A morning full of little miracles
Well, before I forget, I'll be speaking to a writer's group next Saturday, September 25th, in Mansfield, Ohio. I'll be speaking on "Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone" and also about how best to handle it when what you write falls outside the comfort zones of other people. The talk will take place between 2 &4 PM, with a Q&A afterward. It's open to the public & it's free. If you live in Mansfield or close to there, you can check your local paper for the exact meeting place. Otherwise, I'll post it when I have the address.
You know, I awoke this morning and realized I never asked for the address (of where I'm speaking) and that it might behoove me to find out! So I guess the fact that I realized I had no idea where I would be going to next week before I actually got in the car next Saturday and left the house counts as one of this morning's little miracles! Yay!
Actually, that is not at all what I initially considered a "little miracle." I was more thinking about the little family of chipmunks out there in my front yard. I leave them a tiny little pile of peanuts every morning and then, when I'm lucky -- like this morning -- I actually get to see the babies pop out of the little hole in the ground and grab a peanut. The mommy is there pretty much all the time, but I rarely get to see the babies. This morning was one of those beautiful rare times. And the sun is shining like crazy and it's only in the low 60s right now so it is just gorgeous out there. (I'm sitting at my "desk" at the dining room table and watching the world outside my screen door. The mommy chipmunk is staring at me right now, in fact.)
I awoke this morning, as always, at 5 AM and could tell right away that it was oatmeal weather. The whole house had that almost-fall chill to it. So I jumped out of bed, fed the cats, lit my little votive prayer-candle, sighed heavily, then went down to the kitchen and made the oatmeal. (The way I make oatmeal has 7 zillion calories, gang -- butter, maple syrup, brown sugar, coconut milk, cinnamon, a pinch of salt and then peaches, bananas, whatever else is in the fruit bin; all of it organic, of course. Oh, and also some actual oatmeal!! But the good news is that it tastes really good!) And I opted for Jasmine tea today instead of green tea. Took it all back to bed where Fluffy and I watched Summer of 42 by candlelight and we got quite weepy together at many, many moments during the film. We each used up several Kleenex's.
What a heartbreaking, beautiful, nostalgic, wonderful little film, gang. If you're a romantic type and you're not familiar with Summer of '42, check the link there; it's to the Wiki page. Then go check your library -- they probably have it available to watch for free! Mine did!
Anyway, what a lovely little way to start the morning. Especially when it's chilly and still dark out. Not to mention that Fluffy is always such a cutie pie. And a first-class snuggler, to boot.
Ah well.... Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I am single again now and that one of the perks for me about being single is that it gives me time to focus more on dream recall during the night and (very) early morning. I keep a dream journal next to the bed, along with a pen, of course, and a tiny flashlight. But you know what, gang? Even the tiniest flashlight is seriously bright at, like 3:22 AM when you're groggy with sleep and trying desperately to hang on to the fragment of nonsensical stuff you just dreamed. Wow. It's unreal, actually -- how bright it is. So I try to write with only one eye open, etc., etc. And you know what's worse? My dreams these days are really, really tedious and boring. And I mean that seriously. And all of them take place at night now, or in very little light, and everyone is cleaning in my dreams. Everyone is cleaning something. And everyone is staying in, like, a hotel all the time. Meaning me, too, of course. Night after night, in some dark unhappy hotel, everyone's cleaning and it is just so boring!!!
And then, I don't know about you, but I almost always have a song going through my head while I'm dreaming. All night long, and then I'll wake-up with the song still in my head. And even the songs are boring me now, too. For instance, Tex Ritter's O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie (if you don't know this song, gang, here's a YouTube of Johnny Cash singing it , but you have to listen to a long spoken intro first, but if you love Johnny, as I do, it isn't such a bad way to spend 2 minutes...). And another night, the song was "When It's Roundup Time in Heaven". If you don't know this song, either, you're out of luck b/c there doesn't seem to be a YouTube of anyone singing that awful song, but the chorus goes:
It will be sweet when we meet at Jesus' feet
With no heartaches, no pain, no sighs;
When they comb heaven's plains, will they find your name
At that great roundup in the sky?
You're probably wondering how come I know all these awful cowboy songs??? Well, I just do, and I know a whole lot more of them, too. And it is JUST MADDENING to have them playing over & over in my head all night long while I dream really boring dreams that I insist on writing down.
But I have to say that one night last week, I dreamed that this woman came into my kitchen (once again at night, and not my real kitchen -- one I'd never seen before) and she asked me really urgently if I would take care of some baby chicks for her. So I said yes, of course I would. And she had them hidden protectively inside her bra. She took out 3 baby chicks and a baby rooster and set them on my kitchen counter. Luckily I had a handy little tree right there on my kitchen counter that already had some birds living in it, so I helped the little chicks & the baby rooster into the tree and I thought to myself, "Boy, when that rooster grows up and starts crowing around my yard all day, it's going to drive my neighbors nuts." And for some reason, when I awoke in the middle of the night and scribbled down that dream, I also scribbled: It felt a lot like "opportunity."
Can you see why this is getting a little tedious, folks? And yet these are my dreams these days. And, as I wrote in my regular non-dream journal last week: I am convinced that now more than ever, I need to experience my whole life every day. (The "underlines" are exactly how it appears in my diary! Gosh, I'm so corny, aren't I???)
