The creeps...

Sometimes I like things that creep me out. But only when I am totally sure I may change the channel or close the book and sleep with my light on do I allow myself access to the things that go bump in the night.

I am a chicken [yes, I freely admit it.] I slept with all the lights on in my apartment for a week after I saw The Blair Witch Project. I haven't walked over a storm drain since I was 14--courtesy of the Stephen King novel It. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 4 Episode 10 "Hush" freaked me out a bit more than I would have liked--the Gentlemen...creepy!

And, now on Neil Gaiman's site I find a trailer for Coraline. Some of the trailers are cute and some are a bit eerie, but the trailer he is in begins the chilly thrills....

I'll admit I'm a Gaiman junkie...I adore his work. He makes me think in directions I would never have before considered. That impresses me.

Late last year I listened to his book tour for The Graveyard Book in which he read a different chapter at each stop. I opened a tab and let it play while futzing around on the Internet. Each chapter is a separate section (roughly 40-50 mins) so listening to a daily chapter is easy. Oh, and it just won the Newberry Medal!

Only the Literary...

Moon Report: 2% of full. waxing crescent.

Notable Passing

Today, John Updike, author of The Witches of Eastwick, died of cancer. There are some lovely pieces at NPR, BBC, and the New York Times.

Blizzard!

Moon Report: 3% of full. waning crescent.


Today is the anniversary of the 1978 blizzard that still holds the snow record here. It started late in the evening of Jan. 24 and continued until Jan. 29. The snow was recorded at 41". The snow itself probably wouldn't have been as ghastly (other than just clearing the roads) if all that snow hadn't come with tons of wind. Some drifts were 15 feet high!

I remember my dad dug a tunnel from our door to the neighbor's across the street so we could share supplies if anyone needed anything.
I remember my dad picked me up and swung me around and let me go sailing into soft snowdrifts.
I remember some houses had drifts up to the roof and the older kids would climb to the roofs with their plastic sheet sleds and slide down.
I remember my dad being home because he couldn't get to work for several days.
I remember a lot of wet mittens and soaked snowsuits and hot cocoa and soup.

The aging process has you firmly in its grasp

if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.

--Doug Larson

I don't chuck snowballs since I got hit and had a nasty bruise on my forehead--I was about ten. I do however love snow angels--which I still make on occasion.

lolcats

Ok. I just thought it was funny.

Vocab lesson on "cold"

To say it is "cold" is a mistake. Cold is somewhere near 32 degrees. Ass-cold is something near 0. However, we're in the range of -18 at almost 9am. We're also under a windchill warning because those winds rushing upon us (as a light breeze) are between -40 to -45. So when I ammended the weather yesterday to say we were approaching the 9th Circle of Hell, I came close.

But, damn, the view is picture perfect! Imagine a clear morning sky with pink yellow light hitting the trees and casting blue shadows over the snow...

According to my thesaurus (Roget's International Thesaurus, 5th ed.), the listing for non-formal epithets for "cold":

cold as a welldigger's ass

cold as a witch's tit (or kiss)

cold enough to freeze the tail/balls off a brass monkey

cold as a bastard/bitch

colder than hell (or the deuce/devil)

These are common around here during the winter. I'm sure there are more colorful ones as well. However, the regular use of "cold" as an adjective produced little in the way of good description. They were usual, commonplace. I didn't like them (as I hear them daily on the news). A few: sharp, bitter, keen, frigid, icy, nasty, chilly, cutting. Sometimes I wonder if the English language is limiting or we are just too lazy to explain ourselves properly.

*****

God bless all the poor trash collectors who have to be out today as it is trash day for many in our neighborhood. All the schools in the area are closed today--buses don't run and they don't want kids outside waiting for buses or walking to school. Heck, even my dog won't go out. [I've been on the computer about an hour this morning and I haven't even seen one car drive past.]

I know the weather is terrible when I have to bundle myself up in the same manner my mother did when I was five. It almost makes me wish I had snowpants. However, I must make due with thermal leggings under my jeans and two pairs of mittens and scarves and two hoods (one a hoodie sweatshirt and one on my coat). Then the shivering commences as I step out to shovel half the driveway before I come in to have hot cocoa and warm up. But today, I say bugger the driveway. It can stay snowy and I'm going to sit inside in a blanket and be lazy.

Cold Colder Coldest

Ah, winter. Would that heaven could save us from it...

Time for the weather report. It's cold out folks. Bonecrushing cold.

The kind of cold which will wrench the spirit out of a young

man, or forge it into steel.

--Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

Northern Exposure, Lost and Found, 1992

It is 5 degrees this morning...at 6 am. We're supposed to settle at a balmy 4 degrees for the high today with a nice breeze at 10 to 20 below. This is only because we've got the lake effect snow dumping on us. How lucky are we that an enormous body of water keeps us sheltered from the bitter winters blowing in across the Dakotas. Everyone on the other side of Lake Michigan is bitterly cold. However, once the clouds clear this afternoon we'll hit -13 degrees under a lovely starry sky.

I'm on a two hour delay this morning--woohoo! Except that it won't matter much because the temperature is what kills you...not the snow. It's so fun to walk outside and have the breath sucked right out of your lungs!



Ammended Weather Forecast: Approaching the 9th circle of hell.

Ok, sun is just beginning to set. We have had a lovely sunny afternoon with blinding whiteness blaring from every direction. If you could stay inside, it was perfect. But instead of holding, temperatures have continued to drop all day. So, tonight at 6pm it is a sweltering -8 degrees with a light wind that freezes your nose hair the moment you step outside (roughly -30 degrees).

Now the weather stations are saying we could get close to a record -22 (before wind chill is factored in).

O, Sweet Shovel

And again, I must go out and shovel the driveway. Although I don't think I will go now as it is quarter to seven and no one is yet awake. I think it is pointless to wake the neighbors with the scraping of metal on cement. We got about 8 inches of snow between Friday and yesterday late in the afternoon.

Outside, the overcast sky is holding in ambient light from nearby stores and looks like a very murky, muddy peachpink. All the snow, as a result, seems to be enhance it. It leaves the picture out my window look like a charcoal drawing, with only spare lines of rooftops and branches of trees among the deep shadow of smudgy houses. It would make an interesting thing framed, but as a normal morning it isn't what I like to see.

But it is winter...and what can I do about it?

The romance and practicality of winter

In the bleak midwinter

Frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

Water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter,

Long ago.

--Christina Rossetti

Sometimes I forget how much I adore Christina Rossetti poems. Originally I stumbled across her in a Lit Survey book--one of the works was a poem entitled Goblin Market. Not long after that I found a Dover Thrift Edition ($1.00) of an unabridged version of Goblin Market and Other Poems on a clearance table at the local bookstore.

Her work always makes me feel as if I should be curled in some hidden nook watching the world from behind leaded glass and reading. Although I have no leaded glass windows, I do have a very snowy winter Saturday before me. Knitting and listening to an audio book sounds like a great way to spend the day.

*******************

Well, at 8 am, light has finally come across to illuminate the overcast and very snowy morning. I shoveled the driveway around 7 am for the second time in 12 hours. Luckily it wasn't soooo bad this morning (meaning I had about three inches instead of six). However, since the snow continues I think it won't be another twelve hours before I must again shovel. The best news: it is a light dry snow and very easily removed.

Moon Report: 99% of full. full moon.

quick note

Moon Report: 90% full. waxing gibbous.

I love the astro-sciences. There are always cool things to discover that do well to remind us that we are just dots on the epic scale of the cosmos. Like the article I found today about stars.

There are three rules for writing the novel.

Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

--W. Somerset Maugham

My writing 1000 words per day is still ongoing. Not always am I faithful (even as a new resolution), but I do write more now than I have done in a long, long time. I like it.

Parrot love

Moon Report: 65% full. The moon is waxing gibbous today. [I secretly like to say the word gibbous.]

So the parrots are screeching like banshees in the living room because I turned on Sesame Street for them. They love the songs and all the odd noises and are doing well by imitation. However, Linus has picked up this very weird metallic twirrr and he sounds like Wall-E and I don't know where he learned it.

Linus is in love with my sister. He says "Hi, Erin" over and over even when she is not here. Then he'll say "Come give me kisses" and makes a smooching sound. He has also taken to humping Erin's arm when she is around unless we keep him very distracted.

Gabbi is singing songs of her own invention. Sometimes I can hear fragments of Led Zeppelin and "Row, row, row your boat" and "E-I-E-I-O" as well as the theme from Oklahoma. What is nice is that she yells at the dog for me and I don't even have to bother much anymore. She tells Dobby when to sit, to go lie down, to knock it off, and to go outside.

Max is being much more sociable now that he is able to run from one couch to the other without much effort. Unfortunately he is also able to stalk you for food when wheedling and flirting isn't getting the job done. And if I have anything with cheese he'll fling himself like a velociraptor without waiting to be invited. And after nineteen years, he's learning new words too.

mystery

It's almost 11:30pm and I was dead asleep. Someone knocked at the front door. Even the dog woke up and he doesn't wake up for much after ten.

