The beauty of deadlines

I need deadlines. Self-imposed ones work for me as well as any other kind. Our writers’ group had a deadline to get a piece of writing out on the road to a publication before the end of the year and, well, I did it. Yesterday. If I hadn’t had the deadline of the end of the year, I would have been successful in putting it off until.........

The late writer, Douglas Adams, author of the terrifically hilarious five book trilogy that sorted out that thorny answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, once said that he loved deadlines because he liked the whooshing sound they made as they flew by. It’s not that way for me. I need the finite line drawn across the calender or clock face that says, “you have until this point.” Otherwise, time is, obviously, infinite. I have all the time in the world and it’ll never be enough if I put off my departure from the waiting room. Douglas Adams died when he was forty-nine, two years younger than I am now. If he’d thought time was infinite, we wouldn’t have Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect, and I wouldn’t have memories of laughing so hard my sides hurt the next day.

So, once again I say, I did it. It’s the not be-all end-all for which I hope, after all, I’ve resolved to write a book in 2009, but it is a start and not a delay.

Plus, by way of celebration, my husband and I went out for breakfast. We sat by the restaurant's fireplace, enjoying the warmth and wrapping our cold hands around our over-sized coffee mugs, talking of books and movies. Ending one year and getting ready to start a new one buoyed by a sense of accomplishment is a darn good feeling.

Happy New Year’s Eve!

Reflecting and Prognosticating

For me, 2008 has been a very good year. I only “crossed” three things off my to-do list, enjoy the flower garden more, entertain more and bring new writing to my writers’ group, but, in 2008, I’ve finally become less distracted than I used to be. I can more easily cut off the outside world and come into my comfortable cave to write or to contemplate a single idea. I’ve been getting my “work” out of the way more quickly and now have time to read or create. Or nap. I practice focusing and am able to visualize with much less effort.

I’ve gleaned something from this visualization, something it took me half a century to realize. I’m much more likely to do something if it is specific rather than vague. “Exercise more” is less likely to get crossed off the list than “finish a marathon,” though, in my case, finish a marathon is unlikely to make the list in the first place let alone be crossed off. I’ve also realized that a complete list of all the things I hope to do ends up making me feel I’m pulled in a thousand different directions and that I’ve failed because I only accomplished three out of a list of many. So, though I’m not an Uber Frau, I can be a Wonder Woman (I’m still waiting on delivery of that order for an invisible plane and the bullet deflecting gold cuffs). Any who, I’m only listing two goals for 2009.

#1 Travel to a foreign country
#2 Write a book

Two items on which to concentrate my energies in 2009. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Merry Christmas

O' Christmas tree

Be the envy of your peers!

Be your own fairy godmother.


Come on, you know you want to.

And so I say....

Volume

Isn’t it interesting that we call books volumes. Well, it is to me, anyway. A volume of poetry, for instance. Maybe this is because what’s in a book fills more space than the inch or so between the covers. What’s in a book can fill up the world. It most certainly can fill up a life.

Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, contributed to the passage of laws governing the meat packing industry. Rachel Carson’s, Silent Spring, led to a ban on DDT. But it’s not only the books with the BIG ideas or themes that have impact, it’s the smaller books that seem to find us at just the right time, speaking to us one on one. If I may be so bold as to admit it, I had the worst education. However, I have always read. A lot. I learned not only how to behave, but how I wanted to behave by reading stories about people with the qualities I hoped I might copy.

I read to find out about other people and places, to realize how something innocuous might appear to someone with a guilty conscious or how big a problem an out-of-date railway timetable is to someone waiting to meet the mother-in-law just in on the train. I used to read biographies and autobiographies because I found interest in a well-lived life before realizing most are so biased they make better fiction. Now I read them for that reason.

I’ve always read mysteries and still do, not because I am comforted by a world in which justice prevails, but because I’ve always like to figure things out. I like to know why on Earth so-and-so decided to do such-and-such (or do-in so and so). I will admit I also liked knowing what went on in English country house parties, too, so Agatha Christie was a favorite until I was about twenty-two.

My reading has become more varied as I’ve aged, I try a bit of this or taste of that, stick my fingers in here or there, dabbling in a bit of something new or coming back to something old. I’ve begun rereading a few favorites, pleased to see an entirely different story running alongside the one I remember. Books are always a discovery for me, even if the discovery is realizing how many ways I can improve.

Here’s to the volume of life and the continuing drive to fill it.

Snow Day

The phrase “snow day” still puts a big smile on my face. A get-out-of-school or get-out-of-work free day. Mother Nature saying you don’t have to do what you thought you had to do. You don’t have to face whatever drudgery would have taken place if you’d had to do the daily routine.

Of course, the phrase is like speaking a foreign language to those souls who don’t keep a snow scraper in their cars year round. I don’t think “Hurricane Day” is anything like the same because people are urged to leave their homes and there is usually lots of advance notice. The beauty of a Snow Day is that you don’t always know before you go to bed at night whether or not you’ll have to hit the road in the morning or not. There’s no warning and you get to stay home.

So, I’ll raise my cup of hot chocolate (homemade with chocolate malt added) and give a toast the one of the most magical of phrases......

.......Snow Day.

More tea, Vicar?

I’m making an early resolution. Next year, 2009, I’m going to take a trip to a foreign country. It will be later in the year, probably September because 9 is a favored number for the person I hope is my traveling companion. We might go to Paris since direct flights are available from some city in Ohio, (note to self: do a bit of research before heading to airport). We might go to Scotland because we both freaking love Scotland and long to be referred to as a “lass.” Or we might go to England because, well, because we want to hear someone say, “that’s me sorted,” or to announce when we’ve done something silly that we “feel a right old herbert.” Or we might go somewhere else.

Anyway, this is resolution #1.

Thanks giving

Besides the people and things for which I hope I show I am thankful more than just one day a year, I have a particular list of favorites for which to give thanks. (Starting the list with run-on and/or awkward sentences).

Oatmeal cookies made with brown sugar
Southern Exposure’s staff and classes
Mayan Dark Chocolate coffee by International Foods coffee
Bailey’s
Bailey’s Caramel
Bailey’s Coffee
Tiaras
Snow
Flowers
No workmen in the house
Naps
Sleeping kittens
Hot showers and scented body wash
Christmas tree lights
Leftovers
Warm socs
Books, books, books, books
Music
Old movies

Creative spaces

I think of myself as a creative person though my pace seems woefully slow. I am lucky in that I have a wonderfully large room where I can putter and try out this or that combination and set things aside and still have some room to work on my current project. Anyone can come here. I have a space dedicated to creating, but this is not where I create.

