30 Random Things

We were posting at the Haus lists of 30 Random Things about ourselves. Here's my list.

1. My favorite car color is cream.

2. I have never dyed my hair, but it probably won't be long since the silver hairs are starting to make their presence known a bit too often.

3. I love desserts with lots of nuts.

4. I rarely wear shoes other than flip-flops or sandals.

5. It would take more than one hand to count how many times I have been deserted by "best" friends in my life.

6. I fostered a rescued Chihuahua, Ollie for nearly a year.

7. I have to keep a fan blowing on my dinosaur of a desktop computer at all times.

8. I would be cool with owning only GMC/Chevy Suburbans for the rest of my life, and would even be okay if it was the same one I have right now.

9. I still play trumpet pretty well.

10. I collect pens, journals, words, and books.

11. One of my deepest passions is cooking and creating/adapting recipes.

12. My favorite place is home.

13. I cry when I get too cold.

14. In high school I read 3,400 words per minute with 90% comprehension.

15. I hate speed-reading, and prefer to read slowly to savor the words.

16. Nearly every morning phone solicitors call my house phone, and when I answer there's no one there, just the din of their call center.

17. When we move we will no longer have a house phone.

18. I am honored to be asked to mentor someone, but cringe at the weight of the responsibility.

19. Homeschooling has not always been easy, but it has always been a blessing.

20. I feel like I'm being stabbed in the heart when my babies are hurting.

21. My favorite movie is "The Holiday".

22. I can get lost in the movie scores of Hans Zimmer and Paul Cardall.

23. I was drugged and narrowly missed being raped at 13.

24. I don't know what it feels like to be cherished by a grandparent.

25. I wanted to have 12 kids.

26. I have on occasion envisioned myself in the future as a houseparent to troubled kids.

27. I love Victoria's Secret "Breathless" perfume.

28. If I hear a siren while my family members are out, I have to call them to make sure they are okay.

29. I will always mourn the loss of the seven Barbie ball gowns my mother had made for my Christmas present when I was 10.

30. My favorite song of all time is "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol.

Grateful

I started a new blog for sharing my 1,000 Gifts.

Detail

It is no small task gathering the creativity that happens in my head while I'm going about my daily life and getting it to stick with me when I sit down at my desk to write. It's like the aura of the computer is some kind of force field within which such creativity cannot exist. It vexes me. It vexes me, and I'm determined to figure out a way to do this. Natalie says to keep pushing, to press through to the real, not to get scared or give up or settle for anything less than the deep, that which eludes me and flees every time I try to word it.

So I push through to snapshots of the real that I've seen and noted mentally over the past few days, like last night --or rather this morning at like 1:30am--as I was reading and I noticed how the angle of the reading lamp made my hand look old and wrinkled. It reminded me of my mother's hand, which isn't all that unusual since my hands are shaped almost exactly like hers--the only notable difference being that her nails were always rounded and mine are more squared. With each scar I earn (usually burns and cuts from cooking), they look more like Mama's hands. I don't mind.

It's hard to remember snapshots while sitting here chasing them in my mind. I think maybe I should start carrying my journal with me everywhere, even around the house like I do with my phone. Maybe I should make a journal-sized bag with a phone pocket on the side and a long strap to sling over me so I can always have it on no matter where I might be. I'm grinning at the visual, but I really like the idea. A bag like that would be easy enough to make, and I enjoy sewing. I'm going to do it.

I was completely enamored yesterday when I came across a word--elegiac--which I'd never heard before. When I went to look it up, I discovered a whole group of literary terms I either had never heard of, or I'd forgotten since Mama Nich's high school AP English class. I felt like a kid in a candy store rushing through web pages defining the terms and digging to understand the insides of a Latin poetic form called a dactylic hexameter couplet. I'm still working on it.

Quiet

A girl Rosie's age, a friend of many of Rosie's friends, was killed this morning crossing a street half a mile from her school skipping class. My heart wants to scream out of my chest in anguish. She was only fifteen.

Thunder and Lightning continues to reach into my soul in classic Natalie Goldberg style.

"I came back to something simple--I became quiet inside. Who was I looking for? Who could I find? I was writing for everyone and everyone was me. But still I turn to my readers: I want to take us beyond where we have been. To my students: rest in the structure that holds us up, and keep one foot in each world. Stay close to your own reality and stand also on the bridge that takes you out into something larger--our understanding that we are all finally in this together. Then, who's our audience? Who are we talking to? Open your heart and let it bleed."

Quite often I stop after reading such a passage and just sit, just become quiet. Sometimes it's good to just be.

Dangling

My daughter and I were talking last night about feeling like we are dangling in the air, unable to make decisions in one area because they depend on something needing to be decided in another area, and those depending...well, you get the idea. It's a bizarre place to be, feeling like we are getting nowhere with regard to where we will be moving come July. Dance studio, educational options, residence...everything hinges on other things and we can't seem to find the place to start making decisions.

It's hard to even determine an order in which to start organizing thoughts. What is most important? What can fall under another decision as opposed to which things need to be deal-breakers? Way too much to think about all at once, and yet the days are marching on and we will eventually have to choose a path. As hard as we are trying to simplify, life is rarely simple.

Value

I've been pondering the concept of words having value, or more specifically, whether the value of words imparts value onto the efforts of their writer. Simply put, does what I write have any worth? I know it does for me, even if only in the catharsis of the act of writing. But even for me there is more value than just that; I truly enjoy writing and learn much about myself and life from reading back over what I've written.

Beyond me, is there any value? Does anyone else care? If not, then my writings are better confined to private journals. Just something I'm thinking about today.

It's Friday

It's Friday, and I find myself rather contemplative this morning. A lot has changed in the past few days. Well, months. Okay, years. A lot has changed in the past four years, to be sure, and it's been an interesting road trying to find my bearings after the selling of the house, the moving across the state to plant a church, the struggle to find gainful employment, the move back to the west Florida coast, the full-time teaching, the return to full time homeschooling, a semester of private tutoring, back to full time homeschooling, trying to find time and energy to write, grappling with heartbreak in the family, raising the our last two teens, keeping that fine balance of parent and friend, exploring my passion for cooking, and trying above all to fill the days with as much love and prayer and compassion and living out loud as humanly possible.

It's been a wild ride, this life of mine. The past few years have been pretty crazy, but good heavens--my whole life has been wild. Maybe soon I will blog a bit more about just how crazy it's been on the whole.