Sweethearts - Day 14

     Happy Valentine's Day sport's fans.  I drug out of bed this morning in slow motion. It was gray outside with about an inch of snow on the ground. Winter really wants to get us but it's the middle of February. We are on the back end of winter. Sure we might get some foul weather but so far so good.

    I ran into a creative wall at my workshop. Last week I had such energy to finish my latest project but today, I couldn't seem to get it together.

    When I got home from work, Philip took me out to dinner. We went into Fortville, just a few miles from out house. We ate at the Fort Grille. The food was OK but their dining area is a little less than intimate. It's not a restaurant that I would chose if we had more time.

    I am beginning to believe that writing in the morning is better for me. At night I feel like I am just more dull.

    I had all kind of ideas this morning for things to tell you, but tonight, I am just thinking about getting to bed and going to sleep.

    Which reminds me, I had a dream about Brad Pitt last night. He was flirting with me in my dreams and I was just giving him the cold shoulder. My friend, Julie, was in my dream, watching what was happening and kept asking me if I was going to do "it' with Brad. Of course I said no...I think. Besides Angelina was there and she and Brad rode off in a dog sled across a rocky hillside - a sweetheart thing to do.

Let It Snow - Day 13

     According to the local weather report, snow is coming our way. It's been a mild winter and the snow that's coming our way should'nt be more than 2 inches. I can live with this forecast.

     Today started out troubling. I went to the McDonald's restaurant near my workshop. I got a chicken biscuit and a large cup of black coffee. Well, that's what I ordered. I picked up my stuff at the window and headed back to the workshop. I chewed around on the biscuit then took one drink of that black coffee and almost did a spit take!

    It had sweetener in it and when I gazed into the drink hole - it had cream too. This is not good news for a lactose intolerant person!

    I went into a mini-panic. "The day cannot start like this!"  If they had screwed up my sandwich order, I would've made the best of it, eaten the sandwich and moved on with my day. But to screw up the coffee is unforgivable!

    I loaded back into my car and drove the 4 blocks to claim my vengeance! I explained to the lady behind the counter that I had just come through the drive through, ordered black coffee and received coffee with creamer AND SWEETENER!

    She calmly took that full cup of coffee, dunk shot it, perfectly, into the trash can and poured me what I needed. The day could not start out like that for her, either.  Happy snow, sports fans!

Home - Day 12

    Oh my goodness. I'm having a major problem with writer's block tonight. I'm drawing a blank from my brain and the 15 minutes tick away.

    The Grammy's are on television. Paul McCartney is singing about getting back home. This is kind of ironic because Phil and I were visiting our friends Jack and Julie tonight. We got to talking about my childhood home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. No matter how old I get, I still consider that place to be home to me. I guess that home can mean a lot of things. Anywhere I'm with my husband is home to me. Of course, having my children be a part of my life is also an element of home for me too.

    Home might also be that place in my mind where I can go to at anytime and in anyplace. I can go there and walk around. I can mull things over as I sit on my big, cozy couch. I can have the entire decor just as I want it. The filmy, white curtains of my mind, blow in the breeze, letting the fresh air clear my thoughts.

    When my Dad grew old, he began to talk of going home. His house was within walking distance of where he stayed with my brother. He could have gone back to the house where he lived for more than 50 years, at any time. It was the house where he and my mother made their home together and grew their family. Yet, at the end of his life, this was not his home. And he began to talk to his parents, two people who have gone to heaven decades ago. It was an unspoken truth, my dad wanted his home in Heaven.

Easy Day - Day 11

    I got up early this morning. Phil and I were planning a trip to Indianapolis. The plan was to go to a museum. Of course, he wanted to stop by and check on the work in progress at a building he owns.

    At the last minute our plans changed and we went to visit our daughter and our grandchildren. We had a lot of fun helping our grand daughter organize her toys. And holding our little 3 month old grandson never gets old. 

    This day has been rather uneventful. So I will write about a day that happened about 25 years ago.

    At that time, we were living in the mountains of east Tennessee.  We lived there in a five room house with our four kids. We also owned a herd of goats which numbered around 25.

    One spring, Philip and I were castrating the young goats. At some point a rebellious goat decides he's gonna make a run for it. He took off like a bullet! I was already aggravated because I hated that job, so having this smarty get away was out of the question. I held onto his back leg with all my might! He pulled me behind him, right into a barbed wire fence. The wire cut my eye brow but I persisted in hanging onto the goat. Phil almost freaked out when he saw the blood on my face.

   When we were finished, we went back to the house to check on the kids.By then, I had forgotten there was blood running down my face.

   My kids still talk about the trauma that caused. (And there's the timer!)

Hearing Things - Day 10

   I was sound asleep this morning. Suddenly I woke up with a "What the ... what?"The door between our bedroom and the kitchen was wide open and the television in the kitchen was blaring. And I don't say that with a naggy, complainy voice. The television was BLARING! I could have gotten up, gotten dressed in complete outdoor gear, gone outside on our porch, and still heard the morning news. It was that loud!