There are other places, dearer places, places where I freely wander and every one of them is inaccessible to anyone other than myself. I have a place that looks like an Old English shop, Dickensian in fact, with large glass cases, a bit dusty, housing my creations. The paint is dark green, but very old and faded. The coffee is always on and there are cookies on a china plate. There is a lettered sign over the door, Nicholas & Marley, and a tinkling bell that rings when I push open the door to come inside and be inspired. When I’m in here, I might physically be sitting in my large room at home, but I’m really far away in both space and time.

There is another place I go and, I must admit, it can be quite a long hike to get there. It’s a library, my own library, a story and a half high with recessed pine paneling and built-in bookcases all around, a desk near a large fireplace with a fire that is always burning, a comfortable chair and ottoman in gray velvet and a couple of quilts in case I feel the need to nap. There are floor to ceiling windows with heavy fringed drapes that always frame a night scene of falling snow. This is the space I use when I write fiction and I find great difficulty staying on the path that wanders and loops through every other place in my mind before I can get here. I’m too easily side-tracked.

I need to practice getting to my library and my shop more often, finding a shortcut, perhaps. My creative spaces somehow comfort me, though I don’t believe comfort is the right word. Insulate is more like it. They act as a buffer that allows me to create complete crap knowing no one else will see it and judge all of my meager talent by it. The freedom to create crap that can be tweaked and trimmed and highlighted and possibly turned into something I’m not horrified to bring out into the light. The freedom to fail, fail, fail, fail and still try again.

I have the best creative spaces. Someday, I post a blog about the gardens around them.

Fools rush in

Em has a great post up about her experience with Writing Day, a day she’d set aside Just For Writing. From what I can glean, she managed 35 minutes of writing in addition to the time it took her to do the blog post about her Writing Day experience. It also appears she managed some healthy fiber for breakfast as well as lunch out with her father who is, I agree, effin’ cool. She also washed her hair.

Just let me say, well, you’re thirty-five minutes ahead of me on the writing, you had a healthy breakfast, had lunch out AND you have clean hair. You’re way ahead of my curve.

You are my hero.

Today Istanbul, tomorrow Constantinople

I love the Brits. I say this so often that I may have crossed the annoyance line with my husband over it, but I can’t help it. I love the Brits. Where else but on a British program would you have a character say, "I may be gone some time. Carry on as though I weren't here."

An article on the British newspaper, the Telegraph’s, online site reported Britain’s first October snowfall in 74 years a few weeks ago and went on to recall newsworthy snows of the past, most notably, and this is a direct quote “In 1881, the Great Victorian Blizzard brought five-metre drifts to London, while in 1836, journalists were able to use for the first – and last – time the unlikely newspaper headline: "AVALANCHE KILLS EIGHT IN SUSSEX".”

Ah, bless ‘em.

The Telegraph’s website has become my news source of choice. I liked the way they reported the American Presidential election. I like the full articles speculating on who will replace David Tennant as the next Doctor Who. I like occasional use of the word “arcane” in their articles. But, most especially, I like their obituaries.

Here in the Colonies, our obits tend to be a boring list of data from birth to death, including the number and list of siblings as well as off-spring and off-spring of off-spring. Graduated from here or there, served in such and such, etc. We’re so focused on accomplishments that we celebrate a life by listing them. The list of what one did doesn’t tell me much if anything about the person the world just lost, but read the obituary of Johnny Hesketh at www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/3393349/Johnny-Hesketh.html and I dare you not to feel that the world was lucky to have enjoyed the company of this person. Almost every obituary is like this one, filled with anecdotes and some sense of the personality. I have Johnny to thank for the title of this post.

And don’t even get me started on how much better and flat out interesting the writing is in the Telegraph.

Ah, bless ‘em.

Two Bits

Every year, my husband and I have a standing bet for twenty-five cents. I bet that we'll have snow, the snow doesn’t have to stick to the ground and flurries count, on Halloween or before and he, being the sport he is, says we won’t.

I think I might win a quarter this year.

The Color(a)tour(a)

Yesterday on what will probably prove to be the last great weekend day for driving around the area and seeing the trees expending all their efforts to dazzle in oranges, yellows and reds, we took our annual color tour. Our annual Coloratoura. During the ride and the stop at a coffee shop along a local lake shore where we refueled with good coffee and very good pumpkin bundt cake with cream cheese frosting drizzled with caramel, we came up with a few Thoughts on Fall.

1. Fall is all about presentation. Find the winding back road through the country and traveling down and up and twisting and turning through a brightly colored day. Observe the leaves still on the trees as well as the drifts of bright color from the fallen leaves dancing across the road, swept to the side as we pass. Side note to this thought: fall is messy, but worth it.

2. Fall is a performance piece. You have to go out into fall to really appreciate the staging. Leaves fluttering down from the trees, yellow brightening when caught in the sun. If the temps are not too cold, roll down the window and hear the crunch of the leaves and the sound of distant flocks of geese heading out of Dodge. Catch the faint hint of wood smoke in the air or the acrid smell of burning leaves. See not only the vivid hues of the trees but the rich dark red of apples at a roadside stand next to piles of pumpkins. Maybe, if you're lucky, there will also be cider.

3. Fall is best when enhanced by good coffee and very good pumpkin bundt cake with cream cheese frosting drizzled with caramel.

The uncertainty principle

There are many decisions involved in any project; color, size and shape, style, etc., but I know of few places where decisions are made more difficult because of the sheer number of choices as in a store selling light fixtures. Add to this the knowledge that the choices to be made were for a room that, as yet, only existed as a line drawing on a piece of paper and one wonders if Heisenberg wasn’t so much a Nobel prize winning physicist as a man whose house was being remodeled.

We had to visit one such store recently. By the time we left, we both had headaches and, if we hadn’t carried our final choices out with us, we would not have been able to recall what they were half a hour later. Too many choices bouncing around our brains.

When one looks at a large bronze outside light fixture with a carefully attained patina and a slip of wonderfully crackled glass, it is difficult to remember that you’ll need one for each side of the french doors and that the size of this particular choice will overwhelm everything. You need to close your eyes to remember the light will hang at eye level out the kitchen window and you’d better have some sort of smoky glass if you don’t want to blind yourself looking at a bare bulb. You need to keep in mind the entire structure. You need to remember this is the light you may have hanging outside that kitchen window for a long, long time.

I’m amazed we were able to make any choice at all.

This way to the Great Egress

We started a remodeling project a few weeks back. Because of this, there have been people in our home. They will continue to be in our home for a few more weeks. They are all, without exception, polite, gracious and even amusing. Yet all I can think of is that I want them to be gone. I want to thank them for their work and show them the door.

I want my privacy back.

Best, Favorite and Most Wonderful

I don’t believe I could survive very well without books. I always have at least two books going at once. Right now, I have a biography, a mystery and a supernatural storyline competing for my attention. I love it. I’m being courted by three completely different beaus. For what more could a girl ask?

When I consider the list of those books that have found me at just the right time in my life or have simply bowled me over when I read them, I find they are a diverse group. The list is incomplete since it only includes those three books I’ve thought of in the past fifteen minutes.

