Wednesday, December 09, 2009

There's a Woman on the Outside, Looking Inside. Does She See Me?

Here's my little house in the snow.

So, I did end up going to work. It was an interesting walk there. The drifts were pretty high, so I got one hell of a work-out. When I got to quieter streets, I was able to walk on those instead of unshoveled sidewalks. I just don't like walking on busier streets, because I know it's hard enough for people to drive on such slick roads, let alone worry about pedestrians.

There were at least 10 people in my whole office. Luckily, one of them drives past my house on her way home, so she gave me a lift this evening when it was much colder. I think I'm going to try to drive as close to my building as possible tomorrow, so I'll only have to walk a few blocks in the bitter cold. Since my office is on campus, there is really no parking anywhere near it, without practically paying a day's salary to park in a ramp.

Here are the trees in the front of my house. They look a little ghostly don't they? Cool.

With all of the work I'm trying to do on my house lately, I realize my posts have been a little boring and detaily. My head has also been like that and it's usually not a good thing for me. I feel like I've been stifling my creative side the last few weeks. So, during lunch, after I read my blogs and Facebook wasn't doing a very good job of holding my interest, I Googled one of my old fiction writing teaching assistants. I love his writing, and he gets a lot of stories published, and some of them are available on-line. I discovered that he has his own Wikipedia entry now, which I thought was pretty cool.

Anyway, I also found a shorter, short story of his and it was really good. I had a friend suggest that I submit a story to one of those short "flash fiction" contests recently. After reading my ex-T.A.'s story, I'm even more intrigued with the idea. I'm going to try to work on a few ideas I have and see about submitting something, just to have a goal to make myself write. It might be a good exercise for me to keep my writing from being quite so long and babbling. How refreshing would that be for everyone? Very, I'm sure.

11 comments:

rel said...

Churlita,
Looking forward to your missives!!
rel

Susan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Susan said...

Awesome pictures. My camera is packed somewhere so pictures of my house basically don't exist.

I used to write a lot but anymore it just seems like my creativity has been completely zapped. Maybe I'll find it again someday.

SkylersDad said...

Great pictures, that is what we looked like until today. The sun is out, yippee!! I am looking forward to a little melt off, I am tired of running in the YakTracks.

Pamela said...

We like it all.

Tara said...

I love your house! It's so pretty sitting in the snow like that! And the snow actually looks pretty! We didn't get much snow last night. There's a bit on the ground and lots of globs of ice, and it's freezing outside.

Brando said...

Our snow was about average, but the winds were insane yesterday. Drifts everywhere.

You should definitely submit some of your stuff.

j-dub said...

crazy snow! some friends of ours are in Ames and posted hi-larious videos of their puppy doing the puppy hop through the snow.

We only got an inch or two in ann arbor but got all the frozen, windy cold.

Ananda girl said...

Your house is beautiful in the snow! What a wonderful shot.

Good luck on the story... you won't need it, but the wish is there anyway.

laura b. said...

I love your snowy house and tree photos. Snow in its brief pristine state :-)
Churlita, you are a wonderful writer. Anything you could do to nurture that gift sounds great to me.

booda baby said...

as long as everyone has a way to get warm again, big bad snows are THE most wonderful thing in the whooooole world! You know they're going to happen and the whole business world will get all messed up but that's the deal, isn't it? Yuuuummmm!

The exercise of short fiction will, I think, be great for you. I know you have a crushing schedule (well, it'd crush me), but when you're weighing things up - WAIT. How weird. I was thinking about saying/writing something about how writing/getting your story/some version of that is soooo important, blah blah blah. But .... either it is or it isn't and one is not better than the other. Wheee. I like that insight, early in the morning. :) THanks!!

(I want you to write so much because I love your writing.)