I finished the March story a couple of days ago (in February we work on the March story, in March we work on the April story, etc) and am in that period of malaise where I don't really have enough to occupy my feverish brain, but I also don't have the energy to start the next thing yet. It is definitely a mild post-partum depression (apologies to the people who have had that after, y'know, giving actual birth to actual children), and I do it every time.

The malaise, in this case, has not at all been helped by the massive blizzard earlier this week. Monday was cancelled; Tuesday was semi-cancelled; today we have LTHOMG as scheduled and I'm hoping I don't fall and die on insufficiently shoveled and/or de-iced sidewalks when I go out for that in a few minutes.

I've felt shut in and a little trapped, which is ridiculous because I don't leave the house much even in non-blizzard conditions, so I don't know why snow whirling sideways past the windows for twenty-four hours would make that any different.

Anyway, the snowbanks still hadn't melted much from the storm a few weeks before that, so now we've piled new snow on top of old snow and we've got a solid shield wall of snow in front of our house which is more than five feet high and about ten feet long. We are safe from snowman attack.

I haven't gotten much workwork done for a couple of weeks now, between two days of Mysterious Sick and several days of Snow Removal and Sore From Snow Removal. We did manage to go out to dinner on Saturday, in a lull between minor catastrophes. Fortunately, there isn't a lot of workwork that's pressing to do, though that will change soon.

I don't really have a plot for the April story, which is designated fluff anyway (AFAB: Assigned Fluff At Birth), and right now I have absolutely no enthusiasm to work on one. I'm half tempted to just abandon it and instead do one of the really nasty, really bitter SF plots I've got lying around in my idea file. I am feeling dystopian.

Also, it became clear this morning, after an unusually dumb paragraph from a particular Globe writer pushed me right over the edge, that I'm finally going to have to write a five-thousand-word essay which is a really stupid idea. Nine-tenths of my brain knows it's a really stupid idea and a complete waste of time to boot. The other tenth of my brain keeps insisting louder and louder that it absolutely will not shut up about it until it gets written.

So I guess that's the project that's going to happen next. Then perhaps a mild lobotomy. After that, I should be in the right condition to plot the Easter fluff.

(I joke. Wryly. I would never want to cut out part of my brain, no matter how much of a pain it is. I do occasionally point out how many of my stories involve induced mindlessness as a plot point. Cut it out, no; shut it up for a while, yes. Especially these days when that part of the brain is constantly Screaming About This and Screaming About That because there is just so much to scream about. For someone who is scared to death of death, I sure do find myself contemplating oblivion a lot.)

I guess I'd better go put on some socks.