More Monday Musing-Alongs

The handsome chef about to use his new grill
Happy Monday to you! And to all those dads out there, I hope you enjoyed Father's Day yesterday.

We surprised the daddy in our house with a new charcoal grill on Saturday...a little early due to the fact that it needed to be set up. We were hoping he'd want to use it on Sunday to prepare some yummy dinner...and he did! He already has lots more grilling ideas in mind for this summer.

Time is once again whizzing along.

Only 88 more days until the unofficial "d-day" of "Leechie" (now pronounced [lee-ay-chay]) at our house. Egads! I don't remember the first two pregnancies going quite this fast. But then it has been over 7 years since I was last pregnant...*grin*

And only 5 months until the 24 Season 7 prequel and 7 until the actual season!! Think we're a bit excited?? Nah. We'll only have been waiting for 19 months for this particular season...

Today marks our poochie Buster Brown's 6th birthday! Wow! We can't believe he's 6 years old already! Happy Birthday, Buster!!

Edward lost his front tooth last Thursday, and the Tooth Fairy once again forgot to visit on time. *chagrinned smile* We told him that she isn't used to him putting out his tooth so quickly. And -- you have to love these modern times *wink* -- we promised to "e-mail" her on Friday so that she would be aware of his tooth's departure from his mouth. Sure enough, he came rushing down on Saturday morning to announce that this time the T.F. had remembered...and just to prove it he held up 7 shiny quarters.

The weather has decided to cool down for the week...which suits all of us just fine. It'll mean a bit of rain and wind and thunderstorms, but anything beats that heat wave we endured last week. Our little veggie patch is hoping for some rain, I think. All the lush greenery of the spring suddenly shrunk back due to the oppressive heat last week. We still have some seeds to plant to see if we gets some watermelons and pumpkins.

The calendar shows a quiet week ahead...so perhaps I'll be able to get ahead on the cleaning and organizing? Here's hoping!

* * *

5 THINGS TO BE HAPPY ABOUT
• old cookbooks
• antique-car shows
• barnacles
• bookmarking a Web site
• the first sentence of your novel

* * *

I love to write. I mean really, really love it.

I've been doing it since I was about 8.

Short stories, poems, books...anything to get out the words that rattled around in my brain. (Funny enough, I was never very good at keeping a journal though. I found writing about stuff in my life was rather mundane. In my mind, I lived a very "ordinary" (read as: boring) life, I guess. Not necessarily a bad thing now.)

My dad even bought me a book for writers who "can't not write."

At first I resisted entering the field of journalism -- despite it being a more lucrative writing field -- since I saw that kind of writing as not as creative as I normally enjoyed.

But, like any kind of writing, I discovered it had a style all its own...a kind of voice. And in developing that, I found the creativity. I was really blessed by being able to write a lot of features during my tenure at the newspaper...not something many freshman journalists get to enjoy.

Still, it left little time for the creative writing I'd always enjoyed. My brain was tired from writing and editing every night.

Then I had my children, and I hung up my reporter hat, tucking away my reporter card.

Now I could write books for them, right?

Hmm...

Somehow it didn't work that way. As much as I wanted to -- and I did manage to pen a few short stories and poems for them -- I just didn't have the time or energy to pursue my old passion.

And that was okay. I had a new job -- that of "Mommy" -- and I was enjoying it immensely.

Then one day I found myself missing something. Maybe it was that same moment that I realized the kids were off happily playing in their rooms, leaving me all alone to ponder on my own.

What was I missing?

I felt a bit dead inside. Sure I was very alive with mommyness and wifehood...but I wasn't "me" anymore. What had happened?

Well, throughout life when I changed roles, I found that I didn't change everything...just my perception of normal. Normal changed to whatever was that way at that particular moment.

Then I realized that my "normal" at that moment didn't include writing anymore. I'd let it fall by the wayside in an effort to master the other "normals" of the moment.

Hmm...

Having just the right pen and paper makes such a difference to the flow of my creative juices. (Read here for more proof.)

So a search began for these items, and shiny, new pen and notebook in hand, I began the long journey back to finding some of the "old me" to incorporate into my "new normal."

That was actually the easy part.

Writing the first sentence on the first page of that new notebook was the daunