Talking About the Weather

Two inches of snow with blizzard conditions. That’s our weather forecast for Wednesday. It’s almost calendar Spring, and we’re faced with a blizzard. Today, the high is going to be seventy-five. Tomorrow, blizzard conditions. You may wonder how we can have two inches of snow that’s a blizzard. Blizzards are all about the blowing, not the snowing. We’ve been getting some pretty fierce wind gusts lately, one of which took out a tree in our side yard.

We talk about weather here in Missouri, mostly because our weather is strange. Tornadoes in February? We’ve had them. Snowstorms in April? That too. Thundersnow? Of course. Seventy-five degrees followed by blizzard conditions? That’s the next couple of days. This is the only place I’ve seen that can simultaneously have floods and fire warnings.

I need to prep for the weather. How? Short sleeves? A snow shovel?

The Grey Time

We’re moving into the grey time, where the holiday red and green and tinsel are a memory, the white snow is muddied, and the new year is weeks old. The sun hasn’t shown itself in weeks and the days are still too short. Now is the time I want to hibernate until I start smelling the grass begin to perk up.

In an agrarian world, everyone would be resting this time of year, storing up for the busy three seasons (I think. I am not an anthropologist.) But this is not my world. I go to work and teach my classes, then (as in today) go to the brightly-lit Starbucks and work on writing.

Coffee helps my mood, as does accomplishment. And I give myself credit for every little accomplishment to boost myself. “Yay! I got up! Hurrah! I wrote 300 words! Yippee! I cleaned the toilet!”

I will persevere. If I get too depressed, I know to talk to my doctor. But: “Yay! I’m going to class!”

Writing in the Winter

It’s been cold, windy, and snowy. We haven’t had a winter like this for a while. I’ve felt snowed in lately; I haven’t spent time at Starbucks for two weeks. I blame my difficulty in writing right now on this.

My personal sanctum at home is not available to me either. Ever since I got a new computer, the dock to the dual monitors no longer works. And there’s the fact that my darling Me-Me peed on my old computer in there and I’m afraid of the waterworks once more.

What I’d like is some time at Starbucks. Preferably with my husband, so I can talk things over with him. Someplace with noise, with people. I need noise to write, which is why I’m probably ADHD (I’m serious about this; no one has diagnosed me but I do not sit still well).

I sound cranky. I am cranky. What to do?

Winter and … winter

It doesn’t take the snow here much to disintegrate into oily puddles in the street, and muddy divots in my driveway. Even the snow on the lawns has taken on a grimy tinge where it has not melted completely.

This is not how our snow looks like right now.
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

But while the snow falls, while the trees accumulate a blanket on their shoulders, I live in a fairyland. I live in a place where the cardinals silhouette against the snow and Christmas has reappeared, just for a moment. Because the snow will only last for a minute, and then the gritty winter of Northwest Missouri appears again.

I used to live in a place that, when they had snowy winters, the snow would accumulate six inches at a time and consistently fall weekly through the winter. This wouldn’t happen every year, but in the years that it did, I stared at white lawns, wondering how anything could seem that pristine. Back then, I didn’t drive, so I had to walk and take buses through that weather. It was dangerous; I discovered this after a couple of falls and sliding down the hill. I marveled at the snow anyhow.

Right now we’re at the gritty and cold winter in Northwest Missouri. Fallen leaves and brown grasses stick up through the patchy snow, and I miss the comforting snow of the past couple of days. This, too, is winter; I can’t wait for Spring to start.

The Winter That Was Barely There

Today we finally have a Winter day — three inches of snow on the ground and 31 degrees, so we’ll have the snow through tomorrow. That’s been the status of our snow. Barely enough to cover the ground, barely long enough to call a snow cover. No snow days in my future.

All our snow, strangely, gets forwarded to Kirksville, some 150 miles away. Or malingers just north of Omaha. We keep acting as if the big one is coming in any minute, but then we get barely enough to cover the ground. One doesn’t even have to shovel it, just look cross-eyed at the sidewalk.

Oh, do I long for the eight inches of snow weekly I got back in Oneonta! Now that was Winter! We still didn’t have snow days because New Yorkers are hardy! (They’re also talented complainers, at least the downstate variety are.) To be honest, it was a pain in the ass parking up the side of a hill with an inch of ice at the curb. But it was a camaraderie, hoping our cars were still there when we left the party.

So I’m going to look out the window watching the snow slowly melt. By tomorrow, we will have marshy ground again and it will freeze when we have no snow on the ground. And so it will cycle till Spring, which will come with a sudden fluffy snowstorm just to irk us here in Maryville.

Hurray! The Writer’s Block is Gone!

I have been struggling with writer’s block so badly that I have to push myself to write 1000 words a day, which is about half of what I write when I’m not struggling.

But these past three days I have been writing! Up to 2000 words a day with the words flowing through my fingertips and two, maybe three, chapters gone through. Hallelujah, I might even complete this book!

The book I’m working on is the next Kringle Chronicles book, Kringle on Fire. The characters are a single mom and a firefighter, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t go the way most of those books go. I try not to write stereotyped, overly built firefighters and damsels in distress. Just like I like to include sardonic old ladies, gamers, a group of somewhat clueless frat boys, a sympathetic Karen, and the Kringle Society.

I better get back to writing.

Another broken promise of snowstorms

Once again, the major snowstorm misses us.

We were expecting 8-12 inches here in the far northwest corner of Missouri, but now we’ve been downgraded to 6-10 inches, and I personally doubt we’ll even get 6. My bet is on 5 inches, not more than a normal storm would drop.

I love snowstorms, much as I like thunderstorms. This might be privilege on my part, because I can stay at home and teach if the weather gets bad out. As a child, I had privilege. I remember my dad driving 30 miles home in the snow and my mother starting to worry half an hour before he was supposed to get home. He had little choice, unless the snow was so bad in the morning that the roads were closed.

When the snow gets bad enough on the interstate in Wyoming, the Department of Transportation literally closes the interstate with gates and locks at the ramps. I remember driving on a ramp to I-80 just as they were unlocking the gate, car stopped behind several 18-wheelers, waiting to get through. I drove slowly on that road and arrived home 10 hours later.

So I love snowstorms even though I don’t think I should. I like buying supplies as if we’re going to spend a week marooned in the house (and with COVID, I don’t even know why isolation is something I relish). I enjoy looking out the window and seeing only white, and hearing the muffled sounds of a snow plow. I hope we get a snowstorm like that today.

Adapting to Adversity

We got snow in October. Ask me how I feel about it.

This is a year to feel cheated. COVID has cheated us of extended family and friends, our old routines, and recreation. And now, my outraged brain shouts, “Autumn has been canceled due to snow!”

But it’s not as simple as that, for COVID or for Autumn.

The snow will melt soon and we’ll have Autumn again — maybe the dreary, rainy sort, but nonetheless Autumn. And we will have life with a more controlled COVID, although not for a while unless a proper vaccine is available.

In the meantime we will become resilient, adapt to the new situation, using the greatest strength we have as humans. We will joke about snownados in December and curse 2020 as the most calamitous year ever. But we will adapt as we have been adapting, for the first rule of the universe is “Adapt or die”.

Everyday vs Writerly Stuff

It’s snowing thirty miles north of us.

Yes, it’s only halfway through the month of October, and southern Iowa is getting snow. We’re just getting the greyest skies imaginable, with a bit of fog and a touch of wind. I’m ready for snow — heck, I’m ready for anything with my cup of ginger tea and my cranking weather radio because I’m a Midwesterner.

I want to write about more than the weather, however. Because this blog is often a warm-up for my other writing (such as the novel I’ll be writing for NaNo), I tend to write off the top of my head, which involves:

1) Weather

2) Setting

3) Where my head is at

4) What I’ve been up to

Maybe that’s okay. I’ve put up a writers’ blog where I’m talking about more writerly stuff at lleachie.wixsite.com/laurenleachsteffens . I don’t write as often there because I don’t write writerly things every day. I will be mobilizing that as my writers’ website very soon.

But I should tell you that The Kringle Conspiracy is available for pre-order on Amazon. Type in my full name, and you should be able to find it!

April Snowstorm

We’re under a winter storm warning. We’re supposed to get 4-10 inches of snow today. In April.

The timing is all wrong. This should have happened on April 1st.

I don’t know what to do but laugh, because the alternative is to scream. Isolation is starting to be a bit difficult for me, and a dump of snow when it’s supposed to be Spring is just making matters worse.

I have no choice, though, but to shelter in place during the pandemic. I have no choice but to accept that our spring is going to be bifurcated by ten inches of wet, cold fluff. I don’t get a say in matters beyond my control, so I sit behind my computer and field work emails and work on improving my writing.

But what to do with the mood — with the tiredness, with the frustration, with the crabbiness? I’m not sure. Maybe I need to sleep more, but I get 8-9 hours of sleep a day. Maybe I need to sleep deeper. Maybe I need to get out — oh, wait, we’re on shelter-in-place and a major snowstorm is coming.

All I can do is keep my sense of humor up and stay productive. And drink coffee, definitely drink coffee.