Joy

I recently read a topic on Amy's Live, Learn, Knit blog titled What Brings You Joy? In her post Amy mentioned a book she had read, Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer, which I have added to my "must read" list. During this past week's marathon NaNo writing, I found myself often distracted from my story and thinking about joy. I began to wonder what the difference was between joy and pleasure, since I could easily think of many things that brought pleasure to my world, but not so many things that seemed to bring joy. So today I looked up the words "pleasure" and "joy" online and found an explanation that suited me at Dictonary.com.

Pleasure, enjoyment, delight, joy refer to the feeling of being pleased and happy. Pleasure is the general term: to take pleasure in beautiful scenery. Enjoyment is a quiet sense of well-being and pleasurable satisfaction: enjoyment at sitting in the shade on a warm day. Delight is a high degree of pleasure, usually leading to active expression of it: delight at receiving a hoped-for letter. Joy is a feeling of delight so deep and so lasting that one radiates happiness and expresses it spontaneously: joy at unexpected good news.

So what does bring me joy?

My first thought was writing, but writing is not always joyful or even pleasurable. It can be difficult, painful and emotionally revealing, none of which brings me joy. Writing is something that I have to do, like breathing and eating. It is a rare day that I do not write something, whether a blog post, an email or a letter to a friend (sometimes those are even handwritten!). It does not matter to me whether anyone reads what I write or not. The possibility of an audience is not why I choose write.

Reading also comes to mind, but again, it is more of a need I have, like an addiction to caffeine or nicotine. A day is not complete if I have not had my daily fix of word input and output, reading and writing.

Crocheting gives me pleasure and satisfaction. I find it relaxing, soothing. But crocheting does not give me joy. The act of giving a crocheted item away, knowing that it will be used and appreciated by the recipient, that gives me joy. I never really understood why we needed to save an item that someone had made, pass it down from generation to generation, never to be used. To me, the value of the item is in knowing the person who created that item. If I did not personally know great-grandma Tilly, I am not going to value something made by her nearly as much as I am going to value something made by my Grammy. And so it brings me joy to know that items I have made and given to others are actually being used. That was the reason I made them in the first place!

Here is a picture of the baby afghan I made for my niece's new baby boy:

Knowing that Aiden's older brother loved his afghan and carried it around with him for several years gave me great joy. I hope Aiden enjoys his half as much.

Here is another thing that gives me joy:

Copper has taken to sleeping on laptops and computers. When it was ninety degrees and better outside, she preferred sleeping out on our balcony all day long. But when cooler temperatures came in September, she ceased wanting to go out on the balcony and now sleeps away the day on top of laptops or any other computer she can find that is running and warm. Anyway, just seeing a cat gives me pleasure, but having one (or more) of my own that I can interact with gives me joy.

Photography brings me joy. Amy mentioned photography and art in her post, too. Unlike Amy, I have never been interested in the darkroom and developing of pictures. What I love is the hunt for a good subject, the art of framing the subject and the sense of accomplishment I feel when I capture a moment in time. That gives me joy, knowing that I have saved some essence of "now" that can easily be recaptured in the future simply be looking at the picture.

My children, of course, bring me moments of joy. Their individual births were three such moments. Add to that my granddaughter, Miss Munchkin; I was lucky enough to be present at her birth and one of the very first to hold her. Miss Munchkin brings me joy almost every time I see her. There is just something about a toddler who is happy and curious and loving that is joyful, especially when she is related to you.

I feel joy when we hit the road for a road trip, whether it is just a day's jaunt somewhere or a vacation. There is something truly joyous about leaving behind the every day world for a bit and looking forward towards possible great adventures. And I feel joy every time I step onto a beach. Hearing the waves crashing onto shore and the cry of the gulls, feeling the heat of the sun through the sand on your bare feet, the smell of the salt spray, it all fills me with joy. Oh, and the skirl of bagpipes bring me joy. If ever I were to come across bagpipes being played on the beach while I was walking barefoot with my granddaughter, my heart would likely burst from experiencing too much joy all at once.

