Well, here we are.
Today is February 19. After a week of temperatures in the 60s and 70s, even flirting with 80 one day, out of relative nowhere we are scheduled to get a snowstorm tonight and tomorrow that will dump an up-to-now unseen amount of snow on us for the season.
This is new. This was not a thing a few days ago. Three days ago it was almost eighty degrees here in Omaha. Today? Snow is coming, m'lord.
I'm not sure how much I believe it, honestly. We've been lucky so far this winter in that most snow has been light and fluffy and very, very infrequent. We have had to shovel the driveway only once, for one other storm in December or early January (honestly, I can't remember when, that's how long ago it was since we had any actual meteorogically-significant snow).
It comes during a very weird time for us personally-speaking. Yes, we normally get a decent snowstorm sometime in February, so it tracks weather-wise, but it's odd for us personally. This time last year, Daisy was just getting ready to start her new job and I was about to start my leave between jobs for two weeks (something I did on purpose to get some downtime). This year, at my new job, Presidents' Day on Monday was a holiday, and I worked it normally -- which means I got yesterday off as my "comp day" for it. Today is a day to "get shit done" around the house, so to speak, for me. Tomorrow will be too, since it's now apparent we'll be snowed in, so...I feel sort of like I'm in a bit of limbo downtime, unscheduled and unexpected.
I was supposed to have a follow-up dental appointment tomorrow afternoon, something we'd scheduled at the beginning of the month. That has now been canceled and we have not yet been able to reschedule it -- they'll need to call me. Apparently, and as expected, a buttload of people have called to cancel their appointments for tomorrow, making a logistical nightmare for the dental office ladies to try to reschedule things for everyone. I told Daisy that I wanted to call it early, even before the snow started, because I knew this would be a thing, and it would be difficult to get it rescheduled because of that.
Please note: if it doesn't get rescheduled immediately, it's not a huge issue -- I have two more appointments already on the calendar for said dentist over the course of the next year. I'll be fine.
For Daisy, this storm also comes at a strange time as she and I now have our weekend days off together for the first time in a very long time, due to a recent schedule change on her part. Fridays is now when we take care of our errands, doctor's appointments, do our shopping, visit the parents, etc. This storm coming tonight is going to throw a wrench into any plans we had for that this weekend. Luckily, we do have a new episode of The Pitt and a new episode of Starfleet Academy both dropping today, so as long as the power doesn't go out, we should be able to have a pleasant evening and day off together tomorrow.
And then we'll have to shovel ourselves out.
The last big, significant snowstorm we had was about a week or two into our new jobs last year -- we got a snowstorm in early March that started out as rain, then quickly turned to ice and blizzard conditions with snow and high winds. It knocked out our power for hours in the middle of the workday, and because at the time I was on days at the new job and was still getting accesses to things and working through trainings, I just came upstairs and took a nap with all of the cats -- who, because it was cold, decided to all come and lay with me:
That was back when Pete was still with us, when Mable didn't hate Emmy, and when Charlie was still a baby. This picture was taken when the power was still out, as evidenced by the fact that the clock on the far side of the room is still dark. It is dated March 19, so yes, it is still possible and sometimes even probable that Omaha gets snowstorms well into March.
Today, eleven months later to the day, we may be put into the same situation.
Well, minus one cat and plus another, anyway.
I am not a fan of these "surprise" snowstorms that prove that weather can change in the midwest at the drop of a hat. A month from now we'll be readying for our trip to North Carolina, and something like this is the absolute last thing I want to happen before we leave or while we're gone.
By daylight this morning, all of the schools around the area had already closed for the day because of the incoming storm -- hours upon hours before the first flakes would fall. It is now almost noon, we are now coming up on the start of the Winter Storm Warning, and it's 29 degrees and sunny outside. You'd never know there was a storm coming if you didn't check the weather forecasts. Normally I can smell it in the air, normally I get a bad nosebleed right before the storm hits (worst mutant power ever, by the way) and so far, nothing.
Will we actually get the snow they're predicting? Who knows. We frequently get forecasts for snowstorms that turn out to be nothing, or a dusting. Then again, we've had forecasts where the weather people have been like "oh, it'll be 2-4 inches" and we get nine. With thunder and lightning. So, it's really a wait and see scenario, I think.
What else is coming up? Well...
