Thinking out loud....

It's Saturday. I'm in the middle of sweeping the kitchen floor, had most of the debris gathered in one spot, and the broom broke. Just split in two, the handle from the part holding the bristles.

I took that as a sign.

Left the trash right where it was and got out of Dodge. Perhaps somewhere in my travels, I'll pick up a new broom, and finish where I left off whenever I get back. Or better yet, someone else will see the mess I left on the floor and somehow get it up while I'm gone, freeing me up to do something I really want to do and with better success.

Just Thinking....

Nothing like being made to do something you don't want to do, anticipating it with dread, but getting through it without a hitch, and breathing that final sigh of relief. I did it, it went well, people said they enjoyed and learned something from the presentation. Tired, but I feel good.

Ready for the rest of the week now, but hurry Friday.

Great weekend. My mother and my sister visited for the first time in five years. I've been home several times in the last five years to see them, but it's been that long since they've come to see me. Actually, they didn't really come to see me alone. They came to see the latest addition to our family, Ms. Karrington Chandler, or K.C., as she's been most affectionately called in these four months of her life. She is the daughter of my oldest niece who was the first of my parents' grandchildren. KC is their first great-grandchild, my most precious grandniece.

Can't put into words what it's like to be part of a four generation of women weekend. The conversation, the laughter, and serendipitous walks down memory lane. The meaningful glances, quiet sidebars, mamma's hugs, a few tears, all of it laced through with carefree baby coos and her sweet, innocent laughter. Talk about an awesome thing to find yourself in the middle of.
It was living history and hopefully laying foundations for the future in the best possible way.

Feeling most fortunate right now.

Starting One More Time

"I don't know what keeps me from writing. I love to do it. I love the process, yet I sit down to the screen and find all kinds of things to do that divert me from writing. I surf the net (my greatest procrastination technique), play Scrabble on the desktop, read the news, and pointedly ignore the Front Page icon that would force me back to the story I'm working on and the Word icon that might urge me into starting something new. I tell myself that I want to pursue a side career in writing, but I don't take the steps to get me there. I know what I need to do get to my dreams- write, but for some reason I don't do it. I seem to be my own worse enemy. I don't understand it, but I'm not going to go another day, another moment, without trying to do better. This is my first stab at turning this thing around."

Just Thinking....

I figure I've already lived a good bit of my life. In that time I've experienced quite a few historic events, some of which changed life as humanity has known it. I was sitting here today, thinking of how my own personal perspectives have been changed by personal milestones, pitfalls, triumphs, mistakes, successes, and hurts. How beliefs I once thought were fundamental truths turned out to only be edicts imposed upon me by my upbringing, but that living my life has since shifted, altered, or shattered altogether.

Church and religion (not God) has become very personal, no longer a group effort. Don't need to belong to the club to reap the benefits of having faith. Now it's more about concentrating on being the best person I can be, staying true to my own heart, and doing what I can to bring joy and/or comfort into the lives of others. I keep my promises, respect my fellow man, know where to turn when my back is against the wall, and where to send my thanks when life is good.

Marriage, relationships between husbands and wives, I continue to scrutinize and evaluate. As a wife, I've adjusted, shifted, accommodated,tolerated and acclimated. I was brought up to believe that girls grew up and got married, but over the years I've grown uncertain about the need for marriage in general. I find myself wondering if the expectation of eternal fidelity are archaic and unrealistic. Once the initial passion wears off, do young people today have what it takes to stick to the promises they made? Judging by those who came before them and the examples they're bombarded with in the media, probably not. Why do we believe in fairy tales? Dreams do come true, but there's some work that has to go into that. Sometimes it turns out that the end isn't worth the means, and that's reality. Why should people be made to feel like failures because they faced the truth of a situation and opted out?

And I laughed at how I once thought people without children in the home couldn't possibly be happy. Now that's one of my youthful assumptions that got completely altered. The empty nest isn't that bad, in fact, it's rather peaceful and serene, particularly now that the chicks are independent, productive members of society who live in their own nests. I love them, and I'm proud of them, but I'm happy to be at this place in my life.

In my professional capacity,over the years, I've continuously modified my expectations of my students (sadly, it's becoming more like lowered my expectations), as well as pondered what is relevant and irrelevant about the content I teach. I am a Reading teacher to 8th graders. (Believe, me, though there is the need.) I'm fighting the battle of print over LCD, and the effect that reading from the screen has on reading static print from the page. It matters because most standardized tests, the ruler which our children are measured, are usually given in the form of static print. Handwriting, a near and dear to my heart, has sadly gone by the wayside, and I'm beginning to wonder if teaching writing conventions is headed that way, too. With so many gadgets and devices allowing for shortcuts and providing built-in crutches, even adults seem to be having trouble constructing a proper sentence, much less in cursive script. I mean, who really "writes" anything anymore beyond signing one's name, making lists, or jotting notes? Who needs to know nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, gerands, and so on and so on when a machine will be doing the bulk of the writing and the spelling and grammar checks?

Just rambling here, but I do wonder....

It's just me....

Used to blog a lot, but life and things got in the way (Ithink I let them), and little by little I shut down.

Lately though, I'm feeling stifled, confused at times, halted, as if the room I'm in is too cluttered and it's way past time to purge and reorganize. There's too much up there in my head that I need to get out, that I need to share. I like to write, and I'm not stingy with it, so I decided to sit down here, light the lamp, and get to it.

Maybe this will bring me out of the writing stall I've been wrestling with for way too long. I refuse to call my dilemma a "block". Blocks are hard, impenetrable, sometimes heavy. They're so much harder to deal with than an easing aside a pea soup curtain of funk.