tuesday, april 10, 2001
downpours

there just seems to be a deluge of stuff in my life lately, sometimes more literally than really is necessary. yesterday morning the weather played a nasty little trick on me and gave me a real downpour versus all the other torrential experiences i have been having of late. i left the house in bright sunshine, crisp and clear, a few white clouds, a bit chilly but tolerable at that hour. not a sign of wetness or threatened wetness anywhere. by mid afternoon the day had not done the expected warming up but was distinctly colder. and gray. very gray. by my last class it was drizzling. by the time class was over it was outright pouring. no wrap. no umbrella. and all that rain.

i hate rain. getting wet is for 2 instances only: a naked shower or bath, and a suited swimming pool. it is not for being fully clothed in frigid temps that would have eskimos under wraps.

fortunately, a classmate graciously gave me a ride home. i skulked from over to over hang, from over hang to car and car to my doorway. just imagine a very displeased wet cat dashing from cover to cover, ears flat, fur all spiky and you got me in the rain. complete with indignant look.

there is another downpour in my life at the moment that is much more enjoyable: a deluge of creative writing that is truly drowning me in words. perhaps melodramatic there, but i lost at least 3 ideas for whysper today. all in the space of 5 minutes. i suppose this should be no surprise. i have more than enough writing opportunities online and now in r.l. you take a creative writing class and the next thing you know you have more than you could write in a life time. i decided to give myself a place to put my deluge of words: ink. unlike eloquence, ink is first drafts, unfinished and in rough form with little correction in either spelling or grammar. here i just write. unlike whysper or any of the blogs, ink is not nonfiction in nature. instead it is totally creative fiction: bits and pieces of stories and dreams, lines, lists, poems, anything that i feel the need to write at the moment. i write until the idea is done in my head and i have no more words for it, then post it as is. i am hoping to get into the habit of writing in it once a day, but there are no guarantees. i am not very good at making habits. but at least i now have a place for the out pouring of ideas and images and story lines and pieces of poetry that clutter my head. this is good. because i am planning to write only once each day, i still chance losing ideas, but now i will not lose as many ideas.

the words suddenly flying about my head are also benefiting visions. chapter 7 of silverhall is in its first edit for posting and the keepers intro is up. all things considered, i am hoping ink will help with visions in the future. i am quickly coming to the end of what i remember from the game it is based on and will need ideas to finish out the first book and fill in the other two. so far, however, ink has primarily uncrowned pieces. which is good in a way: uncrowned is on hold until the game stabilizes. but even though the game is on hold i am still dreaming about it and getting flashes of insight and ideas that i don't want to lose even if the game goes back on hold indefinitely again. ink will definitely be very helpful to me in the future! like i never kept a regular journal very well, i haven't kept a writing journal at all. i don't think i have even tried. but so far i am enjoying getting these scraps out of my head and some place where i won't quickly lose them.

the next few weeks promise to be flooded with paperwork and appointments as well. h.u.d. appointment to keep our housing. another appointment with the neurologist to determine how well the adderall is working. paperwork to drop minors, for my grad check, and to get a deferment on my perkins loan. kitten has an appointment with taz's doctor to see if she's possibly adhd too, and the paperwork for that is astonishing. she's 14, i hope they don't really expect me to remember all this! and i have a paper to fill out in case tax needs tubes in his ears to help with the winter ear infections he gets (he has another one even now, poor kid). and, of course, we can't forget homework. but, while it adds to the deluge of paperwork on my desk, it hasn't been a downpour in and of itself. and most of it is fairly enjoyable so far. (boy am i ever glad i dropped shakespeare this quarter! i would be miserable right now if i hadn't. as it stands, i may actually enjoy this quarter!)

adding to the ever growing pool of busyness once again is an overhaul of my main (this site, now affectionately referred to as the dot-com) site. i finally managed to create something i can live with to replace the more difficult to manage layout i have now. i am simplifying the overall structure of the site (yes, that means some link changes!) and am going to try to go over my links with a fine tooth comb to make sure they all go where they are supposed to go and that all forms work the way they are supposed to and so on. no, don't expect to see it before summer.

you know what? i am content. i am content with recent decisions i have made, pleased with my classes this quarter, feeling more secure in my marriage and pretty much at peace with life at the moment. oh, there's things that could be changed, but we're working to make those changes where we can. and, for the moment at any rate, i can live with that.

now if only the rain would wait until weekends. then life would be as close to perfect as it can get for me at the moment. barring that, waiting until i am home from class would be my next choice. as long as i don't get caught in the downpour i am one happy cat.