You ever look out the window to check the weather, and then check the weather online, and wonder whether the weather online is the weather for your area – or maybe it’s the wrong day – because it just doesn’t match?
Yeah.
Feels Like…
I was checking the temperature for our area via Wunderground. It said, “104.3 F.” Underneath, it said, “Feels like 78 F”.
We wondered where they were, that they were so optimistically cool.
May!
Hey writers, it’s May!
You didn’t know? Sorry, I didn’t mean to spring it on you. Guess I should have included a spoiler alert.
I’m lovin’ May so far. Here in Ashlandia, the rain has ceased. We’re in a delightfully pleasant crease of weather, greenery, fresh air and blooms. ‘Spring’, some call it.
Whatever, the days are longer and sunshine rich. The furnace didn’t kick on last night, one of the traditional signs of spring arriving here. That warmth, long days and sunshine platter feeds my writing and creative energies, enabling a surge of writing like crazy.
How ’bout you? Do you find the seasons, weather or daylight affects your writing?
Today’s Theme Music
Theme music is often about setting the stage for what’s about to happen. It’s a familiar, establishing your expectations.
On some days, I like defiant theme music to play in my head. They’re not necessarily days when I battling conditions; these can also be days when I’m determined to complete a task or pursue a dream.
Other days find me seeking melancholy theme music for accompaniment, fun music, or dance music. Theme music that’s nostalgic to me is frequent. That’s not surprising. Nostalgia is all about trying to achieve a particular state of mind. For me, that balance was often about hopes and dreams, youth and maturity, satisfaction and eagerness to pursue life.
The weather also affects my theme music choices. Today’s song, though, hits in many areas for me. It’s pouring rain through balmy air and upset winds. So I’m reaching for a song that accompanies my mind’s drift toward nostalgia and weather but remains something that
T2POIM
Writing is about learning what you like to read and then learning what you like to write and then writing what you like to read. That’s my opinion. Naturally.
So today’s Things That Probably Only Interest Me (T2POIM) is about our local temperature. Arriving home yesterday just past five in the pre-evening (or post-afternoon), I checked the temps. Thirty-seven F. Sweet.
We’ve had days of colder weather that we’re used to. I’m not bragging that ours was cold because I know my sisters were out shopping in twelve degree weather. We never went that low.
That’s the thing, however. We usually don’t go low on temps. A few times per winter finds temps in the low twenties and high teens, which is what we’ve been experiencing. As our homes aren’t built to endure that, we need to attend matters like the furnace, pipes and cats to ensure nothing freezes on us.
Thirty-seven yesterday pre-evening marked the first time that we were over freezing that late in the day. I skated through some relief with a mental cry that the worse was over. But I kept watching the temp. Six: thirty-seven. Seven: thirty-seven. Eight: thirty-seven.
Midnight: thirty-seven.
By now, I believed my weather station was kaput. But local online stations showed the same temperature. So…I went to bed.
Three: thirty-seven.
Six: thirty-seven.
Seven: thirty-seven.
Eight: thirty-seven.
I went to Southern Oregon University’s online weather station. It’s physically situated several hundred feet lower in elevation and in a field where either sun or fog often envelops it. Its temp was but one degree below our temp. Pulling up their graphs, I saw the same results I’d noticed at home: the temperature hadn’t changed since five PM yesterday.
By ten, our temperature had finally climbed to thirty-eight. But it struck me as astonishing, that through a winter night and past sunrise, the temperature remained the same. Of course, seeing the thick cloud cover and then the rain, I knew a warm front had moved in.
It’s interesting. I’m sure, though, seeing an unchanging temperature over fifteen hours remains a T2POIM.
Winter Has Come
Snow has been sneaking down the surroundings mountains day by day since mid-November. I’ve tracked its progress, glancing up to see peaks and fields sporting new white blankets, setting off the barren brown and evergreens. Last night, under the night shield, the snow advanced to us.
We’re not the valley floor. That’s about two thousand feet further down, but one to three inches at our location is significant for the I-5 corridor. For just fourteen miles from us is the pass. This is where I-5 makes it through the mountain range between northern California and southern Oregon. It’s an impressive climb, in the top ten at least, of climbs I’ve driven, although way down from the scale of those encountered in the Rockies and Alps.
The pass isn’t looking bad this morning. The absent sunshine and temperatures hovering around freezing aren’t good signs for easy commutes but the roads are fairly clear. Just beware of black ice. About as far as I’m commuting is down to the coffee shop, lucky me. I’ll drive down there and then walk around downtown, stimulate the writing juices, and look for The Wall, the men of the Watch and white walkers.
Impressions
a spattering
a sprinkling
a drizzle
a spit
a smattering
a storm
a torrent
a flood
a dark day
a warm day
a cool day
a breeze
a sniffle
a cough
a blow
a sneeze
Conversations with Self
Perfect, I think, 71 degrees F in the house, perfect, I think, with a cool breeze laden with soft tinctures of damp grasses sweep in through the office window, an unexpected delivery. Outside, the sun is flexing its blaze, awing the blue sky. Outside promises heat, the kind dreamed of during frigid winters.
My perfection doesn’t align with my wife’s idea of perfection. When 78 degrees inflamed the office and the windows were closed against the 92 degree heat outside, my wife declared her pleasure with the heat. “I’d rather be too hot than too cold.”
Yes, all of it is a spectrum, I speak to myself. Nothing seems absolute. Everything in our existence seems to be on a spectrum. I toy with the spectrum of spectrums that merge and blend into a spectrum of reality and existence.
Is truth somewhere on a spectrum? No, but our understanding of truth exists on a spectrum, the understanding, interpretation and application of truth and facts through spectrums.
Spectrums and cycles. I travel cycles of darkness and light, balancing along spectrums of happiness. Spectrums of determination and desire. Spectrums of energy and willpower. Nothing is black and white for me and my spectrums. Emotions, dream, urges and frustrations pedaling with frenzy, I cycle through my spectrums.
I’m going through a cycle of thinking that propels me toward optimism, joy and happiness on my spectrum. Are joy and happiness the same, I question, and cast a net to define the differences. Imagination intrudes. Story concepts take seed and bloom. I want to be done with what I’m writing so I can write more, explore these other ideas, discover these characters and their situations, lay out their story. I want to finish painting the guest room and the bathrooms’ trim so I can work on the yard, cut the grass, pull weeds, trim plants and bushes. I want to walk a long distance in the hot sun and free the sweat from my body. I want to load up junk, and clean the closets and drawers, and take items to the Goodwill, and I want to sit somewhere by an ocean’s side, smelling its breeze, hearing those waves, sipping a beer, or wine, alone or with others.
Life is good, in this spectrum’s neighborhood. And then, I tell myself, go edit. Go proofread. Go write. And I close the window, because the breeze is gone.