Well, on that happy note... I have a ton of updating to do to my web site gang, so I'll be doing that over the weekend. As well as getting a little writing done, too. It's been a while since I could really focus on anything so I'm looking forward to it. I hope you have something rewarding mapped out for your own lives this weekend, wherever you are and whatever you're doing. Thanks for visiting, gang! Dream on!!!
See ya!
You know, I awoke this morning and realized I never asked for the address (of where I'm speaking) and that it might behoove me to find out! So I guess the fact that I realized I had no idea where I would be going to next week before I actually got in the car next Saturday and left the house counts as one of this morning's little miracles! Yay!
Actually, that is not at all what I initially considered a "little miracle." I was more thinking about the little family of chipmunks out there in my front yard. I leave them a tiny little pile of peanuts every morning and then, when I'm lucky -- like this morning -- I actually get to see the babies pop out of the little hole in the ground and grab a peanut. The mommy is there pretty much all the time, but I rarely get to see the babies. This morning was one of those beautiful rare times. And the sun is shining like crazy and it's only in the low 60s right now so it is just gorgeous out there. (I'm sitting at my "desk" at the dining room table and watching the world outside my screen door. The mommy chipmunk is staring at me right now, in fact.)
I awoke this morning, as always, at 5 AM and could tell right away that it was oatmeal weather. The whole house had that almost-fall chill to it. So I jumped out of bed, fed the cats, lit my little votive prayer-candle, sighed heavily, then went down to the kitchen and made the oatmeal. (The way I make oatmeal has 7 zillion calories, gang -- butter, maple syrup, brown sugar, coconut milk, cinnamon, a pinch of salt and then peaches, bananas, whatever else is in the fruit bin; all of it organic, of course. Oh, and also some actual oatmeal!! But the good news is that it tastes really good!) And I opted for Jasmine tea today instead of green tea. Took it all back to bed where Fluffy and I watched Summer of 42 by candlelight and we got quite weepy together at many, many moments during the film. We each used up several Kleenex's.
What a heartbreaking, beautiful, nostalgic, wonderful little film, gang. If you're a romantic type and you're not familiar with Summer of '42, check the link there; it's to the Wiki page. Then go check your library -- they probably have it available to watch for free! Mine did!
Anyway, what a lovely little way to start the morning. Especially when it's chilly and still dark out. Not to mention that Fluffy is always such a cutie pie. And a first-class snuggler, to boot.
Ah well.... Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I am single again now and that one of the perks for me about being single is that it gives me time to focus more on dream recall during the night and (very) early morning. I keep a dream journal next to the bed, along with a pen, of course, and a tiny flashlight. But you know what, gang? Even the tiniest flashlight is seriously bright at, like 3:22 AM when you're groggy with sleep and trying desperately to hang on to the fragment of nonsensical stuff you just dreamed. Wow. It's unreal, actually -- how bright it is. So I try to write with only one eye open, etc., etc. And you know what's worse? My dreams these days are really, really tedious and boring. And I mean that seriously. And all of them take place at night now, or in very little light, and everyone is cleaning in my dreams. Everyone is cleaning something. And everyone is staying in, like, a hotel all the time. Meaning me, too, of course. Night after night, in some dark unhappy hotel, everyone's cleaning and it is just so boring!!!
And then, I don't know about you, but I almost always have a song going through my head while I'm dreaming. All night long, and then I'll wake-up with the song still in my head. And even the songs are boring me now, too. For instance, Tex Ritter's O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie (if you don't know this song, gang, here's a YouTube of Johnny Cash singing it , but you have to listen to a long spoken intro first, but if you love Johnny, as I do, it isn't such a bad way to spend 2 minutes...). And another night, the song was "When It's Roundup Time in Heaven". If you don't know this song, either, you're out of luck b/c there doesn't seem to be a YouTube of anyone singing that awful song, but the chorus goes:
It will be sweet when we meet at Jesus' feet
With no heartaches, no pain, no sighs;
When they comb heaven's plains, will they find your name
At that great roundup in the sky?
You're probably wondering how come I know all these awful cowboy songs??? Well, I just do, and I know a whole lot more of them, too. And it is JUST MADDENING to have them playing over & over in my head all night long while I dream really boring dreams that I insist on writing down.
But I have to say that one night last week, I dreamed that this woman came into my kitchen (once again at night, and not my real kitchen -- one I'd never seen before) and she asked me really urgently if I would take care of some baby chicks for her. So I said yes, of course I would. And she had them hidden protectively inside her bra. She took out 3 baby chicks and a baby rooster and set them on my kitchen counter. Luckily I had a handy little tree right there on my kitchen counter that already had some birds living in it, so I helped the little chicks & the baby rooster into the tree and I thought to myself, "Boy, when that rooster grows up and starts crowing around my yard all day, it's going to drive my neighbors nuts." And for some reason, when I awoke in the middle of the night and scribbled down that dream, I also scribbled: It felt a lot like "opportunity."
Can you see why this is getting a little tedious, folks? And yet these are my dreams these days. And, as I wrote in my regular non-dream journal last week: I am convinced that now more than ever, I need to experience my whole life every day. (The "underlines" are exactly how it appears in my diary! Gosh, I'm so corny, aren't I???)
Well, on that happy note... I have a ton of updating to do to my web site gang, so I'll be doing that over the weekend. As well as getting a little writing done, too. It's been a while since I could really focus on anything so I'm looking forward to it. I hope you have something rewarding mapped out for your own lives this weekend, wherever you are and whatever you're doing. Thanks for visiting, gang! Dream on!!!
See ya!
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