Warning! Blog Post Due

On schedule, my phone began beeping at 8 this morning. “Blog post due.” I groan and do a mental check. I groan again. Not one gear jerks into motion. Not one synapse fires. English runs up the white flag and throws up its hands in surrender. Language-less and feeling empty-headed, I begin my day by dragging a circuit around my house.

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Sometimes writers don’t write; they spill

I woke up this morning, just a regular Monday morning. My plan with crawling out super early was to focus on writing. If you really want to be a writer, you must (MUST) set aside time to write. Daily is preferable.

So here I was, sitting with my laptop on my lap, at 4:00 a.m. Monday morning, October 2, 2017. Ready to do the work.

Then a text came in. That is not alarming. So many of my loved ones are back east. It is not 4:00 a.m. everywhere. It was my son-in-law “Are you guys ok?” I just stared at the phone and looked around me.

My patio door was open. Silence there. My husband was asleep in the next room. Peaceful snoring there. No rumbling underfoot. No hurricane level winds. “What happened?” I asked.

Then the news was revealed to me.

The worst mass shooting in America’s history has happened a few miles from my home. Across the boulevard from where we go every Friday night to enjoy a lovely songwriter’s show.

Devastating. Such a horrid loss of life. For what? Nothing. So much heartache. For what? Not a thing.

So, no writing took place today. Just this blurb on this platform where I choose to spill my heart.

Treasure life. Embrace loved ones. Live positively. Love wildly. Speak words of kindness, not hatred. Believe the best. Be the light. Let your beam break through. To everyone with all you have in you as much as you possibly can.

Every day.

 

Patricia Meyers

 

I Love My Colorful Facebook Feed

I love my colorful Facebook feed

I love Facebook. I really do. I love scrolling through and seeing the faces, reading the stories, hearing the prayer requests, rejoicing in the victories.

I love my Facebook feed because it is full of color. I love colors. I love them all. Purple is my favorite, but I have yet to have a purple friend. Purple-haired friend, yes, I got that. But my feed is full of color.

I have friends of every shade. My feed is full of smiling folks: white folks, Asian folks, African American folks, Indian folks. I’ve got a host of bi-racial couples, white couples with adopted African-American kiddos, or Ethiopian kids, or Jamaican, or Chinese, or Guatemalan. I have families that have all kinds of shades of skin around their dining room table.

Why the Long Face?

Have you heard this one? A horse walks into a bar and the bartender asks, “Why the long face?” Not so funny when I am the horse. I’ve had a long face for months. Winter blahs? Oh yea. Midlife crisis?  Maybe. Global warming? Of course, isn’t everything?

Once again…..Heeeeere’s Willie!!!!

A few months ago I introduced you to my beagle, Willie. He’s a rambunctious creature, stubborn and sweet—sugar and spice as they used to say. He, like most of us, has his faults, but we chalk them up to personality disorder (probably a result of feeding him table food) and move on.

What Bartlett Says…..

 

When I was young—a long looong time ago— my Mother relied on two books to raise my sister and me. The famous Dr. Spock Baby and Childcare book about raising perfect children was not one of them. Her choices were her Bible (of course) and her Bartlett’s. As in Bartlett’s Famous Quotations.

Blog On

Blog, blog, blog. Blah, blah, blah. This is what is going through my mind sitting here trying to come up with a blog post. Post. Post-traumatic, fence post, bang my head on a post, post-date, postpartum, parcel post, post mortem. That’s it! This blog post is DOA. “What was that, Bev?”

Bev says I have to be positive and encouraging because Paddlecreek is all about uplifting fellow writers. Being positive is somewhat against my knee jerk reaction while under stress, but I am all about being encouraging. So here goes:

One Day At a Time … One Page At a Time

Seriously, how many times have we heard that phrase: “Take it one day at a time”? Too many in my book. The Lord’s Prayer states: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Daily. One day at a time.

Why the heck is it so difficult?

I mean, really! We want to see the end from the beginning. We want to type “The End” before we complete the character sketches. We want to know everything about our plot before the story unfolds instead of enjoying the unfolding process.

What are you working on right now?

There should never be a time in our life when we are not working on something.

So, what are you working on right now?

Are you improving a skill? Learning a new one?

Strengthening your body? Finishing a home project?

Mastering a recipe? Trying to grow some veggies?

From Beagles to Books

About ten years ago, two months after our beloved beagle, Annie, went to that big dog bone market in the sky, I decided I could no longer bear living in a house without a dog. My daughter, married and and mom to my two perfect grandsons, concurred and began “shopping” via the internet at  local Pet Shelters.

“Mom,” she would say. “You should see Precious. What a doll—I think she’s perfect for you.” I’d check Precious out on-line and say something like “nah uh—no Great Danes.”