Amy's post talks a lot about finding joy in your work or rather work that you find joyful. I know this is the goal of many unschoolers, to find a way to turn their passion into a career. That is a great goal, although I know few that have been able to truly realize it. The only possible work-related thing that brings me joy is being able to find answers and resources for others. I love to research; I love to hunt for the perfect gift, for the perfect book, for that needed quote or just the right word that will complete a project. I think that is why I continue with my website, since HTML and web design certainly does not bring me joy. On the contrary, many days it fills me with stress and frustration. But I love to know that a resource I have reviewed or something I have written has provided an answer to someone's quest. That brings me joy.

So, what brings you joy?

Day Twelve

I did not write quite as much yesterday. I only managed 4235 words, which brought my total to 44,934. So I still have a little better than 5K to write sometime today and/or tomorrow. The biggest problem is that my story is done. I wrote the Epilogue. Even wrote The End at the end. I have no more to add to it. Some suggestions given to me by fellow NaNo'ers is to write a prologue, have my character write some emails to her children and include them the story line somewhere, maybe even write my Christmas Letter from the viewpoint of the MC (Main Character). I am not sure what I will write. At this point I am tired of the story, tired of the whole thing. Maybe that is because I still am not feeling 100% healthy. Which leads me to the next paragraph …

This post could have just as easily been titled "It's Your Sinuses, Stupid!" Yeah, I know I said earlier in the week that I did not think my vertigo was related to sinuses, but now I think I was wrong. By yesterday afternoon my head was hurting and there was that telltale pressure behind the eyes. When I finally fell to around five in the afternoon that my head was hurting due to sinuses, I broke down and took a sinus tablet. Today the head is better, although the dizzy still feels there a little bit, mainly when I am sitting motionless. Very odd.

Plus, my eyes are tired from my marathon days on the laptop Monday and Tuesday. And now I am tired from sitting at the car dealership all morning, waiting for them to diagnose why my check engine light is on when they supposedly fixed it last week. It did not take even a day for the light to come back on last week after they "fixed" the problem. After sitting there all morning, they found the problem (under warranty, thank goodness), but it will take most of the afternoon to fix. So they gave me a ride home and when the problem is fixed, they will send their shuttle van back out to pick me up. Ugh. Making chit chat with the van driver all the way back in to the dealership again, oh goody. Have I ever publicly stated here how much I hate making chit chat, social pleasantries, with someone I do not know? Well, I do. Hate it, that is.

So I am home, catching up my blog and trying to figure out what I shall write to use up 5+K more words! Tomorrow is the last possible day to finish. Check back and see if I make it!

Oh! And a shout out to my friend Lisa … hey knitbits! Happy Birthday!!! And yes, she's a knitter. Whatever gave that away?

Great American Word Challenge

Have you heard about the Great American Word Challenge? It is quick and painless. Here is a bit from the official e-mail invitation:

The Challenge is a fun nationwide contest that pits city against city in a friendly competition of word knowledge. You'll improve your vocabulary, plus your score might even put your hometown on the map! And if your city gets the highest average cumulative score, it will receive a donation to a terrific local literacy charity.

Just for taking the Challenge, you'll also have a chance to win a Nintendo® WiiT and the game "My Word Coach," or even a trip to Washington, DC.

It's quick and fun and all you have to do is visit www.greatamericanwordchallenge.com to play.

Go to www.greatamericanwordchallenge.com to see how your city stacks up against the rest of the country.

And now it is time to quit procrastinating and get writing!

Day Three

I know this is actually Day Five of NaNo, but it is Day Three of actual writing for me. Another 2641 words today. Total of 6645. More than 1/10th of the way there! I might just make it!

Very distracting, writing with the sound of the surf in the background. But a nice way to relax and refocus the eyes every so often after a period of typing, to look out on the horizon, watch the boat traffic, follow the birds in the sky. One could get used to it!

Vacation From Reality

Pinch me, quick! I must be in heaven! Picture this. No children. No meals to fix. No hubby during the day time. No laundry to wash. No errands to run. Open my door from the bedroom and I step out on to a balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Blue sky. Rolling surf. Palm trees. Warm breeze. And all the time in the world to write!

We are staying at the Beachcomber Resort in Fort Lauderdale. Bill has three days of Citrix training and so the days are mine!

The drive down yesterday was nice, although the traffic once we hit Interstate in Ocala was crazy. Speed limit of 70 mph? Yeah, right!