Watership Down, my all-time favorite book. I remember standing in a bookstore looking over the grouping of books on the paperback bestseller list and picking up a copy with brilliant reviews in huge letters front and back. I read the first few pages until I reached the point where the rabbits started speaking to one another, then I looked at the glowing reviews again and made sure I wasn’t in the children’s book section. I did not know authors were allowed to write that way for adults. I was sixteen years old and think it was in that moment that I knew I wanted to write.

Rebecca. There are very few books that create such a feeling of building suspense mingled with dreadful unease as the lead up to the costume ball when the second Mrs. de Winter starts down the stairs dressed as Caroline de Winter. I need to study this to find out how best to do it because, for me, Daphne du Maurier flat out nailed it.

The Debt to Pleasure. This is not a well known book, but I have never ever read anything that managed to make me laugh out loud at the beginning of a sentence then gasp in shock by the end. Brilliant, manipulative and the most unreliable narrator ever.

Not only did these three books court me, but they swept me off my feet. Only because I continue the search for another such beau am I willing to stand on my own again.

Get Your Tickets Here!

I’m lucky enough to have a friend who tells me she wishes she could go inside my head for a little while and look around. And, as I told her, right now it’s pretty cool in there. I have figures and creations everywhere you look, in every corner, in every nook and in every cranny. Some of them are wearing finery for the Halloween ball, one figure is in shades of caramel, creams and burnt orange, another in floaty copper fabric and black velvet while one obviously Scottish lass is wearing plaid with frothy lace ruffles. Off in another space are a pair of pumpkin headed male cheerleaders with old letter sweaters and orange and black checked cuffed trousers. One figure walks around with a sandwich board proclaiming the Halloween events as he sells raffle tickets. There are teetering stacks of materials everywhere, wonderful loden green wools along with black, dark orange, deep russet and dark gray, there are velvets, a few brocades, tweeds and plaids, silky creams and whites as well as prints. A few open drawers hold trims and feathers, buttons galore, pins and brooches. There is a soundtrack, too, my voice telling the stories of each of the figures, the ladies going to their first ball and the one who will meet the love of her life before the evening ends, those two male cheerleaders whose team at Goblin High hopes to win the championship and the sandwich board man who only has a few tickets left.

“Get your tickets here! Halloween! One Night Only!”

Yeah, it’s pretty cool in there right now. And as I work to transform what seems so real inside my head to something similar outside my head, I hope to make things pretty cool out here, too.

Autumn clematis just beginning to bloom

The brrrr months

It’s that time of year again when the cooler weather begins, football weather, pumpkin pie and cider weather, Septembrrrr, Octobrrrr and Novembrrrr. (I’ll save Decembrrrr for a later post.) The brrrr months. My favorite.

For me, there is much to love during this fall into winter season. Not only do I adore cooler and colder weather, but I like the clothes better, sweaters and mittens and gloves. I like the ways in which we cope with the cold and the earlier nightfalls, hot coffee and cocoa, fires crackling in the fireplace, candles burning, baking, baking, baking, curling up under quilts and blankets, the increased frequency of the get-togethers with friends and family to warm our spirits. I freaking love the colors this time of year, the dark red of apples, pumpkins, the burnt orange and burgundy colored mums, the yellow, orange and red trees and the way the evergreens stand out against the riot of foliage. The trees getting on their party clothes again.

I love Halloween, the candy, the costumes of the ones who venture into the night to roam door to door with a plastic grocery store bag or an old pillow case begging for treats on ghouls’ night out. I enjoy decorating the house and having parties during this silly season, creating jack-o-lanterns, putting together menus and baking, baking, baking.

I can’t get enough of this season, but autumn is a fleeting time. The trees glow briefly before dropping their bright clothing to stand bare limbed and the scent of burning leaves is closely followed by the smell of snow on the air. November arrives quickly and we pull out the jars of preserves a friend gave us to spread across warm cranberry muffins, licking our fingers between sips of coffee as we plan Thanksgiving menus or decide what we’ll bring when the family gets together.

There is another thing to love in this season that the long, bright days of summer do not afford us. The way the lighted windows speak without words as we drive down our dark roads toward home. Here’s hoping everyone arrives safely.

Beauty

Time flying once again

It’s been a year and two days since I started this blog. A year and two days.

I’m happy to say I have achieved some of the goals from a year (and two days) ago. More importantly, I’ve faced up to the fact that I tend to spread myself too thin and have taken steps to correct this. Realizing the fact of this was one thing, doing something about it has been something else. So, I’ve given up a bit of work in a county far, far away in order to have more time for the pursuits I love, but I still have the problem of loving many, many pursuits. I realized I needed to make some decisions about those as well. I’ve narrowed the long and winding list down to two desires to which I can surrender.

Creating and writing. Writing and creating.

Creating in the sense of being an artist and creating 3-dimensional objects. The objects tend to be figures, dressed with small accessories. Since I love stories, my 3-dimensional creations often have names and always have their own little tales. They always, always make me smile.

Writing is also, of course, creating, and I love telling stories, but writing is more than that. Even more than when I’m creating something 3-dimensional, writing allows me to be in charge. If I can’t make the face out of paper clay for the figure quite the way I’d first envisioned it, I change the fabrics or the pose or the items they hold until I see before me something that pleases me. In writing, I can describe the face (or the fabrics or the pose) and draw a word picture that is precisely what I want. It may or may not be true, but I feel I have more freedom when I’m writing.

I had some help in figuring out that I would not be as likely to achieve those things I want until I freaking figured out which things I want the most. I recently read a book called, the Magic of Thinking Big, by David J. Schwartz, Ph.D. Here is my favorite bit.

Failure to follow desire, to do what you want to do most, paves the way to mediocrity. the only way to get full power, to develop full go force, is to do what you want to do. Surrender to desire. Surrender to the goal. Really surrender. Let it obsess you and give you the automatic instrumentation you need to reach that goal.

So, surrender already.

Photo finish(ed)

Yikes! I wish my picture taking abilities were a bit better for Nicholas & Marley’s laboratory entrance. The sign looks very good on the door, but my picture of the sign on the door, not so good. Seeing it in person makes me smile and hurry through the door and down the stairs to my studio. Seeing it on the blog makes me sigh, but I wanted it out there so I posted it. Hmmm, I’m going to be practicing my photo taking skills big time before I post any creations.

Laboratory entrance

Enter at your own risk

I’ve always wanted a sign on the door to my studio warning potential intruders to stay away while I worked. I spent a long time wanting a studio, too, so long that I had a name for my business/studio before I had the space in which to work. The name I use is Nicholas & Marley. Now I have a large room where I can spread things out and leave everything without worrying that the cats will make their own playground in the glitter and paper clay. I even have a comfortable chair and ottoman where I can sit flipping through magazines for ideas or making sketches or falling asleep dreaming of new whimsies to create.

