Until Mother Nature puts a stop to that nonsense on Tuesday night.

That’s right, we’re getting another (possibly crazy) blizzard which will lock us all in together for at least another couple of days, and possibly for the remainder of the week.

My children will have forgotten how to add and subtract by the time they get back to school on a permanent basis, but at least they’ll get their Little Big Planet pods just the way they want them.

Thank God for video games. And electricity, and heat, and snacks. And running water. Three days, I melted snow for washing. I don’t recommend it. The ratio of frozen pounds to melted gallons doesn’t work in our favor.

Anyway, the family will have a much-needed return to normal before we are hit once again. I have to go to Wal-Mart and elbow my way through the panicking hoards in order to restock my dwindling supplies; get all the laundry finished by tomorrow night in case the drain freezes again; gas up the car—and I hope I’m not forgetting anything.

Wish me luck.

The snow doesn’t look that deep, but that’s because the land’s been scoured. The drifts are waist-high.

As crappy as it is here, I know it’s going to be worse as the system travels toward New England. Y’all stay safe.

So there’s this hurricane rain coming up from Texas. All around us, creeks and rivers are overflowing their banks, flooding populated areas. However, I think they closed the invisible dome over my city again, because we’ve fallen into the same pattern as last summer: rain dissipates as it approaches Tecumseh and re-forms on  the other side, or else we watch the rain curl around us on the radar while we enjoy white puffies and peeks of blue. I see the dark clouds on the horizon in all directions, but they stay on the horizon. I don’t want the flooding, but the anticipation of rain with no release is putting me on edge. Open the dome, people!

Still not writing, and I’m okay with that. The ol’ batteries are about half-way charged, so I’m on track to be ready to go when the kids return to school in a month and a half. The pull is getting stronger. When my agent sent me line edits on the rewrite of my synopsis, I was ecstatic to actually have something legitimate to do. I love the process, I love having a job to do. Working for someone else has priority for some reason, as when I was editing for Eternal Press. I’d spend hours on it, take pride in turning it in early. When my own manuscript was nearing completion, I worked toward the day I could turn it in to my agent, and somehow it made it more urgent than when I was writing for myself. I know for a fact when I have an editor waiting for my edits, or for a whole new manuscript, I’ll be working twice as hard as I do for myself. I’ll close the dome over myself and let the distractions glance off.

I could talk about my pinhole glasses, but then you might think I’m a dork.

How about my new/old writing space? It’s the previously unusable, newly-dubbed sunroom, complete with wasps and ladybugs.

I could write about my definition of writer’s block, backed by personal experience. Or maybe something about the current WIP, soon to be completed. Or I could finish any one of the posts sitting in my drafts folder, dating back to the balloon boy hoax.

Nah. I just can’t think of a thing to write about. Sorry.

I never did find my camera cord, so I guess I’ll never get those ice storm pictures uploaded. I’m sure I put the cord somewhere that made sense at the time, but only my other personality knows where it is.

I’ll go on record as saying this is the strangest winter I can remember. Normally here in Oklahoma we have a couple of little snows a year, with one big, bad winter storm every two or three years. Ice, snow, power outages, the whole shebang. Any accumulation melts within a day or two, at the most a week, and many times I can remember wearing shorts one week and earmuffs the next. We don’t have extended periods of deep cold. My pear trees try to bud a couple of times every winter, it can get that warm.

This season we’ve had a blizzard with record snow totals followed by a cold snap that kept the snow around for weeks, an ice storm with record ice accumulation and another record snowfall on top of that, with a bunch of little snows in between. I’m seriously thinking of investing in a snow shovel. Yesterday I bought a chainsaw so I could cut up all the limbs that fell off the trees, and if it will ever stop snowing I will do that. Lingering snow makes me nervous. I’m used to the landscape looking a certain way, so those few weeks when the snow just stayed gave me a constant, vague feeling of suspicion.

People like to say, “I thought the globe was supposed to be getting warmer, yuk yuk.” Well of course if the global average temperature is raised or lowered it will cause weather patterns to shift, and that means different weather, not necessarily warmer all the time. I don’t know if global warming is real or not, and frankly, I’ve stopped caring. I live as simply and consume as little as I can, and that’s all I can do.

Not sure I’ve ever been this ready for spring. Geez.

Good thing we took advantage of the sunshiney weather yesterday to play in the snow. Neighbor Lady saw us playing outside and brought her grandkids over to play with us. Since we ere outside the fragrance wasn’t too much of an issue. Whenever I caught a whiff I just moved further up-wind. I’m a be-near person, not a stay-away person, so it was weird trying to keep my distance from them.

This is the same neighbor whose daughter has been fighting cancer, don’t know if you remember, and I was watching the granddaughter from time to time before I realized the smell her shampoo was a trigger for my migraines. I wish I could do more for Neighbor Lady, because she’s the only one who can take up the slack with her grandchildren while their mother is ill. I appreciate Neighbor Lady’s understanding. If you have a moment to spare, could you say a short prayer for the family’s healing?

In other “news”, I had planned to call my agent today. I’m at a crossroads, as one book is losing momentum and the new one is just starting its submission life. I emailed my list of questions to Sara almost two weeks ago, and as it became clear my email got lost somewhere, I figured she’d probably rather have a phone conversation.

Only here’s what happened: I sat down to make that call at 9 a.m. my time, which would mean it was 10 a.m. her time. Got ready to dial, and the phone rang in my hand. It was my brother, checking to see if I had done a bit of business we’d talked about, which I hadn’t. Time was of the essence, so I called the business, hung up, called my brother again, hung up, business was done in a half hour. Prepared to dial Sara, again the phone rang. This time it was a wrong number. Hung up. Checked email while I waited to see how it played out, if the phone would ring again. After 5–10 minutes it hadn’t, so I thought about calling again, and just then my mother called. By the end of  that conversation an hour had elapsed.

Mind you, I’d not had one call before I tried to call Sara, nor one since I decided not to. I’ve had enough experience with signs to know it’s best to heed them. The call can wait till another day.