And what is it with Ocala and horse farms? It felt like we were in Kentucky with all those horses! I will have to remember to Google and find out why Ocala is horse heaven. Sure was pretty, though.

And now, I'm off to write. Maybe I will take the laptop out on the balcony? Or would that be too much of a good thing?

Day Two of NaNo

I wrote another 1418 words yesterday, Day Two. So my running total is 4,004. Not quite 1/10th done, but getting there! I probably will not get much time for writing this weekend, but Monday I will be back at it and should have lots of time on Monday - Wednesday.

The weather today is just perfect. Cool this morning, down in the 50's. 70's today, light breeze coming in the windows, brilliant blue sky, not a cloud to be seen. We all keep pinching ourselves; this can't be November 3rd!

Day One

A good day of writing yesterday. 2586 words! Another day like that and I'll be 1/10th done!

Arg!

My pirate name is:

Captain Mary Cash

Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. You're musical, and you've got a certain style if not flair. You'll do just fine. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

Thanks, Amy, for giving me a fun way to procrastinate this morning when I ought to be writing!

NaNo Eve

This may be Halloween for most people, but for over 100,000 crazy souls, it is NaNo Eve. The night before NaNo begins. Am I ready? No way! We somehow acquired a Miss Munchkin on Saturday afternoon for an extended stay. She went home this morning. So I am exhausted from lack of sleep (she does not sleep through the night when she stays at Grandma's), shell-shocked from her continual (and improving) efforts at talking, and hurting from being pummeled by a 20 month-old toddler climbing all over, up and around me. Somehow, until I saw the announcement in my e-mail box this morning, I had forgotten that November 1st was just around the corner. I mean, I had almost a whole week right before Miss Munchkin arrived … but time seems to have slipped away.

One good thing about time slipping away is that I have not spent hours and hours contemplating my plot and characters. In fact, I have the barest of outlines and only a slim idea of my main character. Last year I had so much planned ahead that I felt burnt out by the whole thing before I even began writing. We will see whether not knowing everything in advance (or thinking I know everything) will work better.

Another good thing is that Penelope is home! She was home again for a couple of days last week, but then her check engine light came on, so she had to go back to the shop. But it was just a vacuum hose or some such thing easily taken care of, so she is back home today. That means that David can take himself to class and I no longer have to drive people everywhere. More time for writing!

The goal for NaNo is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. That breaks down to 1,666 words per day. And since I already know of a few days here and there where I will not be able to do any writing, I figure I need to do at least 2000 words per day, and it would be way better to do 2500 words per day. Wish me luck! I'll try to keep my count updated here, but if you don't hear from me for a few days, hopefully it is because I am busy writing the Great American Novel!

NaNo Creator Interview

One of my favorite blogs lately is Writer Unboxed. Their October 19th entry is Part 1 of an interview of Chris Baty, founding father of NaNo. If you want to know more about how and why he started NaNo, check it out! I particularly love his viewpoint when asked how many people who have participated in NaNo in the past have actually sold their books:

"I think that nobody has it as bad as aspiring writers. Look at the world of sports. If I went out and played a round of golf, when I came back from it, none of my friends would say, “Oh, you going to join the PGA?” The sense is that you do it for fun and you do it regularly, and it doesn’t have to be something you make your living at. My goal for the last decade has been to make a living as a writer. And I think there are other people in National Novel Writing Month who share that ambition, but I think that represents 10% of the overall population, and the other 90% are doing it for completely different reasons."

My friend Tammy wrote about the Baty interview on her blog, Just Enough, and Nothing More, "Homeschooling Is Like Music". Can you tell we've been discussing this interview on a list that we're both on?

October Already?

Where did September fly off to? If this is how quickly months go by at my age, how fast are they going to whiz by when I am ninety? And yes, I do plan to live at least that long! Many of the women on my dad's side of the family lived to be well into their nineties and I do not plan to be the exception.

So we begin a new month, October. And November is only one month away. November is National Novel Writing Month. Last year I participated in NaNoWriMo, but did not succeed in completing 50,000 written words. This year I will try again. No, what is it Yoda said? "Do, or do not. There is no 'try.' " So this year I will DO (write) 50,000 words.

