Rain

It's been steadily raining for over three hours. It is melting away the snow, good news for this spring lover, but as the temperatures go down tonight, the rain will turn to ice.  The ice could cover the sidewalks and once again, my walks would be curtailed.

Or it could just continue to rain through tomorrow.  If that happens I won't be able to walk either.  It is a good thing that I went for a walk this morning and brought my weeks mileage to 14.  That was my goal this week. Every week I will add two more miles, which means my goal next week is 16.  The theory is that I will be up to 40 miles a week by the first of June.  The theory is also that I will lose 30 pounds by the end of the summer but that remains to be seen.

If the rain clears out the snow drifts out back, I hope to get back there to fill the bird feeders which have been empty for about a week.  I would like to make it to the composter, too, with the frozen garbage stashed in the garage.

***

Today I decided on the name of the collection of short stories I'm working on:  Decades of Love and Other Disasters. 

Now to get busy and finish it.  

Euphoria

After a bad session with Seasonal Affective Disorder in February, I've come out the other side and gone into a euphoric state.  

Today, the sun was shining and moderate temperatures allowed me to walk without a winter jacket.  Last week, I walked twelve miles.  This week I'm aiming for eighteen.  If this keeps up I won't add St. John's wort to my pill container next week. 

Gary told me that he will be here for a few days next week to help clear the basement. With all the snow this winter, we'll have a little flooding down there, not enough for any serious damage but any cardboard boxes on the floor could be ruined. We have to raise everything by six inches to avoid damaging their contents.  At the same time, he will be here to celebrate my St. Patrick's Day birthday.  I look forward to a little pampering.

Today I finished another short story.  As I wrote yesterday, I had the story firmly in my mind.  It took forty minutes of writing and half an hour of editing. It's title is "Coyotes".  It can be found at Black Coffee Fiction: 

http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com  As always, I like comments, criticism and applause. 

Once I finished the story I walked downtown to Sissy's for some "Midnight in Bordeaux" ice cream which seems to be a variant on Ben and Jerry's "Cherry Garcia" ice cream.  Delicious no matter what the name. Francine and Sandi told me that they sold one of my romance novels.  I had a copy of "Coyotes" with me so they read that right away. 

Sandi is demanding that I hurry with my next project, a collection of love stories.  I set up the book yesterday so when I came home, I worked on the first of the sixteen stories and put it into the book.  If I were able to edit a story a day I would have the book ready for publication by the end of March. I am looking at a more realistic goal of three a week.  

So I am producing, exercising, and planning for the future.  Not a bad way to come into spring. 

Walking and Writing

Now that spring is on the way, moderate temperatures are here in Seymour.  For the past two days, I've taken my walk without my winter coat, snowmobile gloves, and boots.  There are still a few ice patches and where those have melted, puddles, but I can still walk on the sidewalks with only a few jumps over the bad patches.

Through February's snow and cold, I only managed to walk four or five miles per week.  Last week it was twelve miles and I should make it to around twenty this week.

While I walk I listen to the male cardinals establishing their territories. To drive them crazy, I answer.

I stop at the library to look at the snowdrops, drop in at Sissy's to have ice cream.

Above all, I am writing. I have a story due tomorrow at Black Coffee Fiction. I am a professional storyteller so I know how to put together a story line. I kept walking. Once I had the outline, I thought about characters.  I used to do community theatre so I know how to get into character.  Today I entered the mind of a deputy sheriff about to have an encounter with an old woman. I made it to Highway 54 and kept going.

I needed place, too, so I thought about that farmhouse Gary is staying in in Illinois. I can describe that so it will be added to the story.

By the time I finished my three mile walk, I had the story firmly in my head.  I came home to rough it out.  First thing tomorrow I go into what I call "the zone".  When I am there, the office disappears and I go into another reality. In only an hour, the story will be typed out.  Then some editing and by 4:00 pm the story will be posted at Black Coffee Fiction.

Check it out the results at http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com

Currently Reading

As usual, I am working on several books at once. 

I'm still laughing at Jasper Fforde's The Woman Who Died a Lot.  There's the work on an anti-smiting device to hold off the attacks of an angry deity.  There's a meteor heading to earth.  Thursday Next, who used to work in Book World, is now a librarian. 

"Do I have to talk to insane people?"
"You're a librarian now. I'm afraid it's mandatory." 

There are multiple Thursdays because in her world there are Day Players, or clones, but like Barbie, they have no sexual or alimentary systems.  Every so often, a Thursday is killed off.  It is a satire and a fantasy. I am one of Fforde's biggest fans. 

