Showers

It's been a long couple of days.

It's cold here in Boise. We didn't realize just how cold it would get Monday night. It had snowed the night before though, and was cold. We thought baking a chicken and a couple of pies would keep the oven on, heating the house, for a while.

We had figured that we would fill the next evening with leftover chicken, and some cookies, and more warm oven.

Then Tuesday I woke up, and tried to turn on the shower to go in to work. It wouldn't go. I turned the nozzle again, and it still wouldn't go. I fiddled with the nozzle, and it gushed out brown, then running clear, on cold. I tried turning the nozzle to hot again. Still, there was no water.

I yelled at my husband that there was no water in the shower, and proceeded to brush my teeth in the sink. It, too, gushed an awful brown color, and then ran clear.

"Pipes must have froze," my husband informed me. "Call the landlord."

All plans for fun, enjoyable food and oven use immediately flew out the window; all our attention became focused on thawing pipes.

As a result of growing up in Southern California, the concept of "frozen pipes" in homes is foreign to me. Frozen pipes happen in exposed places, like on a ranch. Not in a house.

Suffice to say, the last few days have been rough. Sure, things could be worse. But, things could always be worse. Sam and I have been particularly grumpy towards each other, and anyone else brave enough to talk to us. We used other showers, and were clean technically, though it's amazing how dirty one can feel stepping out of someone else's shower, and not by choice.

I'm freshly showered now, for the second time today, this time with the luxury of shampoo. I've learned more about space heaters, pipe heating devices, and just generally thawing pipes than I thought could be humanly interesting.

Perhaps this ought to become a story.

For now, I'm going to enjoy the lack of tension in the house, my wet hair wet on my terms, and the new Joanne Harris novel, Runemarks . Yes, it's YA, not something I generally enjoy reading. But, a good author is a good author, and I can't put her writing down.

What are you cozied up with?

Procrastination

I am an excellent procrastinator. I can procrastinate the most essential of activities. "One more row," I'll tell myself while I'm knitting. Or, "Oh! I really need to send out that email. I'll write my grandmother tomorrow." This last one, I admit, I'm doing right now.

This is one of the reasons we initiated The 500. Writers are excellent procrastinators, and find all sorts of imaginative ways to not write. Accountability makes that butt in chair hands on keyboard experience so much better.

Why do we procrastinate? I would give you a thousand reasons why I procrastinate. I'm tired, I'm lazy, I have other things I need/want to do, there's a movie on TV, my mother in law just invited us to dinner, I remembered a book I wanted just came out; I could go on for hours. Though, I think one of the biggest things that stops me is fear. Fear of writing something bad, and, more often, fear of writing something that's actually kind of good.

It's easy to avoid this fear when I have nothing particular to write about, and I just pull some exercise out of a book or my head or the Internet and force myself to write. I don't particularly care about the project when I start. But, maybe I will once I do start. And maybe I'll keep working on it. More likely than not though, I'll write it, and then put it away and ignore it.

I ramble. Tonight was different. Tonight, I wrote with purpose. I had an end goal - sharing a story I tell somewhat often. A story of liberation and freedom. A story many have heard over and over, in a style that, well, isn't told with any sort of style. Someone had suggested a few weeks ago that I write it down and send it off. It's such a simple story, I had never thought to do this - not many would care to read it.

But so many who hear it love it, get it, and are immediately changed by it. Why should I keep it to only those who can and do talk to me? Writing is something I do, and it's what I want to do. I decided a while ago to sit down and write the story. Tonight, I did it.

And, I must say, it came out kinda good. It's rough, and needs some help (which it will get in the coming weeks). But it's good. It has phrases that I would never use in speech that add to the story. It's lost something in being written down; it feels less alive as I go back and re-read it. But, it gains a new sort of life in it's brevity. It doesn't dwell so much on the bits that don't matter; it highlights the emotions that I lived through.

And, it's more than double my required minimum word count.

Tomorrow, I think I'll try this writing with purpose thing again.

Have you written your 500 today? If not, what's your procrastination tool for the day?

First Post

I'm fascinated by those who comment with "first!" and nothing else. Why do they do that? Can I copy them? Is that okay? Well, I'm doing it anyway.

I wrote my 500 today. And, I'd like to know, what happens when a character turns right when she normally would turn left? I honestly don't know. That's how I started tonight - I had Mindy turn right. Mindy didn't actually do anything interesting. She had a few phone conversations while driving an old beat-up car, and she continuously turned right.

Maybe she'll do something more interesting tomorrow.

A couple of random thoughts:

• When sitting in a room facing the opposite direction of normal, shadows fall on the walls differently. This can indeed lead to freak-outs.
• Sam's cat is entirely too needy. Typing with her and the computer in my lap isn't so productive.
• Productivity is over-rated.