Life

Forgetting What We Read Late at Night ….

/ still a dreamer

When I woke up the other morning and looked at the book on my night stand, I remembered I had read it the night before. But I was having a hard time remembering exactly what I had read. I had that sinking feeling that I was going to be re-reading a bunch of pages again. Sound familiar?

Sometimes in our busy lives, that most precious of times – reading time – gets put off to the very end of the day when we have the least energy. We’re so tired that even a good book can put us to sleep. What’s worse than realizing that we have  no clue as to what we read the night before?

This happens not just to me but to other women I know, as well. It’s rather discouraging. And the book I’m in now – which is fabulous – will not be the first book I start again from the beginning because I know I’ve missed too much from late night reading.

Yesterday, I thought of a solution. What if women friends, (OK – it could be guy friends, too), opened their homes – when they were out and busy with errands for a while – to other friends who needed a couple hours just to read? Outrageous, right? For example, I’m going to be gone for half a day. I give my friend my key, leave fixings for coffee or tea on the counter, maybe a snack, and she comes in with her book and actually reads! Chances are excellent that this is what will happen, because who feels obliged to clean anyone else’s house, answer their phone, or run their laundry? No one! It’s clear, guilt-free sailing!

Yes, we’re talking stolen hours … maybe once a week, or even at odd intervals … for the sheer joy of reading uninterrupted. Who wouldn’t do that for a friend?

When Life Gives You ….

/ still a dreamer

Most of you will probably finish that line with “… lemons, make lemonade.” It’s an old adage about making the best of things, to which I have added my own variation. “When life wakes you up at the crack `o dawn, get up!”

At first, I was really fighting this. For whatever reason, this year and last, I have been waking up with the sun, this year even more so with a bumper crop of birds singing about 40′ from my open bedroom windows.  I’m a morning person,  but 4:45 am? Come on! But awake I was. I tried going back to sleep, to no avail. I lay there and harrumphed – needless to say, that didn’t help. But I was becoming more and more tired as I was still going to bed at the same time. What to do?

Adjust! I started going to bed about 10, so when 4:45 rolls around, sometimes heralded by the sun, but always by the birds, (clearly I am now synching with their bio-rhythms), I can actually get up and start doing stuff. By the time I start my jobs, I’ve often accomplished quite a bit. Ergo, the photo of the carrot bread.

I got out all the dry ingredients and mixing bowls, loaf pan, etc. last night and grated the carrots. After feeding the small fry this morning, I opened up the windows to a nice cool 65˚, whipped it together and popped it in the oven. Voila! a cooling carrot bread at 7:50 a.m.! By the time you see the finished photo with a cream cheese icing, it will be a few hours later.

Sometimes reality is a pain in the butt. We don’t always want to hear about it, nor deal with it. But the fact remains – whatever the reality is, if it’s not something we can change, it’s not going away. So for now, one of my realities is waking up at 4:45 a.m. And although this was a carrot bread morning, I discovered that this new reality also affords me extra time to work on my children’s books with no interruptions.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll give the little choristers a standing ovation.

Balance

/ still a dreamer

It has been my thought for a while now to write about balance … it has been a constant source of reflection over the past weeks … months. So while I mused over my subject, I searched for an appropriate photo for this post.

Unfortunately, having the love affair I’ve had with photography most of my life, looking for a photo is something akin to the proverbial child in the candy shop. Or better yet, wandering in the woods. I easily get lost. I searched for a photo by my subject, but the word ‘balance’ didn’t yield what I wanted, so I tried see-saw. Nothing. I tried `edge’ and that brought up images I didn’t expect, (like knives), so I tried `ledge.’ Still nothing. Then I thought of one of the greatest ledges of them all …. the parapets of Notre Dame. And gargoyles. This now became free association at its best.

And so you see the photo I chose, above. This is probably one of the most famous gargoyles in the world; he may even have a name, but I don’t know it. As someone who has been enamored of gargoyles before they became faddish and fairly common garden statuary, I have a few of my own; in particular, I have one of the Notre Dame gargoyles in candlesticks.

I’m in love with this photo. The gargoyle is quietly looking over his beloved city, shrouded in mist … HIS Paris. I look with him. And I contemplate the wonder of it all … the beauty and richness of life and the sometimes pain;  the inescapability of responsibility and the luxury of letting it all go to become steeped in daydreams; being surely anchored in cement and that violent shrug in which we break free and fly.

So yes … balance.

