Cabin Fever

Yes, I haven’t left my apartment in three days due to Seattle’s Snowpocalypse 2012. I also had a light fixture shatter on top of my head and a giant computer crash that ate four days of writing work. Then it snowed again, then it iced up. I watched three different pickup trucks today try to drag a car out of a ditch beside a stop sign outside my apartment, and then only succeed in banging the car hard sideways against the stop sign, with the driver inside. Ouch. This was not, as you may understand, much encouragement for me to try to send myself out into the world. Did I mention a foot of snow with a layer of ice outside?

So, I also started working on two grant applications, which is probably the least life-affirming thing an artist can do with themselves. I have a stack of magazines, library books, bad television on the DVR, gluten-free blueberry muffins…but what I wish I was doing with all this spare time trapped in my apartment was writing up a storm. Creative energy has been lost in a net of trying to describe my last three years of writing projects in an intelligent and cogent way and learning about the difference between escrow and earnest money and corian versus concrete countertops. See why I haven’t been blogging?

Has January given you cabin fever yet? Any recommended cures? Tomorrow I’m hoping to actually leave the apartment complex, for real. I’ve got chains on my car tires and everything, so no matter what the weather throws at me, I’ll be ready. The fresh air will knock my brains back in order. And I got a look at Matthea Harvey’s fantastic new Lamb, which I promise to review here soon!