The only problem I’ve had during the year since my studio came into being is a lack of time. This is what I tell myself because I’ve only completed a handful of the ideas I started. I have several pieces nearly finished, but they’ve been nearly finished now for six months. Maybe “enter at your own risk” isn’t the sign I need on the door of Nicholas & Marley. Perhaps I shouldn’t remind myself right at the threshold of the risk in creating items I hope to show the world, but of the joy in creating, the excitement of trying something new, of experimenting. I know I never have trouble finding the time to play.

My studio is the place where I turn bits and pieces of this and that into figures that make me smile. And if they first make me smile, there is a very good chance they will do the same for others. So I’m thinking a different sign on the door will help me remember this.

Nicholas & Marley’s Laboratory - Welcome

The first step is admitting you have a problem

I’m a girl who likes affirmative and empowering sayings. There, I’ve said it. It’s out there in the ether, even worse, it’s out there on the Internet.

I’m such a sucker for the pithy to the point one or two lines that sum up things. Every once in a while a saying will hit me right in the chest and make me sit up and say, “Wow, that’s exactly it.” We all sometimes think we’ve got it wrong and seeing words we may never have been able to put together ourselves hit the mark and tell us something we recognize as the truth can take away our breath.

Here are a few of my favorites.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
George Elliot

There is NO reason good enough to give up your throne.
Unknown

Five frogs were sitting on a log. Four frogs decided to jump off. How many were left?
Five. That’s the difference between deciding and doing.
Unknown

Now, a drum roll, please, for my all time favorite.

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.
Ana Quindlen

And just for fun........

As much as I try to be an easygoing, stretch your wings and fly type...I just can’t stop trying to burst people into flames with my mind.
Unknown

The Best of Summer

If it is possible to look forward to remembering a season, then that is the way I best like to enjoy my summers. I don’t tend to appreciate summer as it is happening since I don’t like the heat, the humidity, the bugs and the too long hours of daylight. I do, however, like the memories. Campfires, for instance. There have been many campfires in my past and I hope there will be many more to come, but it is only in memory that I truly savor them. The biting bugs and the humidity are non-existent and the t-shirt doesn’t hurt against my sunburned back. I recall sitting around campfires until the rising sun streaked the sky, popped corn only slightly scorched, endless s’mores, stories, wishes made on shooting stars.

I remember once when I was about twelve having another twelve year old girl stay the night from one of the houses down the way at the lake where we had a cottage. We had a very large screened porch with a full bed at one end, some redwood stained wooden chairs and a metal glider smaller than a loveseat at the other end. Naturally, or so it seemed at the time, we chose to sleep on the glider. Each in our own sleeping bag. My head at one end, hers at the other so that once we were settled, we could talk. I think this incident and our attempts to not only fit into the space, but stay fitted into it, hold my life record for longest sustained laughter.

So, in memory of how my sides ached the following day here’s a toast to the best of summer and to those of us who enjoy it most only after it has passed.

Baby Nikko Blue

Impatien(ce)s

How does your garden grow?

Right now, mine is growing great though it is still such a young garden I find myself impatient for a few years from now when the hydrangeas will be much larger and fuller and the clematis taller. Three to four years, the advertisement promised, and my Nikko blue hydrangeas will be five to six feet tall.

By the way, can you tell I’ve finally figured out how to work the digital camera I gave myself for my birthday last August? And I finally learned how to download the pictures onto my computer without having to call into the other room for husband help. Well, if I do it correctly next time I will have finally learned.

That’s what it’s like with a garden, too. Sometimes you need to call for some help, sometimes you learn to do it yourself and there is almost always something of which you want to take a picture.

So, I'll go take some pictures including one of my poor little Nikko blue hydrangea. It has a lot to do over the next four years. Like teaching me patience.

Lists

All too often my lists are “to do” lists of what chores I need to do today, but I do have a several much more fun lists. I hope everyone does.

Favorite things to do
Laugh with friends and family, in fact making a friend laugh until they’re wiping tears from their eyes (hi, Penny) is my favorite thing ever
Read and write
Cut flowers from the yard for the mantle
Check out wineries and brew pubs
Sip coffee and eat good chocolate
Make good chocolate truffles that make people smile when they bite into them (hi, Marie)
Enjoy dark, quiet unhurried mornings
Create

Favorite movies (as of today)
To Each His Own
The More the Merrier
The Lady Eve
Stranger Than Fiction
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
The Uninvited
Christmas in Connecticut

Favorite fictional characters
Sherlock Holmes
Daffy Duck
Bugs Bunny

Favorite stuff in general
Family
Friends
Quilts
Cats
Books
Flowers
Music
Old movies
Old radio shows

I could go on and on and, one day, I will. For now I hope anyone reading this can put aside their “to do” list of chores for a moment and consider one or more of their own “favorite” lists.

A Room with a View

Just a couple of the wonders I could see from my office window this past week.

In between raindrops.

Late Bloomer

I came to gardening late in life. Growing up, I hated dirt, hated getting sweaty and the idea of finding any joy in digging around in the dirt and pulling weeds was beyond my comprehension.

Then we put up a privacy fence and what I had was no longer a lawn that marched alongside and right up to all the neighbors’ lawns, but my very own secret garden, a walled space that no one else could see unless by invitation. I have a couple of winding paths through cat mint, tall bearded irises and smaller rock irises, dahlias, roses, coreopsis, Becky daisies, zinnias, variegated willows, lilacs, hydrangeas, cosmos, peonies, petunias, watermelon colored poppies, day lilies, pincushion plants, bell flowers, hostas, painted ferns, veronica, asiatic lilies, ornamental grasses and boxwood. I have seating areas and obelisks covered in autumn clematis, climbing sweet peas and morning glories. There is a bird bath as well as a set of steps at the back fence so we can still give treats to the neighbor’s dogs. Closer to the house, a deck partly sectioned off with a pergola that will soon be covered in more clematis vines awaits anyone who would like to sit with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. One step down from the pergola-covered deck is a section of brick patio with a sitting area before an outdoor fireplace.

So, to anyone reading this, give me a call and I’ll put on a pot of coffee or open a bottle of wine. I’m inviting you to sit with me in my secret garden.

Miss Direction

Has it really been nearly a month since I’ve posted? Yikes. Unfortunately, the time has flown because I’ve been working so freaking much. Too freaking much. I have an opportunity to get a nice paycheck if I get a job done in a few months. So, on top of my regular work which was considerable, I’ve taken on the new job, too.

Sigh. Where did I go wrong? What somewhat sane individual would deliberately do this to themselves?

Me. I. Myself.

See this is the thing. One day, maybe soon, I would like to retire. Taking on the big jobs for the nice paychecks means that “one day” will be sooner rather than later.