To prepare for said feat, I will be writing here daily for the entire month of October. So enjoy the feast of posts this month while you are able, for next month it will be famine here as I write for NaNo instead!

Catching Up

I can see I should have set a goal for writing daily in April! Goals. Must have goals! And deadlines! All procrastinators work better when there is a deadline looming.

Here are some pics of Miss Munchkin from Easter Sunday. She had fun gathering Easter eggs at my dad's, even though she did not have a clue what was going on. Once she got one egg in each hand, she just grinned and watched all the other kids running about, picking up eggs.

And here's a pic of the handbag I crocheted for Miss Munchkin. I had troubles with the handle and will probably have to redo it, but she seemed to like it.

It's been a busy April. On the 5th I drove to Evansville to bring David home for Easter break. And on the 9th I drove him back. And then on the 11th we (Bill, Charles and I) drove to Tallahassee. Bill had an interview there on the 12th (his birthday!), which we are still waiting to hear the final verdict on. Hopefully we will get word soon.

Friday the 13th we drove to Jacksonville, just to see. There are more job opportunities there, but none of us felt at all comfortable there. It is just too big of a city. Way too many people. Way too much traffic. We drove right on through and headed for St. Augustine, spending Friday night there. On Saturday morning (the 14th) we visited Castillo de San Marcos and walked the beach long enough to get the beginnings of a nice tan. It was lovely. Saturday afternoon we headed back to Tallahassee and then for home, driving through some very nasty storms but arriving safe and sound in the wee hours of Sunday morning. It was very nice to be home. And it was a good thing we came home earlier than planned. Bill had turned off the power strip to my fish tank before we left. I had some very cold, hungry fish in dire need of some oxygen! The tank was down to 62 degrees and most of the fish were just lying on the bottom, slowly fluttering their fins / tails. But I did not see any dead ones. I think they must have been practically hibernating from the cold and lack of oxygen. By Sunday morning they were looking much improved, swimming around the top, waiting for their breakfast!

March Update

Well, I have failed at my goal of daily writing for the month of March. I know March still has a few days left, but as regular readers have likely noticed, there is a huge gap in entries, from March 17th to today, March 28th. My excuse? Life. In all it's wonder and glory!

Sunday (the 18th) was race day and also was the beginning of two days of watching Miss Munchkin while her mommy and daddy got all of her belongings moved to their new apartment. They did take Charles with them, but I am not certain it was a fair trade. Charles is pretty quiet these days, sleeping late and not keeping me very busy. Miss Munchkin not only does not sleep late, but she does not take very long naps and she is not quiet when she is awake! She kept me very, very busy those two days.

I did have Tuesday to myself and I do not remember why I didn't write that day, other than possibly I was trying to catch up on every thing I did not get done while Miss Munchkin was here! And then Wednesday morning I got a phone call from my daughter asking if I would come and help clean and paint their house, which consumed the next four days. I know their house was not that clean when they moved in to it! But it does look nice now and hopefully they will be able to sell it quickly.

So that took care of Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Sunday? Race day again, and a resting day as I tried to recover from four days of manual labor. I'm soft, I know! And also hunt the job boards for possible positions in Tallahassee for Bill. That has been my normal Sunday occupation for many months now.

Monday? Tuesday? I do not know where those days went. I was busy, but not too busy to write. So no excuses there. But today I have written twice to (hopefully) make up for lost days. And who knows? Maybe during these last remaining days of March I will be as prolific as I have been today! And be able to create whole entries that say absolutely nothing, as this one does!

What Kind of a Blogger Are You?

You Are a Life Blogger!

Your blog is the story of your life - a living diary. If it happens, you blog it. And make it as entertaining as possible.

What Kind of Blogger Are You?

I always enjoy these types of quizzes, except that they do not always have the correct choices to question. Or you can only pick one choice to a question when two or three might be more accurate. For example, one of the questions was "Why do you blog?" I could only pick one answer, but there is no one answer. I blog for several reasons: my own enjoyment, I like to write, to keep family and friends informed, as a daily diary, to share information. No one reason is predominant.

Many thanks to the "no school, just learning" blog for being post fodder.

Something Meaningful

Well, here it is the sixth day of my 30 Day Trial and I have not a clue what to write. I have already missed one day, so I really need to write something for today. But today has been one of those non-eventful days and I feel rather brain dead tonight. So meaningful this likely will not be.

