
I would ride.
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Poetry slam?
I don't have the attention span.
Tried one once,
Felt a dunce.
Got my scores,
Walked out with an award!
Tried to replicate that feat,
Got handed my teeth.
Considered Cockney rhyming slang,
Think that'd go over a bang.
Alas, I'm not that clever.
So I never
Participate
In a poetry slam.
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That is all. Welcome to my midnight ramblings.
Never Let Me Go
The Time Traveler's Wife
Montana Sky
Angels Fall
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