So I work long hours and hard days during the week and on my weekends I work long hours and hard days, too. I’m doing this so that in a few years I can retire and I WON’T be saying “where did I go wrong.”

Sigh. That’s all for now. I have to get back to work.

Riding the rails.........with Paulette Goddard

Once, in an attempt to follow a train of thought, I asked my husband how he’d gotten from the subject we had been discussing to the new subject he’d just introduced. He thought about the question for a moment, then explained how the original subject had made him think of something else and that took him to somewhere else and on and on until he’d brought up the new subject. The train of thought made sense even though the beginning and ending seemed as though they had nothing in common.

Every once in a while, we’ll ask one another to describe another train of thought, to ride the rails through the mind’s hairpin curves and fast straight-a-ways to the next station. It’s almost an experiment when we do this now, an examination of the odd links our minds make.

Sometimes you can outline a successful attempt through the maze to recall the name of an actor or actresses not by linking them to the film about which you’re talking, but by making a deliberate series of links through other films or other actors or other whatever until you reach the place where your mind has stored their name. For example, my husband asked me which actress had played the showgirl part in the original version of the film, “The Women.” I like this movie, I have the DVD which I’ve watched many times. I know the names of the principle actresses. On this occasion I could picture the actress, but I could not recall her name. I said, “She was the one who was married to Charlie Chaplin.” Nothing. “She was married to Burgess Meredith.” Nothing. “She was married to that French writer who wrote All Quiet on the Western Front.” Nothing. “Oh, wait, she was in a movie with Bob Hope, The Ghost Breakers,” and then I had it. Paulette Goddard. For reasons unknown to me, my mind hid her behind a Bob Hope movie I’ve only seen once. My mind is a bit twisted.

Maybe this explains why, so often, my train of thought goes off the tracks.

Farewell to the Court of St. James

Merde!

I cannot speak French and it is extremely unlikely that I will ever learn to do so. There are a few words I know, but I can neither speak nor understand French well enough to carry on a conversation with even a first semester student who is taking the language. Yesterday, it occurred to me that this means I will never be appointed to the Court of St. James. The American Ambassador to England isn’t called the Ambassador to England, he or she is the Ambassador to the Court of St. James (Bless the English) and the Court language is French. It isn’t that this was ever on my to-do list, but I’d like to think I’d be ready for most things if asked. Alas. Please accept this post as my preemptive attempt to strike my name off the list of possible ambassadorial candidates.

Mercy boo coo

Riding the wave

I occasionally read CityMama’s blog. Today she wrote about the “subversive acts” that mothers do after they’ve had children that remind them of their lives before children. The stuff that, usually, no one would ever realize if they hadn’t spilled the beans in the blog. Some of the responses were what the women actually do and some of them were wish lists of subversive acts. Most responses involved post-children tattoos. My favorite was about the almost painfully shy mother who “is a kick-ass, chain-metal, silver micro mini-wearing mama on an all-woman’s roller derby team.” I may have found another hero here.

With or without children, all I can ponder now is what subversive acts are going on in the lives of the women I know? Do I, perhaps, know a woman who performs in a circus high wire act? Do I know someone who is a vegetarian, but who goes out of their way to stand downwind of the local eatery and catch a whiff of grilled meat? How about someone who bakes solely to lick the beaters?

So, the question to be answered in regard to subversive acts is, what would I do (WWID). Okay, here it is. If I could overcome my fear of imminent death, I would take up surfing. I’d be a surfer dudette. And I’d wear waterproof SPF 415 so I be as pale as a Sicilian widow and no one would ever know I spent my days in the sun.

Unless I spill the beans in a blog.

Old Songs

I usually listen to old radio programs on XM radio while I’m driving the long drive to and from work. Occasionally, while a show I don’t like is playing, I’ll twirl the dial (so to speak) and check out the 60's, 70's or 80's stations. The Old Songs, the songs that bring back memories, the songs to which I danced so badly, but enjoyed so much. Songs with which I now sing along at the top of my lungs. Not to worry, I am, of course, on back roads when I do my singing though if the sunroof is open and the wind is just right you might hear a dreadful drawn out screeching sound. That’s me!

Occasionally, however, there are ghosts in Old Songs. Those songs that recall times of heartache. Songs that recall growing up. Songs that make me reach out to change to a different station, then hesitate long enough to acknowledge that remembered ache. Songs that allow me to accept that the sorrows and the joys and how I handled both have brought me to the person I am now. And so I sing along with this Old Song as well, softly.

April Fool's

Right now I’m thinking there is no April fool with quite as good a sense of humor as Mother Nature showed yesterday.

The "day” itself, a day when my husband found a rubber ducky floating in the toilet bowl first thing in the morning and had the nerve to say, “Oh, is it April Fool’s Day already,” Mother Nature managed a day that began with brutal wind gusts and temps in the upper 50's, then falling temps and snow flying in the afternoon. Ah, bless her, she’s never boring.

And in order not to be boring myself, I have a year less a day to come up with something in addition to the rubber ducky. There’s no fool like an April fool.

Spring is in the air..........somewhere

Last fall I ordered some plants which, I was assured, would be sent at the correct time for spring planting in my area. They arrived the day before yesterday. The day before the latest snow arrived. I don’t think the ground has thawed yet and I have dahlias to plant.

Hmmm, I see a problem.

Somewhere someone at White Flower Farm looked at a calendar and decided it was spring. To quote Anthroslug at his "the not-quite adventures of a professional archaeologist" blog, "there is often a wide chasm between what is and what is perceived."

Jane Eyre was a gold digger

I love it when (clever) writers take a classic and rework it a bit. Give it a different slant or change the era or tell the tale from a different character’s point of view. Thus, we have Shakespeare’s, The Tempest, reworked into the cult sci-fi classic, Forbidden Planet, with Robbie the robot as Ariel. There have been countless retellings and versions of Dickens’, A Christmas Carol, including a rather good book by Gregory Maquire called, Lost, in which the main character’s family claims an ancestor on whom Ebenezer Scrooge was based.

My own family boasts of a court jester as an ancestor about whom no one has yet written. Maybe that will have to be me. But I digress.

Currently on Broadway and on tour throughout the country is a musical based on the Good Witch Glenda and the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz called, Wicked. This take is also based on a book by Gregory Maquire. Now to the classic, Jane Eyre, the only one of the books any Bronte wrote that I could actually get through. There has been a very well received book telling the story from Mr. Rochester’s first and not-quite-yet-mad first wife’s point of view called Wide Sargasso Sea. The producer, Val Lewton, one of my favorite’s, gave us the horror movie, I Walked with a Zombie, based on Jane Eyre, since Lewton needed a story and, with a minimal budget, had to adapt something already in the public domain. The author, Jasper Fforde’s, book, The Eyre Affair, is a hilarious tale of a world where people can enter their favorite books as long as they don’t break the law by changing anything in the story. Someone begins their nefarious doings by messing about with a character in Dickens who is so minor only scholars notice the change and escalating to kidnaping Jane Eyre right out of her book.

