Ideas sometimes whisper

June 2, 20145 Comments

I tried to come up with a quick short story to post today for the first Writing 101 challenge. I’m really excited to be participating in another Blogging University event, especially one that’s geared toward writing! Normally all I have to do is just look out the window for just a whisper of an idea, and then I’m off, my hand (and pen) gliding swiftly over the page, seemingly of their own volition.

But not today.

For whatever reason, I’m unable to concentrate today. The only thing to be heard at the moment is the song “Frankenstein” by the Edgar Winter Group, which is currently blaring from the office radio. Soon enough, it will be something else, something which is sure to be be equally distracting. I mean, it’s a good song, but when I’m trying to focus on characters and setting and plot, it’s too…

Movie night!

May 28, 201411 Comments

MNO_OfficialPoster_High That’s right, last night I got to go to a movie. With my husband! A real, actual date! It was awesome!

Our local theater does a membership drive each year, where for $30 you can buy a pass to see movies for free on Monday nights. If you spend $60, you get to see them on Mondays or Tuesdays. We opted for the two-night pass, and it’s been wonderful. The movies at our local theater aren’t overly expensive anyway, but it’s still nice to support local business this way. Anyway, we went to see Moms’ Night Out, and it was easily the funniest movie I’ve seen in ages.

From IMDb:

All Allyson and her friends want is a peaceful, grown-up evening of dinner and fun – a long-needed moms’ night out. But in order to enjoy high heels, adult conversation, and food not served in a bag, they need their husbands to watch the kids for a few hours … what could go wrong?

Dishwasher memories

May 25, 201419 Comments

Our new house is considerably smaller than our old house, especially the kitchen. There’s no dishwasher and a lot less counter space, so I had to do dishes yesterday morning by hand; the lack of dish-stacking space required I do them in two batches. The boys were watching The Little Mermaid in the living room and “Under the Sea” drifted into the kitchen, calling to mind the ants from Garfield and Friends (I know, my mind makes weird connections sometimes). While I was drying the first half of the dishes and humming along, I got to thinking.

It’s a dangerous pastime. I know. 😀

Things I love about life on the farm

May 24, 2014July 2, 20146 Comments

farmboy I was initially a bit apprehensive about moving back to the country. I loved visiting my grandparents’ farm when I was a kid, but when I lived in the country with my first husband, it just wasn’t what I expected. I was happy to move back to town, where I lived but a few blocks from the major entertainments (library, theater, bowling alley). I liked walking places and stopping to chat with people along the way.

But as time wore on, I did less and less of that. So when Seymour pitched a move to the country after five years being miserable in town, I grudgingly decided to give it another shot. He assured me many times over that this time would be different, and boy, has it!

While most of the negatives of late have been due to Mother Nature (thanks a lot for all the water you dumped in my basement), there have been some notable positives as well:

• The peace and quiet.
Let’s face it, life in the country is just more peaceful. There are no neighbors out mowing their lawn at some ungodly hour of the morning or having parties in their driveways that last late into the night. There are no kids tromping through the yard on their way home from school. There are no yappy little neighbor dogs who start barking every time I open the fridge in my own kitchen.

At least, I hope there aren’t.

Photo Friday Blues

May 23, 2014August 22, 201414 Comments

That’s right, today’s theme is blue:

IMG_20131205_112005

Me: What shade of blue?
Seymour: You know, blue.
Me: Yes, but what shade – sky blue? Baby blue? Cerulean? Aquamarine?
Seymour: Just blue! Crayola blue!
(drive to Lowe’s)
Seymour: Yes, I’m looking for some blue paint.
Paint guy: Okay, what shade? We have 887 different varieties of blue.

Sorry, every time I hear the word blue, I recall the time we painted Bubbles’ bedroom. It just never gets old. 😀

But this picture is not of his room. This is my steamy bathroom window one morning this past winter. I just love this picture; it’s got so many shades of color, and the texture in it is just fantastic. It reminds me a bit of all the ice in Frozen (great movie, by the way, and despite the fact that I’ve seen it a zillion times since Easter, I still haven’t tired of it yet).

Anyway, happy Friday! Does anyone have any big plans for the long weekend? Tell me all about them in the comments so I can live vicariously through you – we’re staying home this weekend. And don’t forget to stop by Charnele’s blog and see what she’s got up for this week’s extra-blue Photo Friday!

Photo Friday returns!

May 9, 2014August 22, 201413 Comments

Today, I am exhausted. With a capital E. We’ve finished moving and have begun the Great Unpacking, and I’m not sure which I like less. So while we find our belongings (and maybe even our minds), here are some pictures of what the last couple of weeks have been like. Moving with family is always interesting, and probably a lot less stressful than moving with strangers because you can be yourself, whether it’s good, bad, or ugly.

If you can’t be yourself around family, who can you be yourself around?