Elizabeth Strout is the editor of  The Best Short Stories of 2013.  I didn't care much for the stories of 2012, and wondered if this editor would be more in tune with my thoughts.  I am thinking of sending her stories from Black Coffee Fiction. I picked up Olive Kitteridge, her Pulitzer Prize winning novel.  At first glance, it looks like a book I am going to enjoy.

On my Nook, I have The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  Henrietta Lacks was an poor African American woman who went to John Hopkins Medical Center in 1951 with a cancer tumor.  Without her permission, her cancer sells were taken by  researchers who were trying to force cells to duplicate themselves.  Henrietta's cells multiplied to the point that they are all over the medical world now, in every university, every research hospital, in every country.  They are worth millions of dollars. 

Yet the Lacks family never received anything from this.  

Gary worked with cells during his graduate days.  I asked him if he ever heard of Henrietta Lacks and he hadn't. Then I asked him about HeLa cells and of course he had without realizing "HeLa" were named for Henrietta Lacks. 

I am still working through Eudora Welty's short stories and The Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.   

There are books in every room in the house, ready to be picked up whenever I need them. 

Pot Scrubbers

Years ago my friend Norma gave me two Chinese pot scrubbers, or at least that is what they called them over ten years ago.  She found them  at a Dollar Tree and thought I might find a use for them. They were made of hard nylon in Hong Kong

I liked the pot scrubber immediately. It had "corners" with variations to fit into different parts of pans and pots. I particularly liked to use it on cake and bread pans to get into the corners where bits of cake and bread like to stick.

Then I figured out that one little scrubber was all I needed to do dishes at campgrounds. No washcloth, no sponge that refused to dry out and began to smell as the trip went on. As a matter of fact, I lost one of the scrubbers at a campground somewhere.

I continued to use the remaining scrubber but the marvelous cake pan corner wore out.

The Hong Kong scrubbers were no longer sold at the Dollar Tree.  The only place I could find them was on line and they were very expensive. Now they were called pot scrapers.

I finally found them at the Menards flyer this week. They were inexpensive and with a rebate, free.  I yelled "Eurkea", but I didn't have a car to drive to Appleton. I e-mailed Gary. The Illinois farm is close to the Sterling Menards.  I asked him to pick up a couple of packages for me.

Now if I told Gary that I needed a $40 gadget that required four batteries and three day delivery by UPS, he wouldn't blink an eye, but he has been arguing with me for several days about why I need these small pieces of nylon.

My brakes on my car were finally repaired today so after I picked it up, I drove to the nearest Menards and bought the scraper.

One goes in the kitchen, one goes into my box of camping cooking gear.  I should be good for another ten years.

Hope

I went to the Muehl Public Library this afternoon and sure enough, the snowdrops were up and in bud.  Spring is here and it can't escape me now.

Flowers come up early next to buildings. I remarked to someone that some heat must be escaping from the library and she said, yes, they would have to do something about that. I agreed but then realized how much I would miss those snowdrops each spring.

Back home, I looked in vain for any sign of snowdrops or crocuses.  I never planted any next to my house because I like the European idea of planting flowers so that I can see them out my windows. Americans plant everything against the house, making their shrubs and flowers a show for outsiders.  My crocuses are on a strip on the property line. When the snow melts I will see the snowdrops from the dining room. That will be at least a week from now. 

Another walk downtown took me back to Sissy's to finish the display of Seymour's authors.  Susan Manzke, Colette Bezio brought our books there on Saturday, but we needed a sign. I tacked it up then had some cherry chocolate ice cream to celebrate.  

Now we're ready to sell our novels and collections.  

Aldo Leopold Weekend

March 1-3 has been Aldo Leopold Week in the State of Wisconsin, celebrating Leopold, our environmental hero. In A Sand County Almanac, he set out the environmental ethic that is considered the beginning of the modern environmental movement.

“A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of land.”

Each spring I pull down A Sand County Almanac to refresh my soul with his wise words. They tell of the seasons and the spring to come.  

In his methodical records, Leopold kept track of the changes in the natural world. As climate change happens,  those records serve as a baseline for Wisconsin. We know we are warming because the winter season grows shorter, the summers hotter and longer than they were in the 1940s when Leopold wrote.

Today, Teresa in Black Creek posted a photo of crocus shoots coming up next to her house. If they are there, almost certainly the snowdrops are near to blooming behind the library in Seymour. Tomorrow I will tramp through snowdrifts to take a look.

Within the week the vinca vines will be crawling along beside my house and nearby I should be able to dig into the snow to find my own snowdrops. Each year they seem to be a day or two earlier.

I wonder what Aldo Leopold would say about that.