What is happening outside?

It's April, and this is turning out to be the most confusing season so far for me. Summer was a welcome change with no humidity, lower temperatures, and a single bug bite all season. Fall was better than expected, though the light changed until sunset was 4 pm. Winter was exciting, even four nor'easters in a row in March was nothing. But now it's April, and it's still in the 30's and the trees and plants have barely begun to bud. Crocuses have just started poking up. Where are the azaleas? Daffodils? Leaves on the trees? I'm so disoriented...

Skiing in New Hampshire for the First Time as a Southerner

If you ever have a chance to learn to ski with very kind, patient friends who are also relatively new skiers, take advantage of it. We have friends walk us through the process of skiing on Saturday, and now I'd say we're proficient. Micah was on the double black diamonds.

This was actually a really big scary hill

We went up to Pats Peak for the 3 pm-close session. Honestly, $50 per person for skiing, rentals, and snow tubing is worth it. They have 2 beginner areas and a lot of greens, but I'm told more experienced skiers could get bored. They can go to Utah.

The rental process was very organized. Decide skis or snowboard, go through the lines, you're all set! Then I was in uncharted territory. Don't get experienced skiers to help you here, they don't know what you don't know. Another newer skier who has recently taken lessons knows how to tell you how to snap into your skis and whether you need poles (yes) and doesn't laugh when you fall off the magic carpet in the baby beginner section. 

Micah caught on to skiing very quickly. He was comfortable within minutes, and after the dinner break he was heading down the greens with his friends. I'm going to have to figure out what to do, because his parents can't keep up with him, but I don't think we can just let him go off on the mountain by himself yet. Luke likes to go as fast as he can, and he says he wants to try snowboarding next time. I got to where I felt in control on the bigger beginner hill. I never tried the green, but Mike did!

The light at sunset was beautiful

more writing

My favorite kind of writing (my own writing) makes me laugh. I think I have a funny turn of phrase or a silly character. That's when I enjoy what I'm doing and it flows.

I've signed up for a 10 week short fiction course at Grub Street. I've had one class so far, but I love it. I was really worried that I wouldn't belong, that all the other people in the class would be working on or have MFA's, have published stories, or that they'd be really smart and know a lot of technical writery stuff. The first class was really reassuring though. We will be reading stories and exploring them trying to "think like writers", submitting our own stories, and workshopping each others' stories. That last one sounds terrifying. However, in how we talked about the first story in the first class, I realized I have a few natural strengths already. I notice how writers use the particular words that they do, and how the choices they make in character, scenes, and plot move the story forward. I really hope that will translate into my own writing. I also watch the people around me. I'm willing to try things and take risks, which will matter when I get to letting other people read what I write. And I think I'm pretty good at describing a scene in a way that let's a reader see what I see in my mind's eye, or at least gives them the opportunity to construct their own scene.

Writing

Yesterday I went to a workshop at Grub Street called "So you want to be a writer in 2018?" I don't know where I want to go with writing, but I do know I enjoy it. I love to read, I like to be creative, and I'm curious to see where I could go with writing. I'm going to be on the lookout for fiction writing classes in 2018, at the library or Grub Street or somewhere else.

Barriers

What keeps me from writing?

Fear
Fear of what people will say
fear no one will say anything.
Fear of looking dumb, not having the "right" opinion
Fear of sounding dumb
Fear of having no new thoughts, nothing to say
Fear of causing someone to worry about me
Fear of making someone mad

Forgetting
I should start carrying around notecards like some famous writer I heard of, maybe Anne Tyler

Complacency
I'll do it tomorrow...

I heard Nora Roberts say once that you can fix bad writing, but you can't fix not writing.

So here's to writing!

School Starts

After 2 years of homeschooling, both Micah and Luke chose to go back to school. For various reasons, it felt like a good time to try it again. One way that I want to be a participant in my neighborhood is through having my kids in the public school system. The boys have indicated having some independent space may be good for them.

We haven't been in the area long and felt like we were flying blind. So we put into the public school lottery system, both kids got into the same school (not a guarantee here in Boston), it was walking distance, and we were off to the races. It was a surprisingly good start. I thought Luke would hate it and refuse to go. The first day he balked, hard, and I halfway expected him to come home in the middle of the day, but by pick up he was beaming. He told me he'd seriously underestimated school! So we went to Dunkin' Donuts, 'cause when in Rome or whatever.

Beach Vacation During a Hurricane

Long before we decided to move to Boston, we had planned a beach vacation with my family. Even after I figured out that school in Boston starts after Labor Day (y'all, those last 2 weeks before school started were looooong), I felt that with the boys in 2nd and 3rd grade, it was fine to skip a week of school for family vacation. Even with hurricanes causing such serious riptides and undertow that we didn't swim in the ocean all week, the trip was well worth it.

Hurricanes Irma and Jose didn't keep us off the beach. We had 2 days of a little rain, but it was still so fun to walk on the beach, visit the pier, the aquarium, and swim in the house's pool.

In an amusing twist, we found TONS of sharks' teeth. Not so surprising, hm?

This trip, I noticed how independent my kids have gotten. The older kids had some space on the bottom floor where they could go play, and they learned to shoot pool. It was also not uncommon to find 3-5 kids scattered about the room reading to themselves. And we taught everyone to play Exploding Kittens.

Flying into NC was an odd experience. It was the same airport we used to fly home into, but we didn't have a house we were going to. Instead of our car in the parking lot, we went to get a rental. I wasn't really sure how to handle visiting everyone, should I plan a night out that people could come to if they wanted? Did anyone even want that? Would anyone be miffed if they found out later I'd been in town for 24 hours and didn't let them know? I wasn't sure, but I was tired, so I decided to just lay low. I need to figure out sometime how to maintain friendships, in whatever way I can.