Last week I wrote about The Tree Formerly Known As Nosehair and his first tooth. Unfortunately things aren’t going well for the poor little guy.
The day after I published the post linked above, I took this close-up picture of his wonderful, shiny new addition.
The “Tooth”
Now, however, his tooth is shriveling up and dying.
😦
But what I really find amazing is that even from this angle, you can still see his face. Now that’s a tree with personality!
It’s been a crazy day. I decided, finally, to do a garage sale. Unfortunately I didn’t get everything outside until 10:00am so I missed what might have been the morning rush. Final tally:
4 hours
8 dollars
1 crying kid (Alex wasn’t happy when we gave up waiting for the hoards of people he was expecting.)
I may try again next weekend, if I can get some help with the kids.
In other news, I’ve decided to re-release my “Second Seat on the Right” series on my fiction blog. It’s a series of scenes which take place in the second seat on the right side of a city bus. Written independently of each other, they often include repeat characters, each with their own ongoing story. The first one is published and an announcement will be made at the end of each when the next is scheduled.
Here’s a link to the first – hope you enjoy! http://lindaghillfiction.wordpress.com/2014/09/01/1-scenes-from-the-second-seat-on-the-right/
Today is one of those rare days when I have no idea what I’m going to type. So I’ve decided to type into my thoughts rather than type what I’m already thinking.
The coffee is hot, the morning is pleasant as I sit at my kitchen table, watching the squirrels in my back yard search for places to hide their nuts. One, I see, has been in my flower pot. Ah well, the flower’s already dead.
I’m supposed to me talking about age. I remember a time when there was no way I’d have been content to just sit at the table and watch the squirrels. But we go through phases, don’t we? So energetic when we’re young. I consider myself lucky to still have energy – to be able to move with close to the ease I was able ten years ago, though the aches and pains seem to linger longer… linger longer. That’s just weird. Anyway, where was I?
Fred, as crazy old Maurice from Beauty and the Beast
In four short days I’ll no longer have three teenagers – my eldest, Fred, turns twenty years old on the 2nd of September. That tiny little baby I used to hold and rock to sleep to the beat of heavy metal (he LOVED The Offspring’s Keep ‘Em Separated. With Chris it was anything Metallica, and Alex, well, he’s Deaf. As long as it had a beat…) now drags himself through the door at all hours of the morning after partying with his friends. Has much changed? Nah.
This was posted as part of SoCS. Find the rules at the click of the link and join in! https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-3014/
Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions
I’ve been inspired by something in particular this week for the Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday. I hope to write a post about it later. In the meantime, here is your prompt. Drumroll please…
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: young, old, or anything to do with age. That’s it! Have fun!
After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at the prompt page in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Anyone can join in!
Try out our new, handy dandy SoCS badge. Paste it in your Saturday post so people browsing the reader will immediately know your post is stream of consciousness and/or pin it as a widget to your site to show you’re a participant. Wear it with pride!!
Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions
Here are the rules:
1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.
2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.
3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”
4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours. Your link will show up in my comments, for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.
5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.
6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!
7. Have fun!
I had it all planned out: clean up the house and get together the stuff for the garage sale, write one book, edit the other, read lots, learn Japanese… So what do you think happened? None of the above. Between my mother and my eldest son hanging around, I’ve barely had a moment to myself. Not that I’m really complaining of course. But I had plans, damnit!
Unscheduled was the turning around of my living room and the exit of my old wall-unit that I was thoroughly sick of looking at, and then the subsequent cleaning up of my living room which included vacuuming places that haven’t seen the light of day in almost five years. The good news is, I’m happy with the result.
Here’s the most recent pic. I obviously need someone who can paint a mural.
I went to see the movie If I Stay on Tuesday night. I went Tuesday because it’s half price, which gave me just over $5 off. I didn’t make it to the showing I wanted however, so I decided to head over to the book store. Bought a book (How To Be a Canadian by Will and Ian Ferguson which actually had me laughing in the aisle) and cashed in my loyalty points which gave me $5 off. Then, having almost 2 hours to kill, I went to Boston Pizza (no, Jay Dee, I didn’t have the ribs) and ordered a salad with my meal and a big-assed glass of wine. I sat alone and enjoyed my meal (the waitress forgot to bring me the salad) and killed myself laughing while reading the book I’d just bought (How To Be a Canadian, if you didn’t catch it the first time) and when the waitress came to ask me if I was ready for my bill, I mentioned the salad. The bill came -$5, which made me happy.
Total bill for the night:
less than $20 for the movie and popcorn and a drink
less than $20 for the book
less than $20 for a meal with a big-assed glass of wine and a coffee including the tip.
I think I did quite well. The movie though? Made me cry. A LOT. But it was extremely well-acted and well-scripted. I’d recommend it for sure.