So: Family. Moving. Pictures.

Home is where your story begins.

Our game room looks so lonely…

And I wish I could bring our pantry door – designed by Seymour! – with us.

Oh, Bubbles. 🙂

Thumper wants to pet the kitty, too!

Moving is hard work.

Did I mention that I have a partner for my Photo Friday posts? Because I seem to remember mentioning something about it. 🙂 Anyway, thanks to the Blogging 201 course I took last month, I met the lovely Charnele Henry and we decided to collaborate on Photo Fridays. We chose the theme of family, which fit in nicely with my move. You can find her post here, and be sure to check out some of her other posts, too! There’s a lot to see.

Happy Friday, everybody, and if you’re traveling for Mother’s Day this weekend, safe journey! I’ll see you all back here on Monday. 🙂

Remains

March 28, 201412 Comments

All that survives after our death are publications and people.

So look carefully after the words you write, the thoughts and publications you create, and how you love others. For these are the only things that will remain. -Susan Niebur

I was reading WordPress’s Blogging Through Breast Cancer post Wednesday morning and remembered Susan Niebur’s blog, Toddler Planet, which I always enjoyed reading. She passed away from metastatic breast cancer in 2012, but her blog lives on. Since it’s chock full of resources, I shared the link in the comments section of the WP round-up post.

The day before, my ex-husband became a father for the fourth time. He and his wife welcomed another son to their family, but while she recovered from an emergency cesarean, he headed to a children’s hospital an hour and a half away to be with their son. A crushed umbilical cord led to his arrival three weeks early and a host of problems.

These two things might, at first glance, seem unconnected, and maybe they are, but…

Thoughts for the day

March 25, 20144 Comments

No, it’s not blood. Someone had fun with the ketchup while Mommy’s back was turned.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately, mostly in a research vein as opposed to reading for fun (although I do enjoy my research). Here are a few things I stumbled across today that really spoke to me:

Real, life-long security comes not from the barrel of a gun or from being able to spy on your fellow citizens like a Stasi informant; it comes with less harsh extremes of wealth and poverty and increased access to health care and education. -David Byrne

Take a bunch of wolverines. Throw them into a roaring F5 tornado. That’s a toddler. It’ll tear through your home, shrieking and whirling about, scooping things up and depositing them elsewhere. It’ll lose things. It’ll destroy other things. It’ll change direction in the hair’s breadth of a moment — “I’m doing this no now I’m doing this other thing wait what’s that over there.” -Chuck Wendig

Then last year, after my illness, turning 40 and most recently the death of a good friend, I realised that life is just too damn short NOT to be doing what I love. The planets kind of aligned, one of those epiphany moments. -Sophie Tallis (emphasis mine)

All three articles are worth checking out in full (I truly related to Chuck Wendig’s post – I have two toddlers of my own, after all, and have felt the pain of a Duplo block embedded in my foot that he so hilariously references). Happy Tuesday, y’all!

Howdy!

March 24, 20142 Comments

The weather’s been a bit wild lately.

So I’ve been away for a while (yes, I know, a week isn’t exactly an eternity, but since I usually try to pop in here every couple of days, it is a while). I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather lately, so I haven’t been overly active anywhere.

But! I can say that within the next week, I’ll have a couple of bookish-type posts going up, as I’m currently reading Snort and Wobbles by the talented Will Macmillan Jones. Tadpole and Bubbles will be helping me craft a review, which I’ll post here as soon as we’ve finished. Then on Monday, I’m hosting the lovely Joleene Naylor as part of a blog tour for her recently-released book Children of Shadows, the sixth offering in her Amaranthine series.

And as our weather has given us no end of crazy lately, I hope to be back to posting some more lousy haiku in the near future. It’s not the only thing that’s crazy around here, but hopefully I’ll be back to my old self in no time, now that I’ve been to my doctor (again). So, in the meantime, I hope you’re all lovely and that you have a fabulous week, and I’ll see you when I see you! 🙂

And now…

March 7, 20147 Comments

Full sprawl. How feline. 🙂

…further proof that my son is a bipedal cat:

This morning I was awakened by the sound of Thumper taking down the baby gate from his bedroom doorway. (I really don’t know why I bother putting it up anymore since he knows how to take it down, but I do. Maybe it’s for those extra few seconds I gain in which to prepare myself for battle with a two-year-old.) He tiptoed through the hall, barged into our room, and climbed into bed next to me, where he sat on all fours and stared at me, grinning from ear to ear, his nose about an inch from mine.

When I finally opened my eyes to acknowledge his presence, he whispered, “Time to get up!”

If cats could talk, surely they’d say something similar. And this, my friends, is why I am on my second 2L bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper. The first one was gone by noon.

If you’ve got a cute kid story, share it below! I could use a little cuteness on this dreary Friday afternoon.