I've been thinking on this the last few days, as my current illness has had me bolted to the sofa, and I've been reading on that old rag again. I've moved it with me from my bedroom at home to my first apartment to my rented room in a house to my second apartment to my actual house. Tried to get rid of it once or twice but it always came back. And now, after reading The Dark Tower again, I'm into the thick of it. Literally. This book is thicker than many things I'm immediately familiar with. Doorstops, for example.

My reading of Stephen King marked a very specific turning point--when I went from reading "the classics" and turning up my nose at anything popular, to where I am now. That is, enjoying a good story, enjoying the search for symbolism, but overall looking to be entertained and possibly enlightened. In other words, I dropped the snobbery and got honest about what I like to read. And it's funny, now. My bookshelves are jammed with my books and my husband's books, overflowing with words put to pages, and It is an anonymous tome among hundreds. But it marks an important segue.

Not to mention, the edges of the pages are turning yellow.

This was one of the last books I bought before acid-free paper became all the rage. A cheap, cheap paperback which probably started yellowing years ago but I never took it off the shelf to check until last week. Like a horse's teeth, a book's age starts showing as yellow, then as lengthening, and then as falling ... out? Sure. Why not. But I remember thinking as a teenager that the yellowed books were really old, right ... and now, I am either not so sure, or strong in my certainty. Ah, how I hate running a fever.

This is my favorite time of year, see, when the fall-blooming plants start showing off, and I go to all the Back to School Sales to fight with soccer moms over bundles of paper and pens. Because? I am an office-supplies demon, can't ever get enough of them, have an entire room of my house devoted to crates full of paper and writing utensils. Is it a sickness if I actually use them? Or am I justifying any way I can? I do have an office job, now, where I get to surround myself with office supplies and do office work with them. I like that. I've been at the job over a year now, I think I can tell if I actually like it or if it's just euphoria over the paycheck--but no, I really like it. I hated to call in sick again this morning because I actually wanted to go back. It is good times.

The other good thing? I have a finished first draft of the Story that Would Not Die. I started writing backstory to it back in 2007, early, before all the fan-hitting began. And it was all set to be a short story. I was excited, thinking, "Oh boy, I can get back to the reason I got started writing in the first place--my favorite form! Short fiction! Rawk!" And then after five pages became fifteen, and twenty became fifty, I threw my head onto the desk in despair. After writing that novel a couple years back, the novel that "needed some work," the same way you'd look at a derelict house and say, "Well, at least the plumbing's still good," provided there are no hobos in the neighborhood mining for copper, I was more than a little reluctant to try again. But it seems this story had a mind of its own, and it's sitting on my hard drive and in a binder. But, good sign, writing this did not cause the hard drive in my computer to fry, kind of like the last one did. Ahem. And I've been writing on short stories that are right in line with my usual brand, whatever that was. Researching mags to submit to, as well. It's like the person I was went into hiding and now she's back, only not as much of a jerk. Clear goals and determination, man. It is what's for breakfast.

Sometimes I forget what the first weekend of real spring is like. I can go outside, so I go outside, and climb all over everything, and look at everything, and run and play and throw stuff and remember what it is to be alive. This spring especially. Spring has sprung from ruined blackness. Miracle. Also, commonplace. Which makes it even better.

My trees are budding out. My bulbs are sprouting. I am home from work and sunshine is streaming through the window. I have a terrible desire to run out into the yard and start digging holes for plants that will die a horrible frosty death if I even think about planting them for another two months, but I'm holding off, because I CAN.

I have been spending a lot of time on projects. Why? Because they keep me from feeling adrift in a sea of evenings. At work, I can budget my time and fill every minute. At home, for some reason, I can't do that as well. So what do I do? Mostly, I read (I've been sent down the dark path of Terry Goodkind), and I write (the short story that sprawled first into a novella and is now heading full-tilt for novel territory) (oh, and I have a new poem up at The Journal of Asinine Poetry ... check out the front page, too, for a good friend of mine's work), and I do needlework.

