I'm having a hard time writing here of late. I'm losing interest in all things me, all things diary-like. I guess the urge to purge ebbs and flows just as everything else does. I want to horde all my thoughts and all my plans and all my worries. I don't want to share. And also, I can't feel interesting. I can't feel that I know how to put two interesting words together. Clearly.

I'm also losing interest in all things social, all things involving people I do not already know well (wait. losing interest? Right. I guess I was, briefly, interested in the outside world. I'm all done with that now). I am bored senseless by my life sometimes, but I am more bored by me around other people.

I've been reading furiously. I've been cooking furiously. I've been hiking furiously (did another 10 miles yesterday morning--Buddy Black did not move until this morning. Most of yesterday I was blanketed by furry bodies: Bash at my feet, Buddy curled into my side, Harold front and center on my chest--lovely creatures). I've had the radio going and I have many thoughts about the coming war, the coming storm, yesterday's protests. I can't, however, put them here--I don't know where to begin. It exhausts me even to think of it.

I was up until 4 am last night furiously cooking because I suddenly became very afraid by the following words from the local forecast: "tree and power lines damage probable." Oh please, please please please, not again.

So I stayed up late making muffins (yes. muffins. with cornmeal and carrots. I don't know. I just don't know, my friends) and still more pizza. The crust on the pizza, for those of you with a high tolerance for utterly useless and irrelevant information: cornmeal/wheat. Yep. I'm like totally this flour expert now, you know. I have buckwheat, cornmeal, wheat, and all-purpose flour and baby I can mix it up. I flew into a little bit of a panic imagining waking up in a freezing house with no food again.

I was supposed to go to Derring Do's house last night for company and chili. I even said, as I always do, of course! I'd love to come! I haven't seen you guys in forever! God. I'm such a phony. I did want to go, but the impending storm panic (I'm like a depression-era gal, stuffing my money under the mattress--does that analogy make any sense?) required that I stay put and cook cook cook.

While cooking, I soothed my addled brain by watching Star Trek: TNG. I love that show. That show comforts me in ways that I do not understand. I find everything about it soothing: the way it looks, the way those automatic sliding doors sound (swoosh), the way Jean Luc Picard exudes wisdom and confidence (nothing can go wrong with him at the helm), the way Data aspires to be more than the sum of his parts, Worf's honor, the idealized universe, the hopeful future.

Ah fuck it. I don't care to finish my thoughts up there. I love ST:TNG, and it made last night a comforting womb-like night to have that show on the TV, the stove warming the house, the smells of food tricking me into not feeling so alone, the act of chopping vegetables and kneading dough giving me purpose. All in all, a good way to face off the demons of dread.

I have the heat up too high now. I want to trap as much as I can in this place. You know. Just in case. I know I'm being a little bit of a baby, but I just really don't want to be all alone in the freezing cold again. Please please please let this storm be all hype. I don't even want class to be cancelled (well, that's a lie). I just want my heat to stay on.

Right. Let's leave on a more positive note, shall we? Did you hear? Bathsheba! She's coming to visit! Yay!