One of those days

I'm having one of those days where I feel pulled in a zillion directions.  I hate this feeling.  What do I want, you ask?

1)  Sunlight.  Although it isn't sunny today, I am noticing the light.  I don't know if it is considered a wavelength?--but the strength of the light.  It isn't as weak as it is during the winter.  We're on the cusp of the spring thaw.  The sun is also coming up earlier.

2)  Moon.  Full.  Enough said.

3)  Outside.  I want to go for a walk but I have a million things to do that require my attention.  Also, it is muddy slush with ice patches on the road.  Still not the greatest walking conditions.

4)  Grading.  Ok.  Well I don't really feel pulled to do this except the deadline is tonight for grades and I should just suck it up and finish.  I suppose complaining takes more time than actually doing...

5)  Writing.  I just put together another piece of my puzzle yesterday and now I'm wanting to write but I won't until I get this stupid grading done.  I do enjoy death scenes.  Does that make me perverse?

6)  Reading.  I'm sucked into Patrick Rothfuss' book The Name of the Wind.  I am enjoying the voice and the structure of the story.


Moon Report:  100% of full.  Full moon.
Outside:  Soggy snow and mud.

Lazy reading

I think my brain is atrophied.  I have taken to using audio books to supply my craving for literature (or what passes for it).  That way I can listen to the book while doing other things...like grading papers or surfing the web or knitting.  I could pretend that I was multi-tasking, but that really isn't it.  I'm just lazy.

Currently I am listening to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke.  I couldn't wade through the book in written form--I didn't have the patience and my mind kept wandering.  However, I like listening to it on CD.  I can easily follow the story.  I can't do much for "multi-tasking" while listening because it is not unlike reading Dickens or Melville.  The most I can do is knit...but maybe my shawl will be done by the time I finish the book--26 discs!

The next books in my audio cue are The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk.

I am working on a variation of the Eye of Partridge Shawl.  I am working it in a worsted weight yarn because, let's face it, I want something snuggly when I curl up.  The yarn is nothing fancy--a blue/cream/browns variegated acrylic called Retro-Modern Ombre from I Love This Yarn! [Hobby Lobby].  The stitch really helps avoid pooling and makes a wonderful texture.

Because the original pattern is a really tight V shape, I decided to modify the pattern to widen the V.  I didn't want a shawl to end up dragging around like Morticia Addams' dress just to make the width as long as I like it.  So I am adding additional yarn overs--I keep changing my mind about the pattern so I have ripped everything out four times at last count...

Ok, as I am writing this, the system snow promised to us started to fall.  We're supposed to get 2-4 inches of system snow before the lake effect snow starts to kick in.  But right now, although it is coming down steadily, it is that wispy micro snow that just seems to make the roads slick and icy.  It will have to get thicker and heavier if it wants to do more than annoy people...

Moon Report:  48% of full.  Just shy of the quarter moon.

Outside the Window:  Snow.  About 24 degrees (coldish).  Overcast.

A Road Map

Sometimes it is easier to find your way when you already know where you are going.  These questions are from Julia Cameron's book The Vein of Gold on pages 105-106.  I think they are useful when I need a reminder about what things move and motivate me.  Think of them as a useful compass...


1.  Name five favorite films.
2.  Name your favorite childhood book.
3.  Name three characters you loved.
4.  Name three characters you would love to play.
5.  Name three topics you think about.
6.  Name three topics you read about.
7.  What was your childhood book about?
8.  What are your movies about?
9.  Do your movies and books have anything in common?
10.  Do your characters, your reading, and your thinking connect up somehow with your movies and your childhood book?


Other helpful sites
The Happiness Project Toolbox
Authentic Happiness
The Last Lecture of Randy Pausch


Moon Report:  95% of full.  Waning gibbous.
Outside the Window:  Cold.  Partly cloudy complete with muted snow glare.

The Lists

We all have our lists of things to do.  These are a few of mine...


Books


1.  The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
2.  Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
3.  Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
4.  Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
5.  The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski  
6.  The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt
7.  The Emperor of Scent by Chandler Burr


Music


1.  Hyms to the Darkness by Jeff Zentner
2.  Chasing Locusts by Strawfoot
3.  Furr by Blitzen Trapper
4.  Ghost Dance by The Pine Hill Haints
5.  Regard the End by Willard Grant Conspiracy
6.  Miss Halfway by Anya Marina
7.  Elysium for the Brave by Azam Ali


Vegetables


1.  Beans:  Mayflower, Good Mother Stallard, Lazy Housewife
2.  Carrots:  Dragon, St. Valery
3.  Lettuce:  Cracoviensis, Amish Deer Tongue, Tango
4.  Hot Peppers:  Black Hungarian, Rooster Spur
5.  Sweet Pepper:  Chervena Chushka, Napoleon Sweet
6.  Peas:  Amish Snap
7.  Tomatoes:  Crnkovic Yugoslavian, Black Krim


I'm still debating whether I want to tangle with squash vines and cucumbers.  Not that I don't love both, but they take up soooooooo much space.


Heirloom Seed Banks:  Seed Saver's Exchange, Baker Creek Seeds, Heirloom Seeds


Moon Report:  100% of full.  Full Moon.  
Outside the Window:  Wet snow.  Coldish.  Overcast.

Ketchup

Music

I am rediscovering how much I appreciate music. I now have a taste for bands that aren't the highly polished glam turned out for top 40 or MTV. Maybe I appreciate the truly creative? Anyway...here are a few on my playlists at the moment.

