Hope

November 11, 20162 Comments

“Now is the winter of our discontent.” – William Shakespeare, Richard III

Hopefully, the winter of our discontent will be made glorious summer sooner rather than later. In the meantime, though, have hope.

no-matter-how-dark-the-night-the-sun-always-rises-and-hope-with-it Giving up would be easy, and some people will. But if we all give up, who will fix what is broken? No one. And if no one fixes anything, if we all give up, then things will remain broken (and will probably get worse). Now is the time for hard work. It won’t be fun. It will be arduous. Grueling. Painful.

But it could be worse.

As long as we have hope, we can overcome anything. The one thing that keeps people going in the face of insurmountable odds is hope. No matter how dark the night, the sun always rises, and hope with it. Others may try to crush your hope, to steal it from you, because hope is power, but don’t let them. Fight hair, tooth, and nail to keep your hope, to keep hope alive.

Hope is power.

We need something to hold onto in times like these, so hold onto hope. With hope and hard work, the odds will be ever in your favor.

Nerves

November 10, 2016November 10, 20161 Comment

Have you ever watched the days bleed?

They do, you know.

They bleed, one into another into another, week after week, month after month, year after year. Seconds bleed into minutes bleed into hours bleed into days. Each of them crushing in their weight.

This is my thirty-second year of watching days bleed into months, of watching seasons bleed into one another so that you can no longer tell where one ended and the other began. It’s my thirty-second year of watching leaves fall into snowflakes, of watching dead brown grass bleed back to life and then to death once more. It was supposed to be a magical year, full of all the good things I could possibly imagine.

It was supposed to be frightfully wondrous.

But instead…

It’s that time again…

November 8, 20168 Comments

You know – election day. That wonderful day when you get to help elect our nation’s next leaders. Here’s to actually accomplishing something other than dividing our country even further.

But better yet, here’s to the end of campaign advertising (for a little while, anyway)! 🙂

If you live in the good ol’ U.S. of A., did you vote? Why or why not?

Favorite moments

November 7, 20164 Comments

Yesterday was not a stellar day. I was grumpy. I don’t know why I was grumpy, but I was, and it seems to have carried over into today as well. Then again, today is Monday, and if that’s not reason enough to be a little grumpy, then I don’t know what is.

Anyway.

Yesterday afternoon, we stopped in at Staples while we were out running errands. I could spend a small fortune there, if I had one to spend, but I behaved myself yesterday and confined my purchases to two. One of them I’m already regretting – it’s a file folder, one with multiple pockets for storing lots of things. I bought it to keep Bubbles’ school things in, mementoes of each grade he’s completed. The problem is that I can’t fit everything in it. I can’t even fit all his preschool stuff in it, and it’s not that there’s a lot of it, it’s just big. Really big. His first grade folder alone is probably bigger than the file folder I bought to put it all in.

Maybe I should have invested in a box.

Anyway.

The other thing I bought was a journal. I really don’t need another – I have two or three that I haven’t filled yet at home, plus a whole shelf full of ones I have filled – but this one called to me. It’s called “Favorite Moment a Day” and that’s all there is to it. Each page is lined. There’s room at the top for the date, and then it says, “Today’s Favorite Moment:” with plenty of room to write.

Or at least, there might be plenty of room to write if I’d have printed instead of writing in cursive. People always remark about how small my writing is, but my printing is even smaller than my cursive.

Anyway.

I thought it would be a good purchase because it’s small enough to carry around in my purse, and I want to start looking for the good in each day. If I have a place to write down some of that good, maybe it will start to outweigh the bad I seem to focus on so easily. For instance, despite yesterday’s lack of stellar-ness, I did have a pretty awesome moment…

Things I like

November 5, 20165 Comments

I’m feeling a little less than inspired today, so here are some of my favorite things:

Fall leaves.
Crisp autumn nights cheering on my team.
Old cartoons.
Happy kitties.
Books I can get lost in.
Visits from old friends.
The sound of the corn dryers near my childhood home.
Office supply stores.
Silly puns.
Bad jokes.