So I’m waiting for the book that asks of Jane Eyre, what did she know and when did she know it? I’m waiting for the book that paints dear Jane as a scheming little gold digger who set her cap for Mr. Rochester. I’m waiting for the author who wonders if Jane just happened to leave something flammable in the attic of Thornfield Hall.

Maybe that will have to be me.

In which our heroine finds herself mired waist-deep

in a mind-numbingly boring afternoon. Still brown outside, only now there is a cold misty rain that is leaving me listless and without gumption. My mind feels slow and thick and unfocused. More so than usual.

I fear I need a tonic. Does wine count as a tonic?

Brown out

Things are looking disturbingly brown outside. Without the cover of snow and before the warm rains and sun of spring, the world is.....brown. Not a good coffee brown, either, more of a beige brown. I spied some tulips beginning to push up, but no flowers anywhere yet.

No robins yet, either, but there are birds. Most especially, there are cardinals. The only real color in the landscape right now are the cherry red male cardinals. All the birds are involved in some serious flying and chasing and picking up bits of dried (brown) grass.

Today is supposed to be an outside clean up day where we pick up fallen sticks, rake some of the leaves off the flower beds, cut back the ornamental grasses that have swayed all winter and burn all the yard debris. It’s supposed to be, but there is a cold wind blowing and the temperature is not going to be as warm as we thought a few days ago. There is also a new Panera bread store down the street with fabulous pastries and a bag of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee on our counter begging to be used for the purpose for which it was made. So I have a choice between a beige brown landscape and good coffee brown with cherry pastries.

What to do, what to do.

Winter

A few years ago, my husband took this picture out our front door. This is one of my favorite views of winter.

A wish to build a dream on

To be grammatically correct, it should read a wish on which to build a dream, but that doesn’t have the same old zing, so I’ll leave it as it stands.

Everyone, I hope, has a wish to build a dream on. Some thing they want, some thing for which they would make sacrifices. Some thing, though thing is not always the wish. It could be a situation or a way of living that is different from the way things are now. As humans, I believe we all need a wish to build a dream on.

Here’s the problem. For far too many of us, myself included until I suddenly realize time is a-passing and if I don’t get off my duff and strive harder, my wish is only ever going to be a wish and not a reality, don’t do anything more than wish. “Oh, someday,” we whisper wistfully, taking comfort in the dream as though the dream were the reality. To have a wish or a dream is good, but I’m saying the wish or dream alone is not good enough and absolutely and positively should not be good enough. My wishes and my dreams are of great and enormous comfort as I travel down the path toward them, but they will not be a comfort if I get to the end of my life and only have wishes and dreams to show for a lifetime.

This is what Thoreau said, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams, you will meet with a success unimagined in your waking hours! Live the life you’ve imagined.”

Off I go.

Whoa is me

Today is one of those rare days when I’m able to do all my work from home and even rarer, it has happened on a Friday. I don’t have to drive to Marshall and down to Coldwater and back home. I can tuck in for the day, sit back and relax, slow down and enjoy.

Whoa.

But will I? I have a list of around the house projects to do. I have reading and commenting to do for the next writers’ group and I have writing of my own to do. I have all of those things to do that I’d do if only I had the time to do them. Oh-oh, today I have the time.

Maybe instead of being in whoa mode for the day, I’ll treat this like any other weekday when I have things I need to get done and I’ll actually cross some of those to-do things off my list. Whoa! I’ll do something and I’ll still have the weekend to kick back.

If only making the decision to do something was the same as doing it. Sigh, talk to you later, I’ve got some stuff to get done.

Smells in the best sense of the word

AllAtwitter’s blog post on smells has me thinking about my own favorites and the “smell memories” they evoke. My strongest memory ever associated with a smell or scent happened a few decades after my parents had divorced, I was helping my mother go through an old dresser and came upon a jar of Wind Song scented body creme. I opened the jar and breathed in deeply, then said out loud, “You and Dad are going out.” The smell had instantly taken me back twenty-five years to that moment after the baby sitter had arrived and Mom was all dressed up and perfumed leaning over to kiss me good-bye.

Smells I love are cookies or bread baking, coffee, snow on the air, wood fires burning in the fireplace and that smell of cold when my husband comes in from outside. All of these evoke home for me.

Wings perfume, the flat out best smell I ever smelled.

The scent of burning leaves. The smell of apples at a fruit stand. The smell of lilacs.

Quoth the raven

I usually don’t talk much about my “real” job in the blog, but I’m going to say this. I’ve had a project this week where I had to search back 100 years on 8 parcels of land.

Nevermore.

V-Day is coming!

Humans are funny ol’ things. One of the most romantic days of the year is named to honor St. Valentine, a martyred saint who was caught marrying Christian couples and executed and/or buried on February 14. I vote for romantic love to be celebrated on a different day than this death day, perhaps the six month anniversary of Valentine’s Day, August 14, a day as far away from Valentine’s Day as it is possible to get in the year.

However, I would not want to forget Valentine’s Day altogether. I plan for fitting tributes to be paid. A yearly tradition where we bury old letters or other mementos from those true relics of our past, anyone who is now an ex. Each year, in honor of the original St. Valentine being offed, we toss the stuff into a hole and throw shovelfuls of dirt on top. Perhaps even whacking the stuff with the shovel before the dirt goes on top all while imagining the ex. Then we dance on the grave. I see a whole new Hallmark department with specially designed bags and trims in which to place one’s formerly treasured, er, treasures. I would opt, though, for a basic ceremony instead. Dig the hole, toss in the stuff, heap on the dirt, then say a few words or swear a few words or sing a few words and dance.

Then open some wine and toast the future. After all, August 14 is only six months away.

It's beginning to look a lot like February

A hint of spring in the air today with the melting snow. Not entirely melted, it is, after all, February in Michigan, but I can see a couple of patches of grass in the yard.

In the past few days, I’ve received a few gardening and flower catalogs in the near quarter ton of daily mail the post office sends along for me. I’ve been flipping through pages of beautiful roses and dahlias and it occurs to me that these freaking flowers have been air brushed of all blemishes and lit in ways meant to seduce me into believing this is just how said freaking flowers would look in my own garden. HA! They can’t fool me. Then I come to another realization. I want them to fool me. I want to believe as I sit here on a day when I also believe spring might be in the future that these flowers could be mine. Such are the dreams in February.

The reality is that the weather forecast is for at least 6" of snow starting tomorrow morning. Ah, February in Michigan.