When I was twelve years old, I learned how to do counted cross stitch, like any well-brought-up young lady. (Can't fault dear Mother for trying.) I was fascinated by it. Making thousands of tiny stitches in different colors and patterns created a new picture--like pointillism, but stabbier. I may have mentioned how my love of the needle arts is mostly my love of stabbing things, and it's not socially acceptable to take out that desire on anything animate, so, I stick with making scarves and stitching samplers. I finished a sampler just the other day, actually, and after ironing and framing it, I have spent time looking at it and thinking ... "Man. Gaudy." As it happens, this sampler came to me from Mother, who, while cleaning out her craft supplies last month, came across a sampler she'd started before either of her children were born. This sampler. Woo. It's something else. It would have been beautiful. It has flowers, a butterfly, a happy platitude across it. But the colors. O, the colors. Remember 1972? Remember the idea that colors should not be harmonious, but should SCREAM their clashes? War was in Vietnam, war was in the color scheme. And so we wind up with a sampler colored in baby blue, Girl Scout orange, pepto pink, mustard yellow, olive green, drab brown, and this other color that I can't even begin to describe. And I, being the inflexible thinker I am, went ahead and stitched the whole thing in the floss provided. Because what else am I going to do with it? And it was already separated out for me so neatly.

Mom had stitched the border and the lettering, but given up at that point. She shoved the whole mess into an envelope to be discovered 36 years later. I took it home and went to town on it. I'd quit needlepoint in high school. Dunno why. But when Mother handed this barely-started sampler to me, something long dormant in me, awoke. A connection to something larger than myself, maybe. This idea of craft.

Over the weekend I watched a documentary from PBS, Craft in America. It touched on the idea that craft is humanity expressed. And I can't disagree with that. One of the ladies they interviewed is a basketmaker, and she learned the craft from her mother, who learned it from her mother, and on back for hundreds if not thousands of years. In my home, I have needlework displayed from my great-grandmother, grandmother, and now mother and myself. Needlework is a constant along my family tree--all classes, all generations, for at least a hundred years are tied together by a needle and thread singing through fabric. I don't quilt, not yet. I don't have the patience or the finger strength. Great-Grandma used to be able to get five stitches at once onto her tiny little needle--she'd push so hard the needle would bend. Whereas I sew with a very big needle, a tapestry needle if I can get it (a tapestry needle is roughly three times the size of your quilter's needle), and my stitches are less decorative and more about holding together a stuffed animal. Been making dolls and such for more than half my life, with no sign of letting up anytime soon. I just made a stuffed owl last night out of a shirt I haven't worn in three years, and it has been pronounced cuddlesome, if a little spooky. Which is the best kind.

My point being, crafting is what I do. I craft with words a lot, and with physical things. Fabric, feathers, paint, pressed flowers, beads, barn wood, anything I can get my hands on. I'm about to start a project with dried beans and macaroni that will be spectacular, in one direction or the other. I've tried not crafting. I really have. This compulsion used to frighten me--this inability to keep my mind from working in that direction, to keep my hands from grabbing up every found object that might work with some collage/doll/bracelet I'm thinking about. I used to wonder what was working in me, or through me, but now I imagine there's no outside force. It's just how I'm built. It's my talent. I am not gifted with the ability to program Java, for instance, or be a sous chef, or protect people from themselves. But I can make a cuddly teddy bear for a child to love, and that doesn't scare me at all, anymore.

Not that I had that problem. Hurph. Hurph.

No, the drive from my job to my house is mercifully short, and I made it back with a minimum of personal damage. Didn't see a single person out on the road, because no one else was as much a moron as I was. And when the sweetie made the trek across town from his job a bare hour later, it took him close to 45 minutes to make what is normally a five-minute drive.

It's now Day 3 of our internment in the house, and all told it hasn't been bad. We've had power, phones, heat, food, water, internet, craft projects. (I made a stunning ornament from some Van Gogh prints and a little glue. If I'd only had some purple glitter!) Plenty to keep ourselves occupied. Plenty to keep our minds off the intermittent snow showers and status of our coffee situation. (Flatlining.) Blake's return to work is imminent, but not mine--the office is without power, so there isn't much use trying to get down there. Especially since there's a security gate, and without power, it won't open. So it's another day of internet surfing, Netflix watching, and writing. At least while Blake was here, it was easier to forget that we were essentially stuck inside the house. Seriously, it's almost impossible to walk outside--the lawn and stairs and walkway are coated in at least an inch of solid ice.

