Our apple tree has finally started blooming, and it looks lovely. I can’t wait for all these beautiful blossoms to turn into tasty fruit. 🙂
The kids, on the other hand, likely feel differently. They’re not terribly fond of picking up the fallen apples.
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Dandelions are such happy flowers. When I was little, I loved picking dandelion bouquets for my parents. Despite their weedy status, I loved them. As a matter of fact, I still do, even though they’re threatening to take over my yard.
But really, is there any sight quite as joyful as a field of dandelions? If there is, I’d like to see it.
It must be the color. Yellow is such a happy color, and after a long winter, dandelions are like little spots of sunshine appearing to remind us all that there’s more to life than snow and gray and endless cold. Dandelions are symbols of hope, and Suzanne Collins wasn’t the first to think so.
Anyway, Thumper and Cricket are enamored with dandelions at the moment, and it’s got me thinking about childhood and wonder and seeing the magic in the everyday. Yesterday, Thumper picked a dandelion bouquet for me, and it graced the table till well after supper, even though the blooms had closed up by then. I just hadn’t the heart to throw them out. He took so much joy in picking those bright little flowers and then carting them all over the yard – they were his new best friends. They climbed trees together, they chased cats together, they ran themselves ragged together.
I don’t have a whole lot to add to that at the moment; I’m too brain-dead to come up with a decent ending to this post. Brain-deadness has become my new best friend, and it’s one I could really do without. Hopefully the solution to this problem is right around the corner.
In the meantime, may your weekend be filled sunshine, whether in the sky or in the ground. Have a great one!
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That’s right, I’m still waxing poetic about the weather. It’s another lovely day out there, and I’ve got a nice, long lunch break ahead of me to fill with stories to my heart’s content.
More of this is definitely in store today. I can’t wait to get out there and enjoy the sunshine of another world for a little while! 🙂
How about you – what do you enjoy doing on beautiful sunny days?
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It is an absolutely glorious day out there. It’s so pretty, it’s hard to believe it’s actually a Monday. Well, sort of. After a crazy busy weekend full of family and fun, my brain’s a bit fried, so maybe it’s not all that hard to believe it’s really Monday after all. 🙂
Anyway.
See? Told you it was gorgeous. It’s pushing 70 and beautiful out there, and I wish I didn’t have to stay chained to my desk for another four hours so that I could go outside and enjoy myself. Maybe the fresh air would wake my brain up.
On the bright side, I did get out there during my lunch break. Beautiful sky, sunny day, writing progress – it was a great lunch. Too bad it couldn’t have lasted longer. 🙂
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One of the things I love to read in the spring (yes, there are a couple of them) is my collection of Shakespearean sonnets. I don’t know why, but poetry and spring are inextricably linked for me (which works out well, since April is National Poetry Month).
Though I love the plays, the sonnets are the thing for me. I’m terrible at writing them, but Shakespeare was a master wordsmith and every time I open this book, I marvel at his ability. I actually have two collections of his sonnets – the volume pictured is a complete collection, while the one it replaced contained only selected poems – and I treasure them both.
If you like Shakespeare’s poetry, might I recommend this site? I found it the other afternoon and it’s got loads of neat stuff. Spend a day getting lost in it, or perhaps another book. Have a great day! 🙂
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We’ve had two beautiful days in a row. It’s so pretty outside!
Okay, so it’s a little chilly, but still – the sun is shining, there’s not a cloud in the sky (that I can see without my sunglasses), and it makes one feel good to be alive. Much like this pretty, pretty tulip. 🙂
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Last night, Seymour and Bubbles spent the remaining light of day playing catch out in the yard. Cricket, not one to be left behind, was desperate to go outside and join them. I snapped this as he was hurrying through getting his shoes and coat on. He was so excited that I had to be quick with the camera if I wanted to capture even a bit of his joy.
I imagine I might look a bit like this come five o’clock this evening… 🙂
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After months of only creeping, inching progress on my rewrite, I’ve finally managed to stitch together two parts of my book with all-new material. Writing the all-new stuff was like pulling teeth; the words often flat-out refused to come.
I hate when writing is like that.
Nevertheless, I pushed through it. I’m fairly certain that most of what I wrote is rubbish, but that’s what revising is for, right? Polishing up the parts you don’t like?
At long last, I’m back to the polishing part. The writing is going much more smoothly now that I’m in full-on polishing mode. Still, part of me can’t believe how bad some of what I’d written is. There are parts that are positively purple; they remind me of the steady diet of soap operas I consumed as a teenager. There are parts that just don’t read quite right, for some reason; they have me in agony as I can’t quite figure out what’s wrong, never mind how to fix them.
And then there are the parts that just make me cringe, like whole-body, might-possibly-be-mistaken-for-a-seizure-type cringing. People’s Exhibit A: the two-paragraph section where I started four consecutive sentences with the word he. Talk about an epic facepalm moment.
*cringe*
*groans*
*cries*
For the most part, I love writing. I love the act of writing, the sheer physical quality of my pencil scratching out worlds across the paper; I love rewriting and making things shine. But at the moment, I seem mired in the depths of suck, where everything is hard and it’s not looking to improve any time soon. Maybe it’s because I’m exhausted and stressed about things other than writing; maybe it’s because I’ve been working on this story for ten years and I don’t feel any closer to finishing it now than I did when I started it.
Whatever the reason, I’m ready to be overwhelmed by the joy of writing again. It’s been a long while since I’ve experienced the euphoria of having written something that you know in the marrow of your bones is good. It’s addicting, that feeling.
I know I’ll find it again, but when everything else is so gray, too, it’s hard to bear that in mind. In the meantime, thank goodness for things like this:
If you’re worried about not being good enough? Hey, let’s remember, I wasn’t good enough for 17 years. (If you read some of my negative reviews, then ha ha ha, oops, I’m still not good enough.) … Keep at it. Eventually you’ll knock over that brick wall if you commit to the vigorous act of endless headbutting. -Chuck Wendig
Check out the whole article here. It’s well worth the read.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to the vigorous act of endless headbutting.
*grabs economy-size bottle of ibuprofen*
*scampers off to writing cave*
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Well, so much for it being spring…
We’ve had two ice storms since the official beginning of spring. Neither one have been too severe, but they’ve been bad enough to make getting around a pain in the butt. It rained yesterday, but it was just cold enough that the rain froze on whatever it hit. When I got home from work last night, even the grass was slick.
At least it’s supposed to warm up next week…
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We play cards in our family. Like, a lot. It’s kind of our family pastime. And we start ’em young.
Well, not that young, really – I think both Miss Tadpole and Bubbles were in school before we taught them any card games. But when Grandpa and Grandma were up over the weekend, Cricket and Thumper wanted in on the action, too.
They hate being left out.
It started off with Cricket teaming up with his aunt. That went okay, until Thumper decided that he wanted to play, too. He teamed up with Grandpa, but wasn’t satisfied with letting Grandpa hold the cards. We gave him a couple cards of his own to hold, but that actually made matters worse. I finally managed to decipher the sobbing squeals – he wanted all the cards.
At that point, we decided it was naptime. That really set him off.
But someday, they won’t be too little to play cards. Someday, they’ll learn how to play Up and Down the River with us, and then it’ll get really interesting (Miss Tadpole and Bubbles make it interesting already). It’ll be nice when, someday, family game night includes our entire family.
And maybe by that point, I’ll have figured out how to win. 😉
Do you have any family pastimes or traditions like family game night? What are they? Shout ’em out in the comments!
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Suddenly they all died. The end. 