With apologies to Lana Turner

There are movies I like that I didn’t expect to like. Usually it’s a movie starring someone for whom I do not care. Someone who is a STAR. There are certainly STARs who can act, but it seems most of the time that a STAR’s talent is secondary or even tertiary to the fact of their STARdom. I’m not totally sure they have any talent at all, but then I see them in a film and I can’t believe how totally different they are. How unlike their usual crap and I wonder, if they can generate the acting they do in this film, why don’t they do this all the time.

Take, for instance, Will Ferrell. I do not care for Will Ferrell. I don’t “get” the comedy he does, I don’t find it funny and I really don’t think he acts the comedy very well when he’s doing it. He tends to overdo everything. Then I saw “Stranger Than Fiction.” I have to wonder where he found this amazing performance? Was it the director he had?

I had a similar experience with Peter Sellers. I might be in the minority, but I do not find the Pink Panther films at all funny. I don’t care for slapstick and I don’t care for Peter Sellers. Then I saw “Being There.” Wow. Where was the person who played Chance the Gardener hiding for all those years?

My third person who turned in a performance better befitting an amazing actor instead of a STAR is Mickey Rooney. He is always all over the top in the “let’s put on a show” movies and in the Andy Hardy films to which I’ve never been able to relate. Don’t even get me started on his acting in “Boys Town.” For me, Mickey Rooney was all broad strokes, no nuances. Then I saw an old black and white movie called, “The Human Comedy” and even though the movie tended toward over sentimentalization, Rooney’s performance was outstanding. I couldn’t see “Mickey” anywhere in the role of Homer Macauley. He was nominated for Best Actor for this role and it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen him do. Did the studio keep sticking him in films that made them money instead of taking too many chances on their STAR, their investment? I have to think so.

Last, but not least, Lana Turner. If ever the studios produced a STAR, it was Lana. She wasn’t allowed to do any role that might diminish the polish and the glitter with which she was surrounded. It is truly was a shame and a waste of the talent she rarely got to use. Yes, she did a great job in “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” but she was astounding in “The Bad and the Beautiful.” And I’d no idea Lana was so freaking funny until I saw “Slightly Dangerous” and watched the long section that starts when she is walking down the street trying out possibilities for new names through when she gets clobbered by a can of paint and wakes up to notice there is red paint in the hair on which she just spent her last dollar to have dyed blonde. Her reaction is priceless.

So, here’s hoping there are more opportunities for STARs to act.

Survey says......

(My answers are not nearly as fun as Em's!)

1. What’s the last thing you put in your mouth?
Beer washing down salad. Obviously I’m a health nut.

2. What does your last incoming text say?
Your Attention Is Required

3. The last song you listened to?
Every Breath You Take by the Police. There was something playing on my husband’s favorite radio station on the way home from the bar, but the question specifically said, “listened to.”

4. Where is your best friend right now?
Can’t pick a single best friend. One is in Pennsylvania, couple in Michigan and one is in the other room doing his own quiz answers.

5. What did you do yesterday?
Watched old movies, read, drank coffee.

6. Pick a scar on your body. Where’d it come from?
Too many scars and too many stories to list them all here.

7. What do you really think happened to Steve on Blues Clues?
Something happened to Steve on Blues Clues?

8. If you could change your name to anything what would it be?
Queen Elizabeth III

9. What would you say if a guy told you, you were the most beautiful person in the world?
I hear that all day long and my response is always, thank you. I try to be gracious.

11.How often do you curse?
Whenever I can get maximum laughter out of it. Or when I’m by myself in the car. Or when I’m with someone else in the car.

12. Do you trust all of your friends?
Not really because, apparently, one of them stole question 10.

13. Would you move to another state or country to be with the one you love?
For a long weekend, sure.

14. Have you ever talked on the phone while in the shower?
No, but while I’m on the phone I sometimes imagine I’m taking a shower.

15. Which one of your friends do you think would make the best prostitute.
Depends on your definition of best.

16. Are you afraid of falling in love?
Why, are you afraid of loving me?

17. Is there someone that popped in your mind after that question?
Yes, but he popped out again so fast I didn’t see his face.

18. How many kids do you want to have?
Just finished that beer and salad, too full to have any right now. Maybe later?

19. Would you make a good parent?
Sure unless there were children involved.

20. Where was your default picture taken?
Probably to a deep dark cave where it’s been left to fend for itself.

21. Honestly, what’s on your mind right now?
How many more questions there are in this quiz.

22. If you could go back in time and change something, what would it be?
Election results approximately 7 years 2 months ago.

23. What are you wearing right now?
A tiara. See answer for question 8.

24. Right or left?
Right where I left it.

25. Can you make a dollar in change right now?
No, but perhaps one of my staff can help you.

26. Have you had a sore throat?
I knew there would be a trick question. I had one, but it went away.

27. Who knows you the best?
See answer for question 15.

28. Do you wear contact lenses or glasses?
Not contacts and I only wore a wine glass on my head once. Really.

29. Ever been to Mexico?
I’ve made it a point to stay as far away from Mexico as possible.

30. Last thing that made you laugh out loud?
Reading what others wrote on this survey.

31. Would you show your boobs to a midget on roller skates?
In public they are referred to as staff, not boobs, and if they want to let a midget on roller skates see them, that’s fine, as long as they bring back my mocha latte with an espresso shot in a timely fashion.

32. Did you miss anyone yesterday?
No, I got every one I aimed for.

33. Last person to lay in your bed?
Any man who would lie to a woman in her bed is just a scum sucking b’tard. Oh, LAY.

34. What are your plans for the weekend?
Watching the Super Bowl commercials!

35. Who do you think will repost this?
Only someone very, very witty. Or very, very bored.

A group of pathologists is called?

I once bought a book for its title, An Exaltation of Larks, which turned out to be a fun book on the names we humans have devised to describe groups of animals. A pride of lions, a herd of elephants, etc. I have since given away the book, but I still find fun in how freaking hilarious we are with the English language. A murder of crows, an unkindness of ravens and a sleuth of bears are particular favorites right now while a congress of baboons just makes me nod my head sadly. In addition to a pack of hounds, we also have a cry of hounds and, just to complicate things, a mute of hounds as well. I must say I like a charm of hummingbirds and a scold of jays as well as tidings of magpies. Someone hit the naming right on with a mischief of mice, a plague of rats, a glint of goldfish, a leash of greyhounds, a prickle of hedgehogs, an ambush of tigers and a lounge of lizards. Should you see a rogue band of wild emus around, they are properly called a mob and if gnus are gathered together on the corner, you could aptly report this as an implausibility of gnus.

As to the answer to the question in the title of this blog, according to the Inspector Morse series that ran on BBC, a group of pathologists is called, most appropriately, a body of pathologists.