But the view from the window, it's amazing. Breathtaking. I've taken pictures and have not uploaded them yet--lazy! Actually I can't find the cable, because I haven't looked. Although I did finally go through the last three boxes that were still packed from our move. Six months ago. Ahem.

I'm telling you. Super-productive, that's been me these last couple days. Perhaps I'll be able to carry this over into my daily life and not spend so much time staring blankly at episodes of The Venture Brothers from my position on the couch. Who knows, it's been a week of miracles already. One more can't hurt.

A good friend told me yesterday that I'm earthy--connected with the land in ways I am loath to admit. Also that my sense of humor tends to the mildly coarse ... my great dream is to one day live deep in a forest where I can be surrounded by trees and plants and animals that I can subsist in harmony with ... um ... I'm learning to fish, hunt, trap, tell poisonous plants from nutritious, tasty animals from those not worth the struggle, tour the woods with a sharper eye for industry ... ahem. Means nothing. Right?

Regardless--there's snow outside, melting lackadaisically and smirking at me from the more shadowy regions of our yard. I hate to watch snow melt. All that cool white, so peaceful and insulating, disappearing back into the ground, which gets muddier and more sullen as the winter strays into spring. Ugh. I used to think I ought instead to spend my time living in a clime without seasons, but I never have gotten around to that. Maybe this mild depression is linked to seasonal change, maybe it's not. And somehow I think that if it isn't, and I've spent the time and effort to get to a new place, well--I'd feel like an idiot, and that is the one thing that is not allowed. Not that I don't feel like an idiot most of the time, and it gives me agonies. So there.

Not sure where the point has been buried, in this bit, but maybe the point is acorn-like, and a mighty oak shall henceforth spring, a hundred years from now. Or it might get run over by a lawn mower. Gosh, I'm cheery tonight.

We rang in the new year surrounded by friends taking pictures of each other, while people smoked cigarettes around us (because this ain't Illinois, THANK you) and a very loud band performed so beautifully ... I wept.

And today we've been playing Guitar Hero and having deep discussions.

It is good. Getting better.

In that order.

After we returned to our awesome house from our awesome family shindigs, I spent some high-quality time trawling for what can only be termed "obsessions"--those things I collect, not only because they are awesome, but because they are outrageously expensive, and this keeps my house from becoming Red Patterned Glass Mania A-Go-Go, because my only identifiable personality trait is that of Cheapskate. I resisted buying a few pieces that were alluringly cheapish, but have decided that if I really needed a candlestick holder for only $16 (but that includes shipping!), I'd already have a display cabinet set up. On a related note, how many pieces of a fancy collection does one need before a display cabinet becomes a vital part of one's existence? Perhaps I am too much a clodbuster to have such things as fancy collections. I shouldn't collect anything anyway. Have you SEEN the sheer volume of books I have? Started collecting those about twenty years ago--in earnest, ten years ago. Then got jobs at bookstores and everything was lost. This is why I have never worked in an antique mall, though sometimes I think there are more antique malls in this town than residents, so clearly, if I were to choose a job based on economic viability and community growth, that'd be the direction to go in. But somehow I don't see myself standing behind a counter, listening to a middle-aged lady shrew at me because we don't have THE Looney Tunes glass she's looking for to complete her granddaughter's collection.

Most of my energy these last few days has been devoted to not dying of the common cold, which by now i ought to have medaled in, if it were an Olympic sport. Which it should be. Fortunately, while I was wasting away on the couch, I managed to get a lot of writing in. It's intense, here, with stories and poems and magazines my wildly-successful alter ego is being published in. They're so underground, if they'd get fertilized, they'd be stemmed and fruity. And while I used to wonder why people were so proud to be published in these underground mags, now I kind of get it. There's a lot of talent in these things that I'd never see normally, not in my everyday world where I hear a lot of NPR and talk to exactly three people (two over the phone) on average. There's a sneaky subversive thrill to it. I don't think of myself as subversive though. I'm too in love with sunshine rainbow pony magic for that. I mean. For pity's sake. You're talking to the person whose collection that doesn't include red glassware is housed in a box marked "MB's Unicorns--Fragile!"

