Let it never be said that internet friendships are not as real, not as meaningful, as IRL friendships. One can lead to the other, and when tragedy strikes or blessings rain down, cyber friends are often just as despairing or ecstatic as the friends down the street.
(c) 2014. All rights reserved.
I haven’t been feeling well lately. I’ve been dealing with a nasty headache off and on all week, and I was supposed to have surgery yesterday. Thanks to my insurance company dropping the ball, I was forced to reschedule at the last minute. I’ve had a dozen ideas for posts, but I haven’t gotten any of them written (although I did start one – I think it was on Monday).
Since I didn’t have to work today, I thought I’d take a little nap and see if it helped. I was hoping it would. I was wrong.
My parents in our living room. Those lovely bookshelves went from floor to ceiling. 🙂
Well, once again, I didn’t get my post up on time. I’ve been spending a lot of time writing lately, although not on The Lokana Chronicles or Remnants. I’m taking a writing class online, and in our second class, we received a prompt. My homework was to work more on what I’d come up with for the prompt in class, and it’s been a challenge.
I got called into work yesterday afternoon and since I had to drive over there and drop the boys off anyway, I left in the morning like normal and spent three lovely hours at the library working on this new story. It reminded me of when I was younger, and I would take over the living room to write, or spread things out in my room.
There wasn’t really much to take over in the living room, since my sister lived with my grandparents and my dad lived at his desk in the dining room, but it was the space I wanted. Often a friend or two would join me and we would stay up till the wee hours of the morning writing and giving each other feedback. And also dancing to Gaelic Storm.
The house has changed, and so have we.
They say you can’t go home again, and I think they must be right. My dad lived in the house I grew up in till I was twenty, and I went back after he moved out once. Once was enough.
The people who bought my house after my dad moved out remodeled it extensively before selling it themselves. It was after this second sale that I returned – Miss Tadpole was selling Girl Scout cookies, so I took her through my old neighborhood to see how many of my old customers would buy from her.
It was incredibly surreal being the parent in this scenario. Miss Tadpole was woefully under-prepared when it came to her sales pitch, but I’d been so well-rehearsed at her age that it was easy for me to pick up the slack. We made a great team.
Bubbles the Paddlefoot
I know, I know – I’m late again. It seems to be a thing with me lately. Our open house was postponed last weekend (sort of), so we’re doing it again today, and it’s thrown my whole weekend off.
I used to always be very punctual; I miss that particular virtue. Now it seems that no matter what I do, I’m always late, always running behind, and I never catch up. Just when I think I’m caught up, I realize I’ve forgotten something and I haven’t caught up at all. *sigh*
I think this lateness issue of mine can be traced to my eighteenth Christmas. I was living with my ex-husband and his parents at the time (we were just dating then), and I was home from college on break. Things that often happen between consenting adults happened and, lo and behold, some six weeks later, I was late. You never think it will happen to you, but it can. And it does.
When I was little, my sister and I did not get along. At all. We still don’t and I really regret that, but it’s out of my hands now. Anyway, she liked to go through my stuff, so I needed a way to secure it. My bedroom door wouldn’t latch correctly, never mind lock, so I needed a better place to stash things.
Being a big fan of diary-keeping, my diaries were the items I was most concerned with – like government secrets, they could not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands (namely, the hands of my little sister).
Yesterday morning I was running errands with Cricket and Thumper, and they wanted a story. I was at Sam’s Club, and they happened to have a bunch of Dr. Seuss board books for sale. Just the sight of them triggered a fresh wave of childhood memories – my dad hated Dr. Seuss, but not me. My sister and I both loved his books, and we kept checking them out at the library and insisting he read them to us before bed. I remember reading a wide variety of books with my mom, particularly from The Great Illustrated Classics line, but I mostly remember reading Dr. Seuss with my dad.
I think it was because he hated him so that we made him read those books to us. Either that, or he hated Dr. Seuss because we made him read the books so often.
We happened to own a copy of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, and we read it so frequently that the spine is now falling off the book. I saw a shiny new copy yesterday next to the board books and was sorely tempted to buy one, but in the end, it remained on the shelf. I remember bringing home How the Grinch Stole Christmas from the school library and insisting on hearing it before bed one Christmas. And who could forget Green Eggs and Ham? Or The Cat in the Hat? Or Fox in Socks? Or The Lorax?
When I graduated high school, my childhood Sunday School teacher gave me a copy of Oh! The Places You’ll Go! I breezed through it, then put it aside. The whimsy of the illustrations still captivated me, but the message of the book didn’t really soak in. Not until I had graduated college, married, had a child of my own, and divorced, did the book really make much sense for me. I recognized several of the stops mentioned in the book, and adjusted my life’s path accordingly.
Books were a huge part of my childhood, and I can’t imagine life without them. What are some of your favorite books, from childhood or otherwise?
(c) 2013. All rights reserved.
Beautiful fall color (Photo credit: blmiers2)
Can you believe it’s September already? Overnight, it seems like fall has struck. The grass in the ditches is suddenly golden, the temperatures at night are nice and frosty, and football is now everywhere I look.
I love fall. The colors are breathtaking, the temperatures are perfect, and fresh apples abound (I’m a sucker for the smell of fresh apples – nothing beats it). Fall is a time of change, though, and I don’t always do well with change, so reconciling my love of fall with my strong dislike of change will be interesting this year.
Well, it’s late and I’m exhausted after a long day. I hope you’ve all been enjoying the poetry! Most of them were written on our last camping trip. We spent two hours waiting for our boat to get fixed and, after my phone battery died, I whipped out my handy little purse notebook and started writing. (If I’d have had The Lokana Chronicles with me, I’d have started revising, but that didn’t work out.)
Anyway, I’ve got loads to tell when I’m less tired and more coherent, so for tonight, I’ll just leave you with this. It hit 105° today at work, and in Des Moines, apparently it hit 108°. I heard that was a record, but I don’t know for sure.
What I do know for sure is that when it’s this flippin’ hot out, there’s only one thought that runs through my mind, and it goes like this:
So today I’m taking a cue from a friend and using a song title for my post title. And why do I feel fine? Because I was up all night hanging out with my bestest bud, in case you haven’t seen the sidebar to the right. (And then after that, I may or may not have been lost in Camlain and Penrithen, two lands from the fabulous Vortex, Return of the Effra by Lindsey J. Parsons.)
Today, we’re having a blast and tonight is going to be better yet. So if I’m not around for a day or two, rest assured it’s because I’m having a heck of a good time with some really great friends. Have a great weekend, everybody!
(c) 2013. All rights reserved.
Suddenly they all died. The end. 