This afternoon the boys and I went to the mall to find Miss Munchkin's birthday presents. I bought three board books:

• Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, by Bill Martin Jr & Eric Carle
• Good Dog Carl, by Alexandra Day

All three books were favorites of her mother's, so I am sure they will be well used.

In addition to the books, we went to Build-a-Bear, or whatever the name is for the one at the mall, and picked out a black cat with green eyes. Miss Munchkin has a thing for cats, so I know she'll like that. And then we found a couple of small bouncy balls, since she seemed to like Uncle Charles's basketball the last time she was here.

Tomorrow is the big party day. We will go over to Kat's in the late afternoon for dinner and birthday cake or whatever the dessert of choice will be. Miss Munchkin will be one! A year ago tonight I was walking the floor with Kat, wondering when/if Miss Munchkin was ever going to make her arrival. And now she's one. Simply amazing!

A 30 Day Experiment

I have been enjoying "Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog" and recently shared it with a friend. She pointed out to me his entry for April 30, 2005, "30 Days to Success" and then she suggested we try something similar. We have both watched the movie "The Secret" and been discussing The Law of Attraction. My friend has had some past successes with The Law of Attraction and has shared some of them with me. I am still a little uncertain about The Law of Attraction, but more about the implementation of it than the possibility of its existence.

Anyway, we have come up with our own 30-day challenge for the month of March. Each of us has set some ideas into motion, some goals, and will be accountable to each other throughout the month, hopefully seeing progress by March 31 in the appropriate areas of our lives.

I do not wish to share with the public all of my goals, but I will share this one:

I will write a blog entry daily for the month of March. I will write about an important-to-me topic. My entry will be entertaining, supportive, and enlightening to my readers. Most importantly, each entry will be something I am pleased to have written for the public to read.

The reason behind this goal is that I want to get into the habit of writing daily. I have novels I want to finish and articles I want to write, yet I find it too easy to become distracted by life and not accomplish what I want. November will be National Novel Writing Month again and this time around I want to be able to write those 50,000 words in one month. Only by having the habit of daily writing will I stand a chance.

I doubt that 30 days will be long enough to make daily writing a habit. My past record tells me that it will take much, much longer than that to make it a habit. But it is a beginning. And you can track my progress here, since each day's writing has to be posted on my blog or it does not count. Watch me grow!

Weather changes

Looks like November is going to go out with a roar … and December come in with a brrr! We've been enjoying some lovely warm days this past week or more; 70s in the day, 50s at night, lots of sunshine and gentle breezes. But from the weather forecast, that is all going to end tomorrow. Lots of wind and rain, possibly some thunder and lightning (but hopefully no tornadoes) going through tomorrow afternoon and evening. And then turning much colder on Friday, with temps down in the 30s and 20s at night and not much warmer during the day. So far no forecast for any of that white stuff, at least not this far south, and let's hope it stays that way!

Thanksgiving was a nice quiet day. And then on Friday Kat and Miss Munchkin and Shawn came to spend a few days, going home on Monday. It is nice to have them all here, but nice when they leave also! The house seems to much bigger after they leave!

Miss Munchkin is trying to walk. She actually took a couple of steps on her own while she was here. She will be nine months in another week. Nine months! That's too young to be walking!!

Bill and I took David back to college on Sunday. We had a nice visit, but I think he was ready to go back. We have to pick him back up on December 13. On our way to Evansville Sunday we spent some time driving around Nashville, getting the lay of the land, scouting out some possible areas for housing, just in case that is the area we end up moving to.

I've been working hard on my website and it is beginning to pay off! I've also been trying to clean up some of the piles of books around here. Putting more on auction at e-bay rather than on my e-bay store. And either they sell or I donate them to the library. Too many piles, too many bookshelves. If we are going to move … no, when we move I do not want to have to move all these books!!

Needless to say, from the word count showing here on my blog, I will not be completing my NaNoWriMo Novel this month. I did get over the hump I was in last week and had a great writing day on Thanksgiving. But with all the additional company and taking David home on Sunday and everything else, I have not had the time to write. Today I have gotten a little bit done. But I am going to continue working on this novel, as I like the premise and I love the main character. So maybe by this time next year I will have two completed novels - the one I am working on now and one for next year's NaNoWriMo.

