Dammit, It's Snowing, And That's Not All

Yesterday was terribly windy. I don't mind the occasional breezy day, but this was different. It was the kind of wind that brought down a neighbor's tree. It put my teeth on edge, made the dogs nervous, blew debris all over the place.

Truth is I've been in a bad mood for a couple of days. I was having a long conversation with someone on twitter in direct messages, which are private, not out in the open. It was a very interesting conversation and in direct message mode, I can see both sides of the conversation. I was invested in it. It meant something to me. But day before yesterday it vanished, all one hundred and forty seven of those messages just vanished. Not just his side of the conversation, but my side too. Poof! Gone! It made me mad. It made me paranoid. It made me sad.

Then today I struggled with a chapter of the new book. It was a difficult bit of writing. I gave the chapter a title and saved it. Then went to do laundry only to find that the dryer is dead. Totally fucking dead. This after I'd washed a load of sheets. It's snowing so there is no hanging wet sheets on the line to dry outside. And I blame the new kids.

Then when I got back to edit the story, it was gone. I know this makes no sense since blogger auto-saves constantly. But this is the second time this has happened to me with short stories and I will no longer write fiction on blogger. Bummer!

For some bizarre reason I woke up at 5:45 this morning, if you can call that morning. For most of my life that would have been called late night, and I'd be going to bed, but no. I tried to go back to sleep, but it wasn't possible for some strange reason. I've been pissed off all day and the snow is starting to accumulate. If it keeps this up, I'll have to shovel front and back because the new kids are moving the first of May and they no longer give a shit.

I'm too ticked off to tweet.

The Next Morning

We're having a blizzard. I just took Cyrus out for his morning pee and we have about 2 inches thus far and it's sticking. My car is covered, the cafe table in front of the greenhouse has a couple of inches on it. Yesterday was warmish and sunny. Today the snow is falling fast enough to cover the green that's emerging. The buds on the pear tree are white with snow. I hate this shit.

L and I had a lovely evening, but I fear my bulldozer approach to conversation leaves much to be desired for a man of his scholarly disposition. He is a philosophy professor, retired but still teaching a couple of classes a year. He loves teaching and will probably keep teaching until he dies. But I'm nobody's student. I've read as much or more than he, and we don't value the same writers in the same way. He teaches literature as philosophy. If I were a student of his, I would be one very argumentative and opinionated student, challenging his taste and conclusions at every turn. I don't think he enjoys this much, this intellectual bully I've become. And I realize as I write this, that, like a younger sister, I am always pushing back, always trying to prove myself his intellectual equal. We disagree about one of the writers he teaches, Penelope Lively. "I think her prose is thin and her characters a bit boring." I realize when I said that, I was poking him with the sharp stick of my many years of glutenous reading. Why? Why do I do that? He is a lovely man--kind, sweet, warm. Why am I so competitive with him? Odd that even when I was twelve and he was almost sixteen we were intellectually competitive. It was important to me even then that he know I was no light weight in the reading department. I had read Lolita, he hadn't. One up for me. He had read Thomas Hardy, I had not. On up for him. Let the battle of the minds begin. And yet I do still love him. I always have and I always will.

I did find out one thing about his "new" wife that made me think I would like her--she's a fan of fart humor.

And I did not poison him with my cooking. The meal was delicious. But I'm pretty sure I spent my sleeping hours farting. I wonder if Cyrus, my old dog, notices.