Rootsy Americana: Pine Hill Haints, Mischief Brew, Slim Cessna's Auto Club, Strawfoot, and Willard Grant Conspiracy, Drag the River
Songwriters: Annie Humphrey, Jackie Greene, Jeff Zentner, Ben Weaver
Miscellany: Stellamara, Azam Ali, Arcana


Books

Castle: A Novel by J. Robert Lennon

Very much a psychological drama, but without much in the way of feeling. It left me a little cold and without a satisfactory reason for having completed reading it.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

A very interesting coming-of-age novel that doesn't provide easy answers. There is no magical solution to actually living and surviving your choices.


I'm such a slacker reader!


Other Stuff

There's been things. There's been stuff. We'll just leave it at that.


Moon: Waning Gibbous. 88% of full.

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!

Novel #1 March (somewhat unexpected)

MOON REPORT: waxing crescent. 7% full (ish. I just glanced.)


I spent today in rare luxury: I read a book cover to cover! Barring the interruptions by the hyper-barking dogs, I flumped all over the house with a book in my hand and forgot about the world. The book: The Elementals by Morgan Llewellyn. First published in 1993, it is now out of print--although you can find several used copies from Amazon.

I don't remember ever having read this book until today--but somehow I must have done because as I read along I seemed to know where the stories were headed. Not like "predictable" plot kinds of knowing, but like I had dreamed them. So, unless I am somehow gleaning novels from the ether without having read them, I think I must have read this book a long time ago.

I have seen some reviews for this book say it was fabulous and others say skip the last two stories. I'll just say it is an easy afternoon read. Although I agree the first two stories (water, fire) were stronger than the last two (earth, air), I think the driving ideas behind them are worth the read.

I'd call these stories character driven. Though sometimes I feel jerked around by the POV--it should be third person limited but the POV shifts to other characters in a sporadic and unnecessary manner making the omnicient POV impossible. Someone may comment and tell me I've got the terms backwards or wrong or whatever so I'll make it simple: it should read like Harry Potter (being in the protagonist POV at all times). The internal dialog from several characters in each story jars a reader out of the harmony of the narrative. I wish each story would have stuck to the protagonist POV without trying to encompass the whole.

Each story could have been (and most likely should have been) explored in a full novel rather than as a quarter piece. It would also have allowed a full exploration of the element in a smooth and polished way rather than making a reader feel bludgeoned by the implications. The first story especially should have been given free reign to see where it could have taken the writer (and us as readers).

All in all: good lazy afternoon. Read on!

booking

MOON REPORT: waning crescent. 25% full.


Ok. I need to start making better headway into my piles of unread books...they've started to take over. My book buying is on temporary hiatus until such time as my reading pile has been consumed. My new goal is three new books for March.

I thought about giving these three a go:


Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon
Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

If I read three books a month I should be done with my stacks before Christmas! Keep your fingers crossed...

thick as pea soup

Moon: waning crescent. 4% full.

You know, I have always heard (and used) the phrase "thick as pea soup". However, I should say I am completely ignorant of pea soup in general--never had the stuff. Is it chowdery and filled with thickeners like corn starch and heavy creams? Is it just overloaded with peas and possibly ham chunks? These are things about which I am unaware.

I should mention I am NOT the cook in the family. (But I do make killer oatmeal rasin cookies!)

Back to the pea soup: we are surrounded with thick fog. It is 10:30ish and about 45 degrees out--and we've got about six inches of snow on the ground. Warm air+cold ground=uber fog. I couldn't even see ten feet in front of my car on the back roads...it wasn't much better in streetlamped areas either.

I adore fog (as long as I don't have to drive in it). It curls and wheedles around objects playing peekaboo with us. It is especially lovely with the emptiness of it--the deadness of sound, the isolation, the creep factor. Who could resist?

I remember one of the first Stephen King stories I read was about fog--I don't remember much except people being stuck in a grocery store(?) and needing to get home through very scary unseen monsters. I also remember Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon--and how certain people could become lost from Glastonbury and stumble through the mists and end up in Avalon. At thirteen, those story details make their way into the psyche--and now when fog is so thick you can't see your own hand I think about ghosts and monsters and wonder how lost I could get.

So tonight is a night to be insulated with one's own thoughts, one's own ghosts. It is a good night for journaling. It is a good night for blankets and a good book. It is a good time for silence and listening to all the sounds we never pay attention to during our busy lives. Fog slows everything down--take advantage of it.

feeling a bit nostalgic

I've run across a few written pieces of late that have made me yearn for that time when life was so much simpler: childhood. No bills. No meetings. No responsibilites.

I ran across this mental_floss blog homage about Mr. Rogers by Mangesh. I loved growing up with Mr. Rogers and travelling on the trolley to the Land of Make Believe. I adored the Platypus family, Lady Elaine, and the Owl. How could you hate someone who taught you fun things and actually educated you without acting like a "teacher"? Anyway, the blog post is sweet and endearing.

I also ran across a blog which turned me over to this multi-part article from the UK paper, The Telegraph, "100 Books Every Child Should Read." Although I have read many on the list, I can't agree that they are definitive--no list ever is. However, it is a place to start for families who just don't read that much.

I read all the time growing up--and I've got all the books to prove it. I have books in my bed, stacked on the night stands, books in the kitchen island, downstairs, upstairs, in the garage and in the attic. I don't think I could live without them--in practice, that may not be true, but it feels true. I remember reading a small piece in Poets & Writers magazine a while back about a writer who evacuated New Orleans before Katrina hit. And when she went back, all her books were destroyed--quite a few of which had been signed by authors. It made my heart ache.