November update

I checked my blog yesterday because I could not remember when I had last written. November 1st! Imagine that. What a busy month November has been. As you can see by my NaNo count, though, I have not been busy writing my novel.

So what have I been doing? Mainly updating my website. Rewording some pages. Making better intros. Checking links. Adding ads. Trying to make my website pay me back something other than just the satisfaction of knowing I have helped other homeschoolers.

I did write a small amount (500 words) yesterday on my novel. And actually got another 500 words written early this morning. Charles woke me up at 6 a.m., sick again. So after Bill went to work, I stayed up and worked in my office, which is right next to Charles's bedroom. He was quiet for about an hour, resting, but not sleeping. So I was able to write then. But since about 8 a.m. he has kept me busy: needing drinks, vomit pails emptied, covers on, covers off, baths drawn. I am not accomplishing much today!

Charles came down with this nasty stomach bug on Saturday. He was sick, sick, sick on Saturday. Stomach cramps, vomited, diarrhea, fever. He was better yesterday. Slept most of the day and woke up hungry. Announced he was going to karate on Monday. But this morning he is worse again. Not as bad as Saturday, but still sick. The one good thing seems to be that Charles has not had a violent recurrence of his post-tetanus vaccination reactions. He has had a couple of mild reactions, which were quickly squashed with some antihistamine, so hopefully the after-effects of that vaccination are slowly receding.

Tomorrow we are supposed to go to Evansville to pick up David. Bill took the day off and we were both going to go, but with Charles still sick I am not sure whether I'll be going or not. It will be a long day for just one driver. Of course, David does have his driver's license, but it's been a few months since he's driven. Penelope is a nice easy car to drive, so maybe he could help out some with the driving back home. He'll be home until Sunday, when we have to take him back to college.

So I guess that's all the news today! I need to try to get David's room cleaned out a bit. We have been using it for the "catch-all" room since he went away to college in August. I'm sure he would appreciate begin able to actually get to his bed, let alone lie down on it!

Quick NaNo update

The NaNo site's servers seems to be overwhelmed and thus operating so slowly that many are giving up posting their first day's count. And that includes me! So here's my first day's word count: 1723. Slow start, didn't really get under motion until about 6 p.m. and by then I was tired of staring at this computer screen. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get to writing a bit earlier in the day!

Halloween / NaNoWriMo

It's Halloween and all my children are healthy, I think. When they were little, it seemed as though every Halloween at least one of them, if not more, were sick with a fever, cold, sore throat, something. Of course, Charles is just getting over a cold, so maybe he counts? Nah. And I don't really know whether David is sick or not, but he sounded just fine on Saturday when we talked to him. So I'm going with "It's Halloween and all my children are healthy."

Kat was over on Sunday with Miss Munchkin. She had picked up the cutest Halloween costume for Miss Munchkin. A strawberry! It had a little stretchie hat that looked like the hull of a strawberry on top. The suit part was red, with velcro in the back so it went on and off easily. Sleeveless, so it wouldn't be too warm. I'm hoping Kat will get a picture of Miss Munchkin in it this week, as she didn't bring my camera with her on Sunday. If (when) I get a pic, I will post it up here. She looked so cute, although I do agree with Shawn that it was also mildly disturbing at the same time!

Miss Munchkin had a new game Sunday. She is now waving all the time as people come and go, or just when she looks around and "discovers" they are still there. Sunday she would crawl from her mommy to me, get on my lap, turn around and wave and grin at her mommy. Great fun!

I added a NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) participant link to my description here on my blog today (check the right description column). I've never done NaNo before, never finished a novel before (although I have a couple partially written), so we'll see. The plot and characters all came to me within about 10 minutes of reading about NaNoWriMo back in September, so I think I was meant to write it. You have to write at least 50,000 words during the month of November. No editing, that comes later! That's almost 2000 words a day. With all my job hunting for hubby and updating of my website, I'm not sure I'll have time to write 50,000 words. Probably my posting here will be a bit sparse, so check my progress reports (clicking on the the links to the right) and give me heck in an e-mail if you don't see an updated word count each day!