Rambling

/ still a dreamer

I find there are periods of time in which I am all over the place. I’m working on several graphics jobs that call upon very different mindsets, am fielding a proposal to do a new job, wondering when I should follow up on something I am waiting to hear back on, when I’ll get the time, (or desire), to simply pull the remaining paperwork from my files so I can put away all my 2010 tax stuff, and it goes on and on.

I finally used my Barnes & Noble’s gift card from Christmas – bought the reference book I’ll need for some of my characters in the picture book I’ll be bringing with me to the upcoming NJ SCBWI June Conference, and surprise! David Cook’s CD, (yup, from American Idol.) Usually, when I work at my desk, I listen to new age, light classical piano or guitar, or Indian (American) music because I can’t do creative writing when someone is singing lyrics, but lately, when on other types of work, I find myself listening to the radioio IDOLS station in iTunes. Sometimes I watch the show, sometimes not – this year I seem to be interested. I do know, however, when I hear David Cook’s voice, I hear something I like, so he’ll be arriving in a few days. And then I went to read a bit about Patricia Briggs’ latest in the Mercy Thompson series, River Marked, but let’s not go there just yet.

Forrest Gump arrived today. I must be the only person on the planet who hasn’t seen Forrest Gump, but so be it. I, unlike a friend of mine, am a constant juggler of movies in my queue. He just adds something, and when it comes up, it comes up. Not me. I seem to ponder how it will fit in with the current tenor of my life, my feelings, etc. Do I want to laugh? (or need to?) Am in the frame of mind to deal with something powerful and disturbing? I can’t say how many times I have pushed Hotel Rwanda down as it begins to surface in my queue. And I just watched Alice in Wonderland, which I really enjoyed a lot. Makes me think that maybe when I’m done my current book, that I’ll read Alice – she’s a fixture on my bookshelf.

Now watching Alice in Wonderland and Forrest Gump may be an offset to that current book – The Kite Runner. I was told it was a very sad book. I didn’t ask why my friend found it so, so am discovering the many levels of sadness for myself. Certainly, reading a book like this makes it that much more obvious what fabulous, often spoiled, lives we are living here in the land of the free and home of the brave. Visualizing the bombed ruins of Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan and the cruelty of the Taliban as described by the author is sobering to say the least. And it made me think of how that happened here in its own way, except that the victims weren’t Afghani people, they were native Americans.

Imagining the abject poverty the Afghan people were subjected to is heartbreaking, but that same poverty is also right here in America. Many of those living on reservations are living in conditions that are below those of third world countries, yet no one ever talks about it. Or even seems to know. Indians have the highest rate of poverty of any group in the United States.

Years ago at a pow-wow, I saw this great tee shirt. It was funny, well, no – not funny – more ironic. Clever. Ultimately, more sad than anything else. It features Geronimo and several other Indians, the tee shirt saying – Homeland Security – Fighting Terrorism since 1492. Here it is – you can order it at Northern Sun along with many items which have something to say. Was their experience so different than what happened in Afghanistan? Their world destroyed, families killed, homes taken away, forced to live where their terrorists demanded. It was a very dark chapter in American history. I wonder if that history is being taught. Or that this impoverished way of life, so unlike our own, continues on in many parts of this country. Or are we all just too busy?

Well, rambling I am. I also wonder when one of my cats will get past the hairball she seems to be harboring somewhere in her digestive tract, and which she feels compelled to try and push up in the vicinity of 2 – 4 a.m.

And I can’t wait to start photographing my friend’s little boy, my model for the MC in aforementioned picture book. Yeah, just all over.

Making Time for What We Love

/ still a dreamer

OK, I’m the first one who says we have to “make” time, not “find” time, but every now and then, something occurs which effectively pushes in my face just how much I’m trying to accomplish, and what happens? Instant overwhelm!

If you have a dream, and I’m sure you do, there really are just times when you wonder how you’ll ever get there. I was updating my web site, and looking at how many children’s books I have somewhere in the process of either writing, editing, storyboarding, dummying and/or illustrating, and how I really want to be working on each and every one. But then I … like you, I suspect … remember that I have to work and do all the multitudinous things that mean taking care of our lives.

It sure can be a dilemma, can’t it? And then we sit down to it, (or run across it, climb up it, build it … if that’s your dream), and we’re happy. I actually updated a few areas of my site, and added the following quote in my shop, where I always like some words of wisdom – “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker.  His words seem apt for where I am right now — standing on the edge of everything exciting, but still wondering how long I can fly up there, before I have to return to the reality of everyday life. Well, everyday life as I know it at this precise moment in time.

I plan on making the time to fly up there longer and longer. And to keep on learning how to kick that overwhelm to the curb. How’s your dream coming along?