Quote #48 - Tennessee Williams

There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.
- Tennessee Williams

Random #70 - Great Weather

Something has been on my mind for the past few days...

I'm going to assume that most people in North America know that the eastern United States just had a huge snowstorm. From what I could tell of the news coverage, the predictions were pretty accurate. I know that my husband's relatives in the south had some prepartions to make. I also know that a could of his cousins took advantage of the snowfall and played and built snowmen with their children. 

Someone posted a picture of their jeep on Facebook, made a comment about the weather and said that they were perpared. A Canadian commented, saying that the best preparation would be snow tires. An American (presummably also from the south) replied to that comment a little jeeringly and then said that they were used to great weather.

The exchange left me thinking, what constitutes "great weather". Most would say sunny skies and warm temperatures. But there is a point where warm is too warm (at least for me). I have been to the American south in the summer. I remember looking outside and seeing empty sidewalks and parks in the middle of the day. Why? Because it was too hot to go outside. I remember looking at the temperature on the car dashboard and it saying 42° C (that's 108° F). I felt like my skin was going to burn off and I was only going from the parking lot to a building. Is that what this person meant by great weather? That's not for me. Can good weather only happen in the spring/summer? Because we had great winter day today. Mild temperatures, a light snowfall that the children could play in, and almost no wind. 

Though I understand what we consider mild winter weather is a big deal in the southern US. They don't have the infrastructure to take care of it they way we do. We have plows and salt trucks. We have shovels just for digging out our driveways. It's part of our regular lives the way it isn't down there. But while I can throw on a coat and still enjoy a walk outside on a winter day, that 42° summer day removed outdoor enjoyment as an option. Maybe that person does think 42° is great, I just don't.

Do you want to build a snowman?

Last Week #53 - Write By Hand

I started writing more this past week. I think I'm finding my balance. Hopefully, I can stick with it. I've been using prompts to warm up before I start writing, just to get those creative juices flowing. All of what I wrote last week was by hand, which I love. There's such wonderful connection. I can't recomment writing by hand enough. At some point, yes, the words need to get on the screen, but there's something about the solitude you can find when writing by hand. It's where the magic happens, for me anyway.

Random #69 - Ebooks and Emily

The Poems of Emily Dickinson – Three Series Complete....

It just ends. Bam, it’s over. So much time invested and there was no preamble, just the last poem, then the index of first lines. That’s it.  The index takes up the last 15% of the ebook. So I thought I had 15% more poems… or at least 10%. I’ve come to realize that the last few “pages” of ebooks are often ads for other books (by the author or similar authors) or acknowledgements or something. I knew there was an index at the end, but I didn’t think it would be so big.  I guess I should have checked. That’s been my one consistent complaint about ebooks, sudden, expected endings. It was just so abrupt, I feel thrown.

So, if anyone decides to read the complete works of Emily Dickinson, remember that any ebook edition potentially (and the Kindle edition specifically) ends at 85%.

Last Week #52 - A New Year Has Begun

I spent a lot of last week getting back into routine. Work seems to be evening out (I hope it stays that way) and family life is calming down. I did a bit of writing, though not much. Mostly, I brought the notebook out and the file and shuffled things around. I organized, I imagined, but not much hit the page. I also didn't read much this week, often I find the two are linked. I'll be going to writer's group this week and I'm very much looking forward to that. It's been a month and I could use that jolt to my creativity.

Happy New Year!!!!

Wishing everyone the best for 2016!