Twelve Sentence Story

I shiver, high stepping around the little leaf-filled puddles on the driveway as I hurry to the curb. The mailbox is full of yesterday's delivery: junk mail, junk mail, bill, junk mail, bill... I shudder and dash back to the house, wishing I'd brought my jacket despite the short jog. I'm not ready for cold, soggy fall weather yet.
I drop the mail on the kitchen table, and a little voice in my head says, "You should just deal with it now, instead of leaving it for later." I hesitate for a moment out of respect to my conscience, but walk away, kicking my shoes off toward a corner heap.
With the boys off to school, and the baby still asleep, the house is quiet, dark, and cluttered. I should take advantage of this time to clean, pay bills, shower... But somehow I've gotten out of the habit of caring about these things. I've gotten out of the habit of caring about anything, if truth be told.
I stand in the filthy front room and listen to the cold October rain, the sploosh of cars hurrying to places I probably should be going, too. Oh, well.

Say what?

Mr. Harvey in high school used to give us an assignment to write and write and not stop for ten minutes straight without worrying about spelling or punctuation or grammar or anything at all I could never do it well because the constraints of language overwhelmed my desire to obey, and so now I will attempt it while typing, hoping that perhaps I will manage to ignore that automatic backspace and just type type type... I will still punctuate some. I have to. I tried there at the beginning but I could not do it without simply running on, which makes me uncomfortable. If you are reading this, and see a word which I manage to leave spelled wrong, please know that it was very difficult for me to leave it. I have left a couple but can't get more than a word or two past it before I simply MUST go back and correct it.
It is officially the wee hours of the morning, and rather than sleep I sit at the computer, typing and typing and not even for any great purpose, only typing words without meaning. One floor above, my daughter sleeps in a chair because she is not feeling well and I need to be able to hear her when she wakes and cries. Poor darling baby girl. She is so sweet and so innocent, and her nose and one eye are so full of gunk. She felt a little feverish today, too. It is so hard to send your little one to "school" with other babies during cold and flu season.
She cries out now, and I wonder if I should rush to her side or let her drift off to sleep again. If I go to her, she will wake more fully, I am sure... And yet... I go.

The urge to write

Suddenly feeling the urge to write, to compose, to put words together visibly and leave them where perhaps someone will happen upon them... And so, I find myself on my blog, no real thought to convey, but longing to speak and maybe even be heard.

And now that I am here, I am longing more to sleep. I was up until 3:30a.m. last night, allergies or the beginnings of a cold causing my nose to run like a faucet. I can't remember the last time I got a good 8 hours of consecutive sleep.

So, longing to write and be read, to sleep, and knowing that I need to get a ton of housework done instead, I shall close. I have managed only to daydream of dreams; authorship, rest, and cleanliness approaching godliness. An unsatisfying, vain imagining. Ah, well. Another day perhaps.

5th Graders "Clapped Out"

Today, my 11yo DS, "R" had his last day at the elementary school. Here in our district, 6th graders go to one of two 6th-grade-only schools, so he will be moving on to one of those schools next year. At the end of the day, all of the other students lined up on the playground to wait for the fifth graders to come outside. Parents who could arrange to be there lined up too, with their cameras in hand. Soon the doors were propped open and the first few students could be seen, helium balloons in their hands.

Why did my eyes suddenly fill with tears?

I held my camera up in the air and snapped shots of the children emerging, unable to check the focus but wanting to capture whatever I could. I couldn't tell when my son's class arrived until I pulled the camera down and glimpsed one of his friends in the screen. I popped the camera back up in the air and shot a few more photos.

My son and his best friend managed to be the last two fifth graders out of the building. When "C's" mother asked WHY he was last, "C" looked surprised. "I was?"

I am having a hard time accepting that "R" is growing up. I was looking at something this weekend, pricing something or other, and it showed that children aged 9 and up paid the adult price, and I thought, "Oh, 'R' is 9; he pays full price now, goodness!" It wasn't until this afternoon that I realized that "R" is 11, and "B" is 9. BOTH my boys are full price now. How did this happen?

The 5th graders stood on the playground and released their balloons into the blue sky. Teachers gave hugs and told their students to come back and say hello when they could. We loaded into the van and drove home. It is the end of an era.

Now, hello, Summer!

Thoughts Flung By Trebuchet

I just changed the font for this post to "trebuchet." Until a couple of years ago, I didn't know what a trebuchet was. It wasn't until my sons began to get interested in medieval history -- and, being boys, medieval warfare, that the word entered my vocabulary. Then, suddenly, it appeared to be everywhere.

What amazes me is that I have always had some interest in the middle ages. I love books and movies set during that time. The romantic notions of knights in shining armor, quests and crusades, and of course, princesses in tall castle towers often filled my daydreams as a little girl. I figured I would make a great damsel in distress, if I could just find a good hero willing to risk life and limb to rescue me.

Weapons and warfare, however, were not my thing. Daggers and swords, okay; long bows and cross bows, got it. Then there are the long jabby things -- spears and pikes and what-have-you. Yeah, yeah, stuff to kill each other with, and break down walls... Excuse my big yawn. (Sleeping Beauty fell asleep listening to the prince talk about an upcoming onslaught. It wasn't so much his kiss that awakened her, as his removing his helmet and focusing on something other than military might.)

For a while, with my boys, it was trebuchet this and trebuchet that. We want to build a trebuchet that will launch water balloons. A trebuchet could make taking our dishes to the kitchen much more exciting. What if we EACH had a trebuchet and could fling our dirty underwear at each other? That would be so cool!

It has actually been a while now since either boy mentioned a trebuchet. Right now they are more interested in Greek and Roman mythology than medieval lore

I don't remember what I was thinking about when I opened this blog today. I thought playing with the font options would give me an idea, and instead it sent me into a reverie. Well, that makes as good a blog topic as anything, doesn't it?

Freezing rain

In college in Utah, I used to proof-read papers for people all the time. I enjoyed it, and often learned things from the papers I read. One time, a friend asked me to read a paper he had written. He was from Alabama, and wrote a paper about things he missed from home. He described walking in the woods near his home following a "freezing rain" storm. When I reached that point, I looked up and suggested he should call it "hail" instead of "freezing rain."

Grant laughed at me, saying that the two were not synonymous. He said that freezing rain was a phenomenon we didn't have in the West. He encouraged me to read on, and the description was something almost magical. I wished I could see it with my eyes, and not just my imagination.

It was several years later, married and with two kids, after my husband had uprooted us and transplanted us to Indiana, that I got my wish. And maybe it was Grant's wistful remembering that made the beauty of the rain glazed world all the more breathtaking to me. Since then, I've seen several freezing rain storms.

Yesterday morning, I opened the blinds on the back of the house to find that the night's freezing rain had studded the ceiling of our deck with tiny icicles. The snow that had fallen since then blanketed the floor of the deck, and it was so cold that not a drop of water had melted from the glorious crystal chandelier above. It was a stunning view. Throughout the day, I found myself drawn to the beautiful scene, trying to photograph it, but never quite capturing the amazing magic.

Freezing rain falls as water, only freezing after making contact with objects at the ground. It coats every twig, branch, leaf or needle with a clear coat of ice. Of course it makes the ground very slick as well, and when it coats power lines they can become heavy and come down. Tree limbs freeze, become brittle, and a little wind or snow can break them as well, bringing down more lines or causing other damage. One always holds one's breath when the meteorologist says there is a chance of freezing rain. I always hope, though, that maybe the freezing rain will be light enough to just make the world into a crystal palace.