It’s been another beautiful day and so the windows are open again tonight. I’m loving the fresh air.
Hee. I have a funny story as a result of last night’s open windows.. but I need to take a picture to tell it fully and I didn’t get around to it today. It is too dark now. Look for the story tomorrow.
It was smelling a little stuffy - a little stale - upstairs today so I opened the window.
The window is open. Today was the first day since early last fall that it has been warm enough to open a window and leave it open.
It’s nice. It finally feels like spring. The sounds from outside are different - closer. I feel more a part of the world and less isolated than I have in a long time.
The little things…
Dear Lord. How did it get to be Friday already?
You know, I don’t think that I’ve quite got this time passes concept down yet. It just doesn’t seem right.
As a result of my sudden realization that it really is Friday today, here is Heather’s Friday Five actually appearing on a Friday for once.
1. What are your hobbies? Reading. Reading. Writing a little - though I rarely finish the stories that I start. Reading. Sewing. I’m knitting a little, but all I’ve made so far was a headband to keep my ears warm and I finished that months ago. Reading. Did I mention reading?
2. Do you collect anything? If so, what? No, not really. I used to collect neat shot glasses from gift shops, but I don’t anymore. I decided it was silly.
3. Is there a hobby you’re interested in, but just don’t have the time/money to do? I want to start making scrapbooks, but the stuff is just so darn expensive. I’ve tried quiltmaking.. I’ve actually done a decent amount on the one quilt I’ve started.. but it just takes so long to do and you have to be so precise on the seams. It’s hard. Then there is the cost.. quilt quality cotton is expensive.
4. Have you ever turned a hobby into a moneymaking opportunity? Nope, but I am thinking of trying to sell some of the canvas bags that I make on Ebay.
5. Besides web-related stuff (burbs, rings, etc.), what clubs do you belong to? Absolutely none.
I’m reading We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates. It’s boring me so far. I’m on page 146 and I’ve skipped many a paragraph - sometimes even a whole page - to get there. I just can’t seem to get into it. Maybe it’ll get better. There’s still room for hope.
Indolent is today’s word of the day on dictionary.com. It’s a word I already knew and a word that I hate to be reminded exists because it fits me so well that it hurts. Painful what it says about me; what I say about myself when I use it to describe me. All four of the definitions - all four of them, they’re all me. I don’t want to be like that. I so need to get out of this rut, but even as I say that, I am just digging it deeper.
It’s hard starting again. If I was back home where I had a routine and things to do and places I needed to go.. it was different then. Now it’s just so much easier to sit at home. It’s so much easier to sit at home and use the written word to escape anything resembling my own reality.
I feel so youg sometimes. So immature and irresponsible. Need to quit digging in this rut. “Slow to heal, develop, or grow,” that’s the fourth definition of me. “Avoiding labor and exertion,” that’s the first.
The third is “causing little or no pain.” I can live with that one.
M., who knows how to use the breadmaker as well as I do (and it’s not at all hard, by the way) bought bread from the store the whole time I was gone. Today I finished the last of the last loaf that he bought and pulled out the machine to make more.
Oh, how I’ve missed my breadmaker. The fresh bread, yummier than any found wrapped in plastic in a store, would be enough to make me fall in love with it, but even better is the smell of fresh bread wafting through the house. You can’t buy that at a grocery store.
M. also appears to have neglected to do dishes during the four weeks that I was gone. I left the kitchen absolutely spotless.. and now, well, now it is not. There is quite an impessive mountain of plates and glasses and pots and pans piled next to the sink. At least he always rinces stuff well before adding it to the pile - something that I frequently neglect to do.
I’ve been home over two days now and haven’t done a dish myself, other than when I absolutely had to in order to have something to put my food on. I guess I shouldn’t be so hard on him when I’m really not any better.
I’ll do them all tonight. Really, I will. I just can’t start yet because my lovely breakmaker is taking up too much room on the counter…
I saw this one coming a mile away…
which children’s storybook character are you?
this quiz was made by colleen
Here are some more pictures of my girl that I took while I was home. I am amazed that these came out so well. The sun was going down so I wasn’t going to bother taking pictures.. but I got out to the round pen to warm her up before I rode and it was just so pretty that I ran down to my car to get the camera. There was only one small area that got enough light for the pictures to come out, but the pictures that I got of her there are just marvelous.
I had the worst time getting pictures of her while I was down there. I kept forgetting my camera, or I would remember it but it would be too cloudy and icky to get good pictures. A few times I didn’t bother to bring the camera because it was raining at my house and then I got out to the barn and found clear, sunny skies and kicked myself. I got those pictures of her all muddy with a blanket on and I got these all pretty with the saddle on, but I didn’t get any of just her and I really wanted to.
A thick book and this is the only quote that I got out of it. It was just too good - I couldn’t stop reading long enough to copy anything out of it.
I’m not sure why I love this quote so much. The idea of forgetting to eat while eating strikes me as very funny. It also reminds me a bit of me.. when I have my mind on something I am so focused that I shut everything else out. I will be sitting there sandwhich in hand concentrating on something for half an hour before I remember to take a bite. This is not a good thing. I am very bad at multitasking, and the ability to multitask is essential for getting along in the world these days.