Tonight I’m sitting down with a bottle of white and some music to, with any luck, do some editing. Or writing. Or at the very least, reading. I have too much to catch up on before the kids come home on Saturday.
As for the garage sale? I can’t see it happening before Sunday. I need a break.
“…it is delusion to assume that the creator controls his creations and that an attempt to exert such control while ignoring the true nature of those creations is doomed to failure.”
~ Diana Gabaldon, as William on page 470 of An Echo in the Bone, in reference to writing fictional characters in a play.
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Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
The rules that I’ve made for myself for “One-Liner Wednesday” are as follows:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Make it either funny or inspirational.
Have fun!
I love to inspire people. There are many ways to do so, however. I’m told that my prompts inspire writing, which is great – it would be wonderful to inspire a painting, but I don’t know that I have the face for it. I’m afraid any painting I’m in would have to include a broomstick. Haha.
But I also get a lot of satisfaction out of inspiring people to live better lives, be happier, be grateful for what they have… the list is endless.
I want to ask you this: if you could inspire people to do one or two things just by doing them yourself, what would they be? Please answer in the comments or, if you’re inspired to blog about it either link back here or comment with a link to your post so everyone can read.
As I worked on sorting things out yesterday–things I haven’t seen in years that were in boxes around my house–I got to thinking about how good it feels just to get rid of stuff. It wasn’t until I had a thought-provoking conversation with my best friend, John, this morning that I understood why.
When we throw out or otherwise get rid of things we don’t need in our lives, it not only creates physical space for us to live, but it relieves the untidiness it occupies in our minds. For instance, every time I think about getting rid of a game I have already played, I think to myself, “Maybe I’ll play it again one day,” and so it stays. I realize a game isn’t that big a deal – it doesn’t take up must physical space in my house. But if I think about getting rid of it ten times in the space of a month, it adds up to nothing less than stress. Now if I think about ALL the things I have in my house that I don’t need… it really adds up. If I just get rid of it I no longer have the choice, and so I can stop thinking about it.
It’s like procrastination. As long as there is something to do, my mind is cluttered with it. And the more I think about all the projects I have on the go, the more I realize that they are just things which are occupying space in my life. I need to purge them by getting them done already.
As Lao Tzu was wise to point out,
We mold clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that makes the vessel useful.
It’s not only the pot: it works equally for our homes and our minds.
Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions
Over the course of my day today, I will be going through boxes in my basement to find things I want to get rid of sell in a garage sale next week. First, I could use the extra space, second, I want to declutter, and third, I need the money for a trip I’m going to take in December.
I feel fortunate to live in a place where I can stand on my front lawn and sell things I no longer need. Garage sales are big here – I don’t know if they are in other places in North America. People spend their entire weekends out driving around town looking for bargains, and bartering around prices until they get what they want for next to nothing. Even if I get next to nothing, I figure I’ll be up a little bit from what I had when my stuff was sitting in the basement just growing older.
It’s amazing the things we accumulate, isn’t it? I have boxes of things I haven’t looked at since I moved them here almost five years ago from my house in Gatineau, and most of THAT stuff was already in boxes there and hadn’t been used in the fifteen years I was there. I would love to live light, with few possessions. But when you have a six bedroom house with a basement it’s difficult to justify getting rid of anything – I have the room. I have rooms I rarely go into so the mess gets ignored.
I was very lucky to find this house when I first moved here. It was originally a two bedroom bungalow, but the previous owners built three bedrooms and a half bath into the attic. When I moved in I kept one of the two original bedrooms as a guest room and turned the other bedroom into a computer room. The final room my eldest son moved into – he was happy to have the entire basement to himself and, as teenagers are wont to do, came out only for meals, showers, and to go out with his friends. He was as white as a ghost before he moved out.
Ragweed season is here and both Alex and I are sneezing. That was a left turn out of nowhere!
Wish me luck with my sorting and selling, if you please.
This post is part of SoCS: https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-2314/ Click on the link and join in the fun!
I’ve been having a lot of weird dreams lately. Building things has been a prevalent theme, as well as organizing. It’s like I’ve been working in my sleep, and so I wake up feeling like I’ve had no rest. It doesn’t help that for the past week I’ve woken every morning between 1:30 and 4:30, at least once, and haven’t been able to go back to sleep. My mind becomes occupied with all the things I’m reminded I need to do in my waking life by my dreams and sleep eludes.
Every night when I get into bed I hope for a nice dream. One of the ones I sometimes have in which I’m madly in love with someone who loves me back, or I’m laughing or simply happy, hanging out in a shop with Johnny Depp, who is buying me anything I want. (Yes, I’ve actually had that dream. 😀 )
Dreams–good ones–can keep us going every bit as much as the bad ones can weigh us down.
What is your favourite dream?
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