The Nightlife Baby....

I do my best work at three a.m. . My best work, creatively speaking. I probably don't do my best work where let's say, laundry, is concerned at this particular hour. Come to think of it, I wouldn't say there IS an hour where I do my best laundry work. I can only imagine that my two teenagers think I am insane and stay up all night... in addition to thet other examples of my insanity that I provide them with on a daily basis. I wonder if one of them is making a list... "reasons why we are sure our mom is insane." Whew. Let's hope not.

Truthfully... I am so tired at 930 p.m. every night I can barely hold my eyes open. I have been known to fall asleep with the laptop on and humming away - three of four or seven photos open in photoshop... two or three or six blogs open to read. Josh nudges me awake and tells me I have been snoring or some other malarky, and I drag myself to bed. We all know I don't snore. Josh, he lies. But that's besides the point.

Then. In a flurry that I cannot explain, somewhere between the hours of 1230 and 330, I wake up with about a million ideas on my brain... all of which MUST be addressed, despite the hour. Ideas that do not include anything to do with grocery lists or yearbook money or teacher conferneces. Ideas that are juicy and delightful and need a box of markers or a keyboard to complete. Good ideas. Ideas that I need to talk about. Ideas I need to TELL someone... and since Josh is usually snoring (sometimes I think he confuses HIS snoring with mine) I find the internet is my friend. I think if the rest of the world got up at various ungodly hours of the night to flesh out all their creativity, the world would be a happier, less disgruntled place.

And. Let's face it. The internet? She is obviously a woman. First off, she doesn't snore. Second, she listens to everything I have to say without nodding off or changing the subject. I love her.

Perception.

"There's a point where you can give up on winter--when temptation can enter your soul, prying its way in like cold air through the cracks in your cabin--around January sixteenth or so, and this can make you realize that February's coming, and beyond February, March.

See, I don't yet realize that March will be the hardest month. Early February's the coldest, and often the snowiest, but March, strange, silent March, will be the hardest.

The danger in yielding to thoughts of spring--green grass, hikes, bare feet, lakes, fly-fishing, rivers, and sun, hot sun--is that once these thoughts enter your mind, you cant get them out.

Love the winter. Don't betray it. Be loyal.

When the spring gets here, love it too--and then the summer.

But be loyal to the winter, all the way through--all the way, and with sincerity--or you'll find yourself high and dry, longing for a spring that's a long way off, and winter will have abandoned you, and in her place you'll have cabin fever, the worst.

The colder it gets, the more you've got to love it."

~Rick Bass fr. Winter -Notes from Montana