We got a letter in the mail last week that since we had a new furnace installed, the utility board people need to come out and perform an inspection. I called and set that up, and it's set for a week from today (when hopefully there won't be another snowstorm happening). It'll be from 2-4pm, somewhere in that window, and I told Daisy I'll handle it so she doesn't have to worry about taking extra time off work or anything like that. There's almost no scenario where I wouldn't be awake by 2pm on one of my days off, so it's not a big deal. The inspection is "free" in that the cost of it was covered in the furnace installation costs, and as it's a brand new furnace I don't expect it to take longer than a few minutes.
Two days later, on the last day of the month, Dolly goes in to get her last set of shots -- and then, unless something unforeseen happens, she is free and clear for the next year when it comes to vet visits. The little girl is growing like a weed and I fully expect her to have very high amounts of Maine Coon DNA in her once we get the test results back.
She and Gary are also in love.
Gary adores the little girl and they cuddle frequently, usually after a long sparring play session. She in turn very clearly adores Gary as well. I call them The New Lovers because, obviously, Hank and Emmy are the older, much more established couple of the household.
To be fair, she does cuddle a lot with Charlie too, and plays hard with both of the boys -- but Gary has bonded strongly to this little rugrat and loves to be with her. He has little trilling cries he makes when he's trying to find her. It's adorable. Aside from us, nobody loves little Dolly more or spends more time with her than Gary. This is, honestly, what I expected from the beginning.
Anyway.
Last weekend, I dove into my, shall we say, professional writing and worked on a short story I've had rolling around in my head for years. It is not complete yet, but my goal is to try to get it complete this weekend. When it comes to my actual writing, I'll start with a premise I want to explore -- an idea that I've usually written down far in advance, and then I'll start from there. Sometimes the story goes where I expect it to as I'm writing, and other times it absolutely does not -- it'll veer off course into something completely different. For this one, the original premise I came up with years ago remains mostly the same, but the story itself has tightened and has gone off in a much more focused direction. I told Daisy -- after I had written fifteen pages of it in the span of about six hours -- that it had changed so much from what I originally had envisioned for it that at this juncture, I do not know where it is going to go next or where and how it's going to end. It is also going some very creepy places that I did not expect it to. When the muse strikes me and I just keep writing, I have to make sure that a) I'm not just writing trash, and b) I let it take me where it needs to go. When I'm writing my stories I am not so much a writer as I am the vessel for the story to unfold through onto the page.
I'd also like to say I'm not generally a genre writer, but this book I've been working on here and there for a few years now is very much a genre book of genre stories, generally horror-ish in nature. Well -- I'll rephrase that -- they're not horror stories per se, but a lot of them dip into that category, whether it's a toe or foot or a whole-body. I'll put it this way -- a lot of what I write would work really well as episodes of The Twilight Zone. TZ isn't really horror, though some episodes of it certainly could be classified as horror, but it has been a huge inspiration in my storytelling style over the years. My stories don't usually have a twist ending, but they do tend to gravitate towards a "zoom out so that the reader can see the whole picture" sort of ending vibe to a lot of them. It's complicated to explain.
At the same time I don't pretend I'm a better writer than I am. I've read stuff from my peers -- even stuff they'd written when we were all in grad school well over a decade ago -- that blew my own writing out of the water. I just want to be me; I am not trying to live anyone else's dream but my own. I don't compare myself to my peers in any meaningful sense because taste is subjective and a rising tide raises all ships in the water. I want my peers, my friends, to be successful and to follow their own writing dreams too, and many have -- I have, on my desk across the room, three different books by people I know and know well, one of whom was in my wedding. They are not the types of books I want to write but they are very good and their authors are successful in their endeavors, and I applaud them, laud them, for being able to accomplish their goals. It is hard to write a book, and even harder to find someone who wants to publish and print it, to take the gamble on spending that money for what will likely not be a huge return on investment in the 21st century.
But, I do think I have talent, and I do think my writing would be well liked in a lot of circles. I'm sure many others would call it hacky and a waste of time, and that would also be valid. Not everyone has to love me or praise me. If people dislike my writing, or me, oh well. Let them.
Daisy is currently reading a book called Let Them and has been telling me about parts of it, and it basically covers this concept and addresses people like me, who are control freaks about a great number of things. I don't agree with a lot of what the book says -- it perpetuates a lot of myths and logical fallacies that are easy for people of our intelligence to pick apart -- but as of late, I've been doing a lot better in learning how to just let shit go. Mind you, I've never been a "people pleaser" in the first place -- primarily because nothing I ever do seems to please anyone and long ago I stopped trying -- but I do like the concept of letting go and letting people drown in their own shit, so to speak.
Anyway. Onward.
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