However, I am now very confused because not only was there no one at the door, but the motion detection lights were not on and all the neighboring houses were also dark. There is only one possible way for someone to get to the front door without triggering motion lights and no one was there. Believe me I went to check. There weren't even giggling kids anywhere around the street--the night is cold and clear enough to be able to hear them anywhere around.

I thought it might have been a neighbor in an emergency...but no. No one was there.

Saturday...in the dark (no, it's not the 4th of July)

Terribly sorry for that sad-sack reference to "Saturday in the Park" by Chicago...it just popped into my head. I was looking out the office window at almost 7:30am on a Saturday morning and it was pitch black outside. I couldn't even see the maple tree in the front yard. Of course this could have more to do with my lack of glasses than darkness...


Moon Report: 40% of full. waxing crescent.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

--Dorothy Parker

On a Saturday! What a pity in midwinter dark that I should be up and around before 7am. Isn't there some law of Midwestern hibernation? But no. I was wide awake. So I have been snerting around on the web. Here's what I found:

1. A funny brainworm...

2. Today's Poem from the Writer's Almanac

3. My friend Melissa's blog: Whimsy. [Hiya M!]

4. My secret science addiction

That's as far as I got before I posted here. I'm sure I'll get on to Ravelry soon...but that place is a mammoth zone for eye candy. Once you're in, you lose track of space and time. I was sucked in for four hours yesterday without even realizing it.

Would you look at that...pink sunlight through all the grey gloom of cloud. Morning is here!

Lazy Friday...

Moon Report: 33% of full. waxing crescent.

I know that the language of my passion

and the language of my art are not the same thing.

--Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery

So, again I am back to writing. Not writing as blog, but writing as actual pen on paper writing. I forgot how much I loved it. I forgot how much I love the story, the characters. It has been a homecoming--scratching pen on paper and inky fingers with doodles for figuring out how things work.

It's nearing three and I have yet to eat lunch (or breakfast for that matter). My tummy is rumbling. However, I think I am going to pack it down to the local grocery store where they have an enormous salad bar. Something green and leafy is what my body is screaming for. I think I've overdone it with all the squash I've eaten lately. The green beans I had yesterday just didn't cut the craving. Every once in a while I just need a gigantor salad filled with spinach and endive and garbanzos and peppers and carrots and celery and sunflower seeds and mandarin oranges and cottage cheese. Yum. [I'll be able to get most of this out of my own garden this summer!]

*****

Although I'd heard of it before, I stumbled on to this site a few days ago and joined: Ravelry. This is a knitting/crochet community where you get to see what patterns people have developed on their own or the projects they created with found/purchased patterns. Believe me, there is TONS of inspiration and lots of cool people to meet! It does take them a few days to add people so join the queue. I think they add a set number of people at a time as to not crash their system.

Ok, so my sweater has been postponed for a bit. I found a toe-up sock tutorial on WetCanvas! by BeeBlueFern. This is a great lesson and I'm half done with my first sock...meaning I'm about at the heel. We'll see how we get on... [Sorry about slipping into a first person plural. I may have had a Queen Elizabeth I moment.]

I've been trying to work my sweater in moss stitch, but it isn't looking right. I think I am pulling my thread too tight and it isn't leaving the "seed" visible. Although better than my first attempts at a granny square (which, by the way, looked like it was chewed by weasels), it still leaves much to be desired. I'll see if loosening my stitches will ease the problem. Or maybe it will come back after being blocked? I don't know...

At the Beginning

Welcome to 2009.

May your visit be extraordinary.

*****************************

Moon Report: 24% of full. waxing crescent.

One's real life is so often the life

that one does not lead.

--Oscar Wilde

Although not earth shattering, my goals for the upcoming year will bring me great joy.

1. To write 1000+ words a day.

Although I may not always hit the word goal, it will be important to at least meet the words at the page.

2. To plan and execute a garden.

I will plant a garden this spring filled with greens, beans, squash, and other goodies. I'm even going to grow a passel of sunflowers. So, come late July and into October, I'll be sweating and canning and eating and freezing and cooking until I drop. I'll have my own grocery store by the end of it all...

3. To read through (at least part) of my "To Read" book stack.

These books have been piling up for years and I don't read as often as I should. I put a kibosh on buying new books last year and have yet to catch up. So as I read one, I'll review it and cross it off the list.

and now, enjoy...