Let's try it again

I've been having trouble getting anything to post. I wonder how many people decided to Blog in 2005?

My website is updated for January. Finally!!! I'm surprised that I got more traffic than ever in December even though I did absolutely nothing with it. Nor do I have any grand new plans for 2005. More prompts, more articles. Maybe a story or two. We'll see.

I should be working on 2005 OWFI entries, deadline February 1st. I'm too excited about editing at the moment--strangely enough--to get excited about creation. So I guess I should just edit some of the stuff I already have and send it in, right?

I think I've hit the winter doldrums. I keep telling myself if I just get started, the momentum will carry me through, but I'm freezing and it's tough to do anything but huddle under the covers. You'd think the extra pounds might offer just a little bit of warmth, but I'm by far the most cold-natured in the entire family. I practically have to sit on top of a fire to keep warm.

My sis called today, following an ambulance that was taking her dh to Tulsa. Possible heart attack. This after totalling his car yesterday--I presume on the ice, though I don't really know. They did all they could for him in the little town where they live and they were transporting him to Tulsa. She sounded amazingly good; I wish she wasn't driving herself. I wish I was closer. I wish I could sit with her and wait for word. No one seems positive it is a heart attack; just "pretty sure." Apparently sometimes when airbags deploy they trigger belated symptoms that resemble a heart attack. So there is that possibility.

2005 seems off to a little bit of a rough start. Of course our little crisis here compares little with those of others who are coping with conditions and trauma that is unimaginable.

Freewrite

It snowed so much, I didn't think I would ever see it all melt. It was much different than a Boston snow, which, for the most part came down gently and had a tendency to cling attractively to muffs and fur hats, even eyelashes if one were so lucky as to have long dark ones.

These flakes were mean. They started as pellets that were driven like needles by the wind. I guess technically they weren't flakes. Eventually though, that's what they became--so many so close that you couldn't tell land from sky. I didn't want Nathaniel to go as far as the barn, afraid he'd disappear into the white and be gone for good. Of course he thought me silly and weak, as he often does.

It's all so new. I wonder sometimes how he's adapted so well. We both grew up on the coast, among fisherman and sailing ships, not seas of grass. I find this place open and daunting, but it seemed to embrace him somehow. He seemed taller, more sure of himself, eager for the days that roll into one another. He doesn't mind the lack of company or the endlessness of the work. I want to be more like him.

Ack, here I am writer-me and I'm bored. I wish it had snowed so much. I much prefer a pretty snow than the dreariness of ice. There is a little powdered-sugar sprinkling of white out there, but it was the freezing pellets and not flakes. They make so much noise on the windows. Almost like clacking keys. No sun. Just clouds and numbing wind roaring out of the north that makes the vent for the stove clank and clank and clank.

10 minutes for 1/5/05.