It snowed last night. A lot. And it’s still snowing. Not the gorgeous, clumpy first snow, the steady kind that keeps coming like it’s clocking in for a shift.

It can stop now.

I cooked pasta e fagioli for the first time yesterday, which meant leftovers today. It was… respectable. I’m still in my “try to use up what you have” era, though I did order cannellini beans especially for it. So maybe it’s “I wish it were pasta e fagioli,” but I’m going to count it.

But I wouldn’t invite Stanley Tucci over to eat it.

While in the kitchen, I started listening to The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa. It’s sweet. It’s a little like 50 First Dates, except it’s a mathematician whose memory resets every eighty minutes, and a housekeeper and her son who slowly become part of his world.

My January strategy is always read-read-read. Listen-listen-listen. I never know what the rest of the year will look like, reading-wise. Right now I’m five books ahead of my Goodreads goal, almost six. Let’s hope this year allows for plenty of soul-nourishing reading. 

The water tried to freeze in the downstairs bathroom yesterday. I call that bathroom “the dungeon” because it’s cold and weird and it doesn’t get much wifi signal, so trying to listen to an audiobook while doing laundry sucks.

Thankfully, I knew where the space heater was, and Barry had it set up in a jiffy. Disaster averted. So far.

This morning:

I read more in a poetry craft book.
I wrote a poem.

Regardless of the heat-holding powers of curtains, Word Raccoon insisted on having them open today so she could watch the snow.

She wrote a poem.

I wrote another poem. Or maybe two. Can’t decide if they are pieces of a whole or not.

I scanned today’s New Yorker Books & Fiction newsletter this morning and was reminded that today is Virginia Woolf’s birthday. I clicked the link that took me to a 1954 article about her, which made me feel “less than” because I can’t keep facts (especially dates) about her life in my head, though her fiction is part of who I am now.

Which made me remember how easily Gretchen Rubin can quote Woolf, and I felt even more miserable.

I downloaded a couple of Woolf’s nonfiction books, though I’m pretty sure I already have them somewhere in the house, vowing to do better, to re-read them ASAP, pen in hand, even though I feel like you can know someone much better from their fiction and poetry than their nonfiction.

But I metabolize fiction and facts and churn it back out as art, and sometimes I literally can’t remember the facts. Which is so frustrating.

Or if I’m trying to retrieve something in a social situation, my brain goes blank sometimes. Sigh. 

Anywho, this all brought up for me a trait of Woolf’s writing that I still haven’t learned to incorporate into my own, but should, which is restraint.

I overexplain, on the page, in real life. I’m so afraid of being misunderstood. (I just cut two sentences so I wouldn’t overexplain more, LOL.) 

Word Raccoon is raspberrying all this. She says I’m stressing about nothing, that we should just live, dance, like we did earlier today.

But then again, she ate cake for breakfast and is seriously considering having it for supper, too, so how much can her wisdom be relied upon?

She did say that I should tell you: my poem “White Lake Fish” has been accepted for publication by Midsummer Dream House. I’m grateful to them for choosing my work. 

Stay warm out there, and safe, any of you who are experiencing the white stuff. Word Raccoon and I are begrudgingly resigned to staying home until things clear up a bit.