A Delightfully Dreary Tuesday

There's been lots of cooking lately.  I am working hard to cook a lot ahead of time so that I can eat more healthily during the week.  This is a potato celeriac soup with a giant carrot added for more nutrition.


The cold snap has passed and now it's settled in the mid forties for highs and mid to low thirties for lows.  Needless to say we are feeling a little more comfortable.  The rain is here and it's just wonderful the way it makes everything seem darker, greyer, and deeper.  We are feeling cozy with our Christmas tree and lights up and most of the laundry done.  I mucked out the chicken run today and I feel a new layer of relief because I have neglected the hens too much and I've been meaning to get out there to clean out the sodden and dirty hay and give them a whole new bale which for them is the same as clean sheet night for us. 

Seeing chickens enjoy themselves has an infectious quality.  Knowing that your hens have a clean hen house, fresh hay to pick apart, and will be warmer is reflective of your own inner cleanliness and warmth. 

It was nice being in the rain, using my sore muscles to move about a hundred pounds of muck, observe that what looks so unprepossessing is one of the most valuable resources for earth beneath my feet. 

I have spent most of my day painstakingly deleting spam from all the posts on my blog.  I am supposed to be checking that regularly with this blog platform and I just can't get used to having to work so hard- Wordpress and Blogger aren't so complicated to keep swept clean of crap.  I have accumulated over 6,000 spam comments that actually got published and I have to go through my comments page by tedious page to find them all and report them as spam.  Then I have to delete the spam.  But the real doozie is that I have over 30,000 spam comments waiting for me to decide what to do with them...I am not able to empty the whole file at once.  I can only do it page by page...there are twenty per page...I went through about 3,000 of them today and not a single one could remotely be mistaken for anything but spam.

It's going to take me a lot more hours to clean it all up. 

So I've had a few thoughts while going through all these nasty comments and having to carefully avoid deleting the comments from all of you.  First of all- I can't believe people visiting here and looking at old posts have had to see 88 teen sex comments at a whack.  That's brutal.  A total assault on the senses.  So, for all of you who have hung around in spite of the growing collection of porn links and weird foreign comments that make no sense and make one's head feel like exploding...thank you for sticking around.

Another thing that really struck me is that I am very fortunate to have so many really kind, caring, and supportive people checking in on me and my peculiar corner of the universe.  Going through all my comments means that I am also rereading many of yours.  It's really amazing how much people share here of their own experiences because it makes this blog not merely my story, but yours as well. 

I also feel a renewed sense of purpose and determination to keep going forward and letting this space evolve and be true to who I am.  I'm happy that I separated my content into two blogs because I'm very proud of Stitch and Boots and you can go there and get useful information and not be asked to think on questions of faith, government, the evilness of Michael Vick, or have your beliefs questioned.  You can go and learn and be hopefully inspired.  The editorial content is being purposely kept to a minimum.  Which allows me to be able to be whatever I am, think whatever I'm thinking out loud here. 

This is like my mental sketchbook. 

I am always on the verge of forcing myself to write things that will gladden hearts and make everyone feel all fuzzy.  It's not always fun being the person who is throwing little daggers at the heart balloons and tripping the clown.  Writing here often leaves me temporarily raw but it draws things out of me that need to come to light.  I write on a private journal as well for the very off the charts stuff which needs more time to breath before being brought into the open.  But it makes a difference to be telling my stories, exploring my philosophies, and trying out ideas where others live too.  Where others might sit down and find something of themselves waiting for them to be uncovered.

I missed a couple of comments that I just found tonight and so I also wanted to say to anyone who has come here and left something of themselves and has gotten only silence in return- I am so sorry!  It never feels good to leave a little piece of your thoughts, your voice, or your ideas and be ignored.  I will work harder not to miss comments that come in* so that people like Martin, who shyly commented and said such really wonderful things, won't feel unimportant or unheard.

So even though my head hurts from reading almost 6,000 bold pieces of spam tonight, and my skin is crawling with the dirty things I tried not to see, and even though I'm a little bit depressed at witnessing the side of life that propels human beings to send such horrid shit to other human beings like little poison darts through the ether...

I am reminded of some very good things. All those really wonderful pieces of other people that I relished the first time I was entrusted with them- I got to feel the true weight of them tonight.

I also want to mention that the book I wrote this summer isn't finished yet.  I'm not sure when it's going to be finished.  I had such a fire in me to finish this summer and that was the most intense bout of writing I've ever done in my entire life.  When I got to 108,000 words I felt cross eyed with them all.  I know that some details need to be adjusted that may require quite a bit of small but tedious shifting to make it right.  What I realized is that that first book is the one that has to be perfect.  I mean it has to be absolutely 100% intentional and polished and exquisite and while I hope any book I write might be perfect, there is room now for other books to form without that same degree of emotional stitching and bleeding.  I can't explain it but Jane and Isaac need time to rest so that I can come back to them and make them live exactly as they're supposed to.

I am writing notes for my next book and this one will be a series and it will not require me to rip myself open so that I can remove the bones of ghosts just to get it all on the page.  It will not be as dark and I intend for it to be successful.

I just thought it was time to give an update on the book writing.

Good night all of you out there- I'm really happy to know part of you.





*For you techies...I used to have comment notification but because this blog likes me to create a pending comments file full of 30,000 crappy ass fake comments full of gross things I got overwhelmed with the massive numbers of emails I was getting which freaks my anxiety into full combustion mode.  I think there may be a couple of things I can do but I need to consult with my blog tech guru friend who knows everything in the universe and sadly thinks I do too.