Spikemobile a hit – and will be especially once Spike's feet reach the pedals – with nary a tetanus incident (that I'm aware of). Victory. But that's about it in the victory department these last few days. Feeling The Void and its attendant horsemen – Ennui, FuckItAll, and GoToHell – rather intensely today (though it's been a slow burn over the last several).

Big Nowhere continues in The Main Thing, Ennui prancing about as I say FuckItAll and GoToHell to the blinking cursor of empty. Such is the somewhere and the nowhere.

Convinced I need an outbuilding with a loft office above it and room for all sorts of things. Spiral staircase a must: a house we looked at before building the cabin in the woods all those years ago had one and I've been obsessed with them ever since. Emergency Bat-pole too. Maybe a slide instead, IDK.

First snow day of the school year (I think / maybe there was – no, that was a two-hour delay, those accursed half-measures that fuck everyones' schedule into oblivion). Wind chill advisory, supposedly going to lift around noon, but with wind coming in, right around afternoon run time (switching to afternoon for something different – I like it: sun is beneficial in winter... summer'll be another story but I'll burn that bridge when I get to it). New heater fan in The Paintshop doing the job well enough – better than the previous thing that warmed my ankles and even then.

Today's (and, I suppose, every day's) operative creative / The Work phrase: surprise myself. A challenge – given that I know the outcome of this particular segment – but such is the way I've set myself up for this particular brainjam. Not what but how, not what but how... FWIW: didn't surprise myself – yet, but hey, If nothing else, writing these daily things again gives me the illusion of getting something written, even if it's not the thing I'd hoped for.

Ahead: fixing and cleaning up my old fire engine pedal car (1983 repro of a 1950s car) for Baby Spike's (friends’ little human, not mine) early driver's ed / GTA training. Hopefully won't need too much TLC, but up-to-date tetanus vax probably requ'd. Waivers and disclaimers.

Snow is falling, wind is chilling, and the small dogchildren are on their way to the doggy-day-spa for cutz and such. Derbz has brought me a squeaky pig a couple of times, but the novelty wore off for both of us after a few oinks. A subdued boy's day, apparently.

Stuck in this rewrite, drawing a seemingly insurmountable blank in one particular section, for some reason or other. Usual tactics of hurling improvisatory wordplay at it not helping – nor is staring at it, cursing it, or leaving it alone; it hates me and the feeling is mutual. What did I ever do to you? we say, in unison.

Squeaky pig doth squeak; the day awaits.

i left the house today and returned with these

sitehopes

A desire, over the coming weeks and months, to bring more of a texty-thinking-out-loud thing back to this space. Journal and half-baked notions – not so much an issue of figuring out what to say, but how to present it here in a way that strikes a balance between (adding another) routine-based posting and the whenever/whatevers that have populated this hermitage for the past few years. Also, a balance between what I keep in my private journals and what I put in this public one: if my exit from social media taught me anything, it's that I hate repeating myself; I want to avoid that in this relationship between public and private.

At the same time, striking that balance is tricky: I've got the start of the day covered with Attendance Cards and, while I've considered tinkering with a single daily post throughout the day again, the writer that I am when I start the post isn't the writer I am by the end of the day: every minute brings new experience and new rhythms – and my efforts to do Codas at the end of each day inevitably fall victim to my utter exhaustion.

But I'll get there. Considering this posting to be my kick in the ass to get me there. It was nice just writing this.