M.’s not having the best of days. He’s having a good day because I am back, but other than that…
He found out today that he got awarded a grad student travel grant to attend a conference in Toronto. That would be a good thing.. except the conference was last week and he didn’t go because we weren’t sure that he would be reimbursed and we couldn’t afford to pay for it. He’s not happy to now find out that he could have gone.
I’m home. Got in a little after seven in the evening - technically last night since it is now Monday.
That email account I haven’t checked since I left? 2345 new messages.
The cats were very glad to see me. M. was even gladder.
Very tired. Going to bed now.
I’m finally going home tomorrow - technically today. Sunday. I’m going home Sunday.
It’s been nice being here and part of me doesn’t want to leave. My husband is up there but my life is still down here. My friends are down here. All the places I know - not just places I can find my way around but places that I really know - are down here. My horse is down here. I could find a job down here - I’m expecting to have trouble finding one up there. I could go to school down here and not lose any credits or have to figure out a new system.
It’s worth it. Being married to M. is worth it all, but sometimes I just wish.. no, actually, pretty much all of the time I just wish that it was him living down here instead of me living up there.
I’ll be home tomorrow - which is strange to say since I talk about my visit down here as “going home for a visit.” I guess they are both home in my mind, but I am not sure which one is more of a home now.
I’ll be home tomorrow and have a few thousand emails waiting in my inbox. If I had known that I would be down here this long I would have taken the time to download Eudora onto this computer. By the time I decided to stay longer I figured that I already had more email in my inbox than I cared to download through a modem. Now it’s going to take forever even with DSL.
You can go back to emailing me at my normal email address now. I’ll keep checking the yahoo account, but not very often.
Posting this mostly for myself so that I will remember the link. Others may find it interesting as well. The Greek poem that Willow writes on Tara’s back in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Restless” is Deathless Aphrodite on Your Lavish Throne by Sappho. Can also be seen here.
Whenever I go downtown with the friend I was with today she drags me into Pioneer Place to get cookies from Paradise Bakery. Nevermind that she works just a few blocks away and could get them anytime..
On the way to the food court we passed Victoria’s Secret which has now moved across the mall and sits right next to Baby Gap. I think there is a reason for that. It’s a progression of sorts.. the sexy lingerie of Victoria’s Secret causes babies to be made so you head next door to the Baby Gap. On the other side of Baby Gap is Kids Gap. I can’t remember if the normal Gap is next to that or not, but it wouls make sense in the whole progression thing.
When I get back home with my wonderful DSL (oh, how I miss my DSL, it takes too long to download stuff through a modem) I need to remember to download the mp3 of this song. I need more songs like this, so much of what I listen to is just way too depressing.
I’ve got my story pretty much back in the correct order again. I stuck all the paragraphs from the end down at the bottom in random order - I figure there is no point in spending to much time there until I have the middle written since most of the end will be redone anyway. I write my stories in a strange order, adding bits and pieces to the beginning, middle, and end as I think of them. I have the very beginning outlined and some of the dialogue written, but I still need to fill it out. I have about the first half of the middle written, and bits and pices of the last half written. I have the dialogue for the ending written, and a few paragraphs of the ending, but not everything. That’s pretty much normal for me.
I haven’t actually written much today as a result of having to spend so much time fixing the mess. I did save a copy of the messed up story - it is kind of funny to read.
I’ve been writing quite a bit the last few. The story I am currently working on is at about 5100 words, and is a huge mess.
It wasn’t a mess when I left it last night, at least not any more than any of my stories are a mess. When I opened it today it looked strange. I started to read it. All the pieces are there, they are just in the wrong order.
226 paragraphs have been shuggled like a pack of playing cards. The first paragraph is at the beginning where it belongs. Then comes one from the middle. Then one from near the end. Back to one from near the begining, then the end, then the middle, etc. I have no idea how this could have happened. I have had MS Word lose bits of my work before or convert things to nonsense characters, but this is the first time it has played musical paragraphs.
It is so frusterating trying to put the story back together. For the most part it is pretty obvious where things go, but here and there I come across short paragraphs, usually dialogue, that are pretty ambiguous, and I can’t find a fit. Or there are paragrphs that I think I have in the right place, but I am not absolutely sure of the order.
To make things worse, I have a habit of writing long sections of just diologue and comming back later to fill in around them. I haven’t finished this story yet, so there are long sections of dialogue that I haven’t filled stuff in around, and they are now completely out of order. I don’t always indicate which character is speaking since it is usually pretty obvious from context, but now without the context I have to resurect entire conversations from little snippets scattered at random throughout the story.
I could scream.
I swear, my computer must have gremlins or something.
Three new entries up, all of which were actually written a while ago. Two are from March (here and here) and one from April 5. I’m not sure that I really like the April 5 one, but its up so there it stays.
I’m still in Portland. I am going home on Sunday - really this time. I even have my plane tickets.
I also still haven’t bothered to download Eudora so that I can get into my regular email. At this point I think the amount of emails is probably too high to handle through a modem anyway. I miss my DSL.
Please continue to use my yahoo email account if you want to email me.
Hee. It’s a “Small” World After All shows how “Smallville quite simply is Buffy the Vampire Slayer circa season one.” Funny site. So true!
I’m still here. Still in Portland actually - I should have gone home two days ago but decided to stay an extra week.
Sorry for neglecting you all. I’ve been busy and haven’t been online much. I miss my DSL!
Still haven’t gotten into my regular email account. Please continue to email me at the yahoo one.