    Since my eyes were full of sleep, I was having a hard time seeing what was going on. I called out loudly for Philip. No response. Then I began to make out his image in the kitchen. He was sitting 30 inches from the television in his underpants and undershirt, enthralled with the news. It made me think of that old magazine advertisement for speakers, the one where the guy is sitting in an easy chair, in front of his stereo, and his hair and clothes are being blown backward by the sound. I hesitated to yell out again. As you may recall from earlier blog entries, Phil thinks I'm a TV Nazi. If you are envisioning me with a remote control in the Nazi salute position, that's not me!

    I knew that I would have to wait for the next ad to get his attention. So I waited and it seemed like forever but an advertisement finally came on and the spell was broken.

    Now what I am about to write may sound bad but I'll just say it. I feel horrible for those people who had the experience of having their cruise ship turn over. I especially feel bad for the people who lost their lives in the fiasco. But this morning when Anne Curry was shouting out the news, she told of how a huge number of passengers recently got sick on a cruise ship and the ship had to return to port. The same thing had happened on the same ship on the previous cruise. Then they cut to an actual passenger from this sick cruise. The lady says "We spent thousands of dollars on this cruise, only to be confined to our cabins, throwing up." And as I laid in bed, with the covers over my head to block out the light and sound from the kitchen, I said to myself "They must have been on the weight loss cruise." I crack myself up!

   Phil came into the bedroom, got dressed, and as he was leaving the room I told him to "SHUT ZE DOOR! TURN DOWN ZE TV!" And he quietly followed orders.

  

    P.S. These two pictures are the before and after pictures of what I thought was a bird in the bush but was actually something else entirely. One of Mother Nature's sneaky tricks! 

Lunar Chronicles - Day 9

    About a week ago, my car rolled over the 200,000 mile mark. I had anticipated this milestone, so I was a bit excited.

    When I first got my car, back in 2000, I told everyone that I was going to drive my car to the moon. Now I have passed the 200,000 mile point. Ahead lies the lunar surface.

     The moon on average is 238,857 miles from Earth. There's not an exact distance because the moon revolves around the Earth in an elliptical orbit. Sometimes it's 252,088 miles and sometimes it is 225,622 miles from Earth. Needless to say, at this point in my trip, all I can see in the windshield is creamy moonscape. I'm beginning to feel the lunar, gravitational pull. Hopefully I will land my car on a flat spot where the heavens can be forever viewed from my front seat and not down in a crater. Crater life would suck for my 2000 Corolla.

    My husband's truck is headed for the moon too. I can see him in my rear view mirror. Wouldn't it be romantic if we landed side by side? Parked together, forever viewing the universe. Ah, such a magical, romantic place is the moon.

    As the number 200,000 was getting ready to come up, I drove my car to the park in Pendleton. I wanted to get a good picture of the 199,999. It had started snowing and there was a beautiful bunch of ducks cavorting in the pond in the park. Just a common, everyday, Earth scene.

    I imagine that anyone watching me sit there snapping flash pictures inside my car, must have thought - "weirdo!" But it's like they say, "The heart wants what it wants."

   It's not as easy as you think to get a picture of the odometer and also get a picture of the world outside your windshield, all in one picture, and have it make sense. So I probably shot off a dozen flash photos in my car. Yeah, I might be a weirdo.

    Satisfied, I headed for home. I could barely tear my eyes away from the odometer. I wanted to see the moment when everything changed. And of course, why not get the 200,000 on record? I was driving down Old Pendleton Pike with my camera at the ready.

    Sometimes I wonder how I am even able to walk and chew gum. I had it in my mind that when the 200,000 came up that each individual number would roll around - like in the old cars - and slowly 200,000 would be revealed to me. Instead, when the number hit, it just hit. What a huge disappointment! I wanted rolling numbers, I wanted clicking, I wanted dramatics. Instead, I get a big number with little fanfare.

    And you probably notice that my check engine light is on. When the 200,000 rolled up, I decided that I'm not gonna worry about that anymore. We're in the moon's gravitational pull. It's all over but the landing!

Learning Stuff - Day 8

      Hello, sports fans! It's about 10 minutes before my cabinet store closes. The timer has started and soft music plays in the background. I am ready to write.

  This process of writing everyday for fifteen minutes is starting to teach me something. I think I use to know it but now appreciate it more than ever. That thing is how much writing depends on editing. A person would almost think that you just start writing what you are thinking.  Well, that maybe true for getting ideas jotted down but you have to go back and erase a little.

   Imagine writing a story as going on a journey. The thoughts flow out. You're moving down the wooded path. You drop a few descriptions of the things that are about you, maybe you even offer up some feelings you're having on this journey. It's all good until you go back and read "I was walking along the road, the one I started on in the first chapter, with the palm trees that have nothing to do with this story about the desert." Cumbersome. 

   My husband thinks I could dictate my writing into a tape recorder and just transcribe it later. Writing is a little more artful than that. Using a brain to choose words, helps with the process.  

    A quiet spot, a regular time, unhurriedness, mindfulness are some of the things I am encountering on this 30 day habit former. (There's the timer)

  I will add that part of the fifteen minutes was used up wrestling with this blogger program, so.... sorry.