Know Home Schooling, history, and Harry Potter

I received an e-mail this morning from a friend, telling me about a new site, Know Home Schooling. It's a homeschooling wiki. I added my blog listing to it this morning. Looks like it might be a real help to new homeschoolers as more veterans add their info to it. Check it out. http://knowhomeschooling.com

Yesterday we actually got back to reading our world history book, "The Outline of History" by H. G. Wells. It seems like we've been working on the final chapter for months! I read for about an hour yesterday and we're down to the last three pages. Hopefully we can finish it today. Then we can pick back up the Richard Maybury book(s) I want to cover this summer before David goes off to Evansville.

Darn J. K. Rowling and her announcement yesterday about her next (and final) Harry Potter book. Here she hasn't even gotten it all written and she's already telling us that two characters (main characters!) will die in the final book. And her wording was such that it certainly seems possible that Harry could be one of those. Something to the effect that no one else can write more books in the future about Harry if he dies in the last book. So whom will she kill off? My boys speculate that it will be Ron and Hermoine. Surely she wouldn't kill them off? More likely Hagrid and maybe … maybe … oh, I can't even begin to guess! I only know that I'll be extremely saddened when the series ends. And hopeful that Rowling will write more. Although topping the HP series would likely not be possible. And certainly she doesn't need the income! It would just be interesting to see what other areas her writing brain might find appealing to write about.

A New Beginning...

Today, while I was reading another blog, my daughter told me I should begin my own blog. I've thought of it. I even began one a couple of years ago on my own website, but it was a lot of work to write something, put it in html format, and then upload it to my website. I enjoyed the freeform writing and it did spur me to write other things, but the mechanics slowed me down and it's been too long since I even looked at that first blog.

I named my first blog "The Writing Well" and I almost named this one the same. Here's the very first entry from "The Writing Well:"

March 1, 2003

Why "The Writing Well" you ask? Because I am a well of writing that needs priming. I know I have writing ideas and material just waiting to be brought to the surface, waiting to be put on paper, but for some reason they are just not coming to the surface.

When I was a young girl, my grandmother's home was the most magical place. Even though it has been over fifteen years since I was last there, I can still smell and almost taste the unique perfume of Grammy's house: molasses cookies, fresh wildflowers, and that musty, damp smell that comes from a house that is closed up all winter. Outside her flowerbeds were in colorful bloom, the grass always needed mowing, the maple trees spun their helicopter seeds, and the profusion of lilacs scented the air for weeks.

What I remember the most, though, was the water well and its pump, an area conversely fraught with danger and delight, fear and fulfillment. The well pump was on a small shady knoll. As I would walk up the path to the well, I had to be careful not to slip on the moss covered stones that surrounded the well's wooden platform. Even more dangerous to me, though, was the possibility of snakes. On any day there could be several snakes enjoying the cool shade and dampness of the well platform. They were nothing more than green garter snakes, but for a child petrified of any snake they might as well have been boa constrictors or rattlesnakes. The mere sight of them would cause me to freeze with fright, back away slowly, and run for the house. And the next time around I would be doubly apprehensive about going to the well. And yet, go I would, because there was nothing better on a hot summer day than a drink of cold well water!

Some days, though, the water didn't come simply by moving the pump handle up and down. It needed priming, which meant that I had to go back down the slippery stone path, keeping an eagle eye out for snakes, get a glass of water from Grammy's house, make my way back to the well, and then pour the water down the pump while moving the pump handle up and down. If I was lucky, one glass of water would do the trick and I'd cup my hands to catch the cool, sweet water. If not, I would have to run back inside and get another glass of water and prime it again!

You might wonder why I didn't just drink the water from the house instead of going through all that effort to get the well water. After all, it was the very same water! As a child, though, I knew there was a difference. The well water from the pump was sweeter and colder, more refreshing. Or maybe it was just that the danger and excitement, the sense of accomplishment, made the water taste sweeter and feel colder.

My writing needs priming … a few common words trickling down the well to get the steady flow of cool, sweet words flowing again. Ahhh …how welcome that would be!

We'll see if this blog fulfills it's purpose better than my first effort. Quite honestly, I've not written much in the past couple of years other than lots of e-mails. Maybe I should spend less of my energy on the homeschool e-mail lists and more on my own writing!