And suddenly it makes perfect sense why NO ONE has guessed my pen name's true identity. I reckon he'd go after those unicorns with a vengeance. Probably because he lost an arm-wrestling match to a unicorn in a bar, and he's been haunted by the scene ever since. And now I am haunted by the scene, too. Perhaps this is why there are porcelain unicorns everywhere, and no porcelain hims. Har!

"Honey, you have to admit--"

"What?"

"Since the last time he's seen you, you've lost forty pounds, cut off all your hair, lost your best friend, and not had a week's worth of solid meals or sleep."

"So it really IS that noticeable."

Slow nod.

Ordinarily I'd wax poetic on being a year older, reflecting on this year's struggles and triumphs. My thankfulness at having a wonderful family and terrific friends. We're all hurting at the moment, all trying to go on with business as usual.

I planted a mess of bulbs yesterday, digging into the sod behind my house, pouring in bulb food, covering the tiny globes with rich dirt. I bought yesterday's paper. I'll use it to line the edges of that garden, to block weeds and allow moisture through. Cover it with mulch and it will become part of the earth itself. I can think of few better small tributes to two people who meant a great deal to me.

A couple of our dear friends came over last night to distract us with wine and Guitar Hero III. They brought the mead we'd gifted them with at their wedding--and the news that they'd found footage of him playing the guitar at her birthday celebration early this year. We did not watch it, not together, not yet, but knowing it's there is a comfort. Knowing--at all--is a comfort. I guess.

We watched Black Sheep last night, a movie my darling thought I'd like because it has mutant zombie sheep from beyond the edge of the Earth! Also New Zealand. So everyone has hilarious accents. And the special effects were alarmingly good. I recommend, if you're up for a night of sheep ... zombie ... horror.

I think it will spawn a new genre really. Because zombie sheep are just too rich a subject for such a light treatment.

I've been driving all over the place today, running errands and taking in what sights there are to be had. You know, a world-famous river sparking back autumn sunshine, wide flatlands and their ripening crops, brilliant road construction, new homes being built into that deafeningly blue sky ...

Typical October day in the good ol' M-O.

In a nod to insanity, which I haven't felt for awhile so this seems like as good a chance as any, I'm committing myself to NaNoWriMo next month. It will either kill me or inspire me, and I haven't had that dichotomy in a good long while. Take that, common decency! You have a new enemy. Emeny. Nemeny. Mnemonic device.

Notice how I didn't go for the Johnny Mnemonic joke, there. Because while I like wordplay ... I do not like The Movie Which Killed Cyberpunk, Thank You SO MUCH William Gibson.

All over the map today? Me? You say that like it's unusual.

I have never been so tired. Gut-deep tired. The kind of tired that makes my flesh feel like sliding off my bones, because it's not terribly happy about having to defy all this gravity. And I am not so sure how I can get past this, because sleeping and eating? Not so much happening. Which only makes everything worse.

You see, this is why I don't write when I'm down. Because whiny-self-pity mode is only fun for me. And even that isn't the greatest.

Sorry to be so cryptic. But, can't really talk about it. Just my reactions. And I am mostly sad. I think that has a lot to do with my low blood sugar, though. Best to treat that with chocolate. Excuse me.

The last two weeks are a blur of crazy move-in stories, not-so-crazy stories, some fiction thing I'm writing, and more work than seems possible. But through it all has been a continuous daffy grin that not only inhabits my face, but my sweetie's face too, and that has made everything worth it. That, and getting out of that apartment, which was not in itself such a bad place, but began to signify stuckness. And the house? I dig it. We dig it. Home ownership sits well on us.

And now that I have the internets back, the last piece has fallen into place. Ah yeah.