Lots of ideas are coming to mind today. I’m surfing the wave created by this past weekend’s creative energy. As I say, ride it while you can.

I considered scrapping yesterday’s dispatch because I was attempting to create absolutes where there were not any. I have never before scrapped a dispatch but this morning I came really close. My writing and horse lives are actually intertwined – for instance, last year I did a horse related reading in Sutton, and this past year I did a horse related presentation in Palmer. And horsey and non-horsey friends showed up.

Now that the weekend’s presentations are over, I’m moving on. We got a considerable snowfall last night and this morning. I am learning in dealing with snow to be in present. Little kids are this way. They just go outside and play in it. I am enjoying it now – I will be enjoying it less so in a few hours when I will have to go outside and assist Pete in moving it around. Ugh.

I am looking forward to knocking the snow off the hoop house but not looking forward to shoveling it out of the pathways. Ugh, ugh, and more ugh. I have often said to Pete that rather move it, we should just wait for it to melt. This very astute remark has, of course fallen on deaf ears. After all, moving snow is what adults do.

I told Pete this morning, at breakfast, that I am glad to live in a place in that’s in the mornings is quiet This is conducive to getting work done and I do not take having it for granted. Then again, I could easily live in my sister Eleanor’s place in Portland. The background noise there never bothers me and she has really nice neighbors.

I have, since getting up this morning been working on two poems, one entitled Superwoman at 30 and Mr. Lonelyhearts. The latter is about Ranger, the goat and the propensity that humans have for naming things. I will get rough drafts done before I go outside at 2 today. And I will revise them as I move snow.

I made a list of my March projects. The goat reception/reading/exhibit is a priorty. And the Northwest Horse Source article on breathing is a priority. And the Creativity Workshop bibliography is a priority. All this takes time to do – and as importantly, a much needed high degree of focus.

I pause for a second, and think about this matter of high degree of focus. I would not have a high degree of focus if I lived in warmer clime. Right up until now I considered winter to be a time of year to be gotten through. But this is the best time of year for getting writing done. If I lived in a place where it was summer, I’d never get any work done. People who live in such places are outside most of the time. My situation would be worse in that I, who know what it’s like to spend considerable time cooped up inside would want to be outside.

So I need to again count my lucky stars, of which there are an infinite number, far too many to count.

Next: 52. 2/21/17: The Horse Life: A Letter to Beth Theisen