Time traveling

I sometimes wonder if I’m like other people. I don’t mean, am I normal, heaven knows I’m not and proud of it I am. I mean, do other people live with one foot in another time, too? For example, in my modern car taking the back roads to work, I listen to the radio classics channel on satellite radio. The voices that fill the car and fill my head and provide much of my internal narration for the day are those of Jack Benny, Phil Harris, Frankie Remley, the Whistler, Lamont Cranston as the Shadow and many, many more. And those voices and the stories they tell are brought to me by virtue of a satellite circling the Earth. At home I read a lot. Usually I’m stretched out on the sofa reading my books of choice, those which take place in the past. If I can find a mystery actually written during the 30's and 40's so much the better. Many of those books I read were ordered online and they arrive without my having to leave the house to get them. The movies I watch on the 42" flat screen HD television with DVR (a form of TiVo) are old black and white movies that transport me back to another time.

Maybe it’s not so much that I time travel as I have, for me, found the best of different times.

Running for President

In the midst of the current efforts of the populace to winnow down the presidential hopefuls to one from each party, one and half once the vice presidential candidate is added to the ticket, I offer myself as a possible alternative choice for President of These United States. I will run as a member of the Write-In party. I will use big words like populace and winnow in order to sound more intelligent than I, perhaps, actually am. I am tall enough that I will not need a platform and, thus, will not take up your time telling you about the planks. I am an ideal candidate because I am too busy with my regular work to get the country into much trouble. Much more trouble anyway.

I am running for president and I approved this message.

Red light, green light

Waiting at a traffic light while watching a car drive up the hill ahead, I thought about how I wasn’t actually paying attention to the light, but that when it changed, I’d notice. If I didn’t notice the light change, I’d notice the horn of the car behind me. This is my point. What we notice most is that which changes.

I believe this is a very human thing. We float along on auto-pilot most of the time because so many of the details of everyday existence are boring. We are attuned to change, to the different. There probably aren’t too many people who didn’t know the Boston Red Sox finally won the World Series a few years ago, but they won again this past year and while it is certainly nice for them, I probably won’t be interested in the Series again until the Cubs have a chance at winning. This presupposes the Cubs will ever have a chance at winning, but that’s a dilemma for another day. My point is, this was a change that impressed itself even on my non-sporting world.

Change can be good. We don’t generally enjoy being in a rut, same-o same-o every day, but change for change’s sake might not be the best thing. Just because there is something new on the market, some new gadget bigger or better or faster or smaller than what it’s meant to replace doesn’t mean we should chuck out the old. I actually heard someone say the other day, “That’s so 2007.” Yeah, so?

We’re almost always going to notice that which changes though not always in real time. We don’t notice the subtle changes as we and those around us age unless those around us are children. Real children, not just those who act like children. Children grow so fast it’s practically a crime. For the rest of us, the changes over time are usually brought home by looking through old photographs or when someone we haven’t seen in a while looks so much older and we realize we look older to them as well.

So, if you happen to be behind me when the light changes and my car doesn’t move forward, tap your horn and I’ll be on my way. I haven’t changed so much that I need a hearing aid.

At least not yet.

School, yikes!

I’ve started an online chocolatier class. A class with assignments due on time. A class for which I paid money to be given said assignments to complete. A class which will last three months.

Yikes.

Fortunately, the class is about chocolate and about learning how to set up a successful if not downright thriving chocolate business. I expect, at points along the way through the three months, to be literally dripping with chocolate. I expect, at some point after the class is complete, to be a successful chocolatier. I expect to work very hard. I expect to have a lot of fun.

I’d better have a lot of fun, ‘cause if I don’t, I’m not doing it.

Home Sweet House

I’m a nut for old movies. There are those who’d say I don’t need to qualify the “I’m a nut” statement, but this is my blog so I will. My list of favorite old movies has many subsets and categories including one with only four members . It is the subset whose members are movies with houses I absolutely and totally adore.

All That Heaven Allows - a ‘woman’s’ movie from the 50's with odd cinematographic colors, but with an old mill that is turned from a wreck into a freaking masterpiece. It is the space for which I would spend years taking classes in carpentry in order to rehab if I owned the old mill and had the money.

Christmas in Connecticut - a fun holiday movie with a woman who writes a cooking and homekeeping pre-Martha Stewart column in a magazine without knowing how to boil an egg or make a bed. Her stretching of the truth concerning her abilities snowballs until she is put in the position of entertaining a war hero on her perfect farm in the country. It is this perfect farm I adore. There is a huge room for entertaining, bedrooms galore, a front staircase and a back staircase for sneaking down into the kitchen for a late night snack as well as the coolest den ever. And every room except the kitchen has a wood burning fireplace. Since the house exists in Holly-world and not the real world, fires burn in all the fireplaces all the time.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir - the first of my two ghost movies to make the house list. Gull Cottage with all its nooks and crannies, turrets, window seats, fireplaces, outdoor balconies and old paintings.

The Uninvited - my favorite ghost story as well as my favorite movie house, Windward, is from this wonderful little gem of a movie. All of the houses in this movie are great, but Windward is the best. Tall ceilings, wide floor to ceiling windows, carved wooden trim, a sweeping staircase and fireplaces, including one in the bathroom. Candles, firelight and wonderful tall oil lamps with etched shades, too, because this house does not feature electricity. And Windward is haunted by not one, but two ghosts. What more could I ask for in a house?

The book you save might be your own

We are all the hero or heroine of our own story. At least we should be. None of us hopes to look back and say, “I followed.” There need to be moments, many, many moments when we lead. We don’t need to lead an army, but we do need to lead ourselves. Sometimes, true, we lead ourselves down the path of temptation or the path of least resistance or even hopping down the bunny trail, but none of those routes give the feeling of exhilaration as when we forge our own path through life or, at the least, when we take Frost’s road less traveled.

In writing the story of a life, there are chapters we’d like to edit. Huge disappointments or missteps that we’d rather not revisit, but that may have served to nudge us in a direction not previously considered or cause us to reevaluate the story we thought we were writing. Sometimes there are gut-wrenching moments when we realize someone with whom we thought we were co-writing the Great American Novel has penned their own epic, a bigger story in which we are a sub-plot, or worse, a foot note. We find we’re in a farce when we thought we were in a romance.

One needs perspective when looking at a life, especially one’s own. There should be farcical moments, mystery and suspense, at least one great romance even if it ended and became a tragedy as well as moments of high drama and times of low comedy. There need to be times when things happen that you could not have made up. This is called non-fiction because, unlike fiction, it does not have to be believable, but there will also be many bits you rewrite. All these little stories add up to the big story and if you can also work up a hilarious narrative to your life, it’s better. Maybe not better, but laughter does make much of the rest easier to take.

As for how your story ends, there may not be too much you can do to make this exactly how you'd like. The best you can hope is that your end will be colored and shaded by how you lived your life, by the story you wrote. When you are all said and done, ended, finis, the book finally completed, the story of your life from beginning to end will be viewed by others.

So go write your story and do your best to make it a good read.

Everyone

2008! Happy New Year!