If you made a list of some of your favorite things, what would be on it?

Photo Friday

November 4, 2016November 5, 20162 Comments

I meant to post this yesterday as a Throwback Thursday post…but I forgot.

Oops.

Oh, well! My forgetfulness worked out this time, because now I’m not scrambling for ideas on what to post today! And Photo Friday can make a brief return!

See? It’s all good! 😀

Wow, that’s phrase I haven’t used since the ’90s…

Speaking of that glorious decade of my misspent youth, today’s photo gallery features a collaborative story a friend and I wrote for Spanish class once upon a time. She did the drawing, I did the writing, and we both had a ton of fun in the process. I was actually thinking about this story (and a couple of others) a couple weeks ago as I sat at school conferences. Miss Tadpole now has my high school Spanish teacher, who told her that I used to write stories in Spanish.

Ah, the good ol’ days, when I was slightly more confident in my language skills… 😀

I ran across this the other night as I was digging through a scrapbook and praying I could find my original ACT scores. They never turned up, but this gem did, along with some other hilarious reminders of my high school days (YM covers and Tiger Beat centerfolds and “Got milk?” ads, oh my!).

My photo skills were somewhat lacking with these, so I captioned each lovely character sketch with the story.

: Dos Amores

: Había una vez, había dos muchachas, Razaana y Iula. Ellas eran amigas. El padre de Iula era Thor. Razaana era una criada de Odin. Razaana y Iula tenían diez y seis años.

: El amor de Razaana era el hijo de Loki, y se llamaba Skeld. Skeld era rubio. Odin no estaba contento con Razaana, porque Odin y Loki eran enimigos. El amor de Iula era el hijo de Hygliak, y se llamaba Buliwyf. Buliwyf era rubio, también.

: Vivían en un pueblo pequeño, Silverton. Hacía siempre sol. El año era 917 A.D. Un día, Razaana estaba andando en la selva cuando ella vió Skeld. Ella corrió a Skeld.

: Skeld tomó Razaana en sus brazos, y después de un abrazo rápido, ellos fugaron. Mientras, Iula y Buliwyf iban a Thor a pedir su bendición. Ellos querían casarse. Thor daba su permiso, y Iula besó Thor en la mejilla. El Fin.

Happy Friday, folks!

Silver Waves

November 3, 2016Leave a comment

foggyroad The mist rolled in from the fields in great silvery waves, swallowing everything in its path. Sea, sky, land – nothing was spared. I sat upstairs, watching from my window as the fog consumed the world, and wondered why, if the curse was broken, everything continued to fade away.

The Oaks

November 2, 20164 Comments

And now, a story in four little sentences:

A ring of gnarled oaks encircled an ancient house on a lonely hillside. Their tangled arms clawed the sky in supplication to the night, begging her to stay, to keep them hidden from the blinding brightness of the day. But when at last Dawn broke over the horizon, their leafy robes burst into flames, and they rained droplets of fire as the morning star watched from on high.

Afterward, when the sun had adjourned its heavenly travels and night fell once more, the trees wept in their lover’s cold embrace and wondered why, when the air turned crisp, she always let them burn.

The Seventh Question

November 30, 2015Leave a comment

Today was definitely a Monday. Luckily, the good outweighed the bad, and on balance, I’d have to say today was a good day, despite the rocky start this morning. I got to celebrate my niece’s birthday with pizza and brownies, and when I got home tonight, I found a package of pogs waiting for me in my mailbox, and I was featured on Simon Goodson’s blog! Pretty fantastico, don’t you think? 🙂

Simon has a new interview feature called The Seventh Question, and I’m thrilled to have been asked to take part. Head on over and check it out, and then catch up on the rest of the series to learn more about Mark R. Hunter and Joleene Naylor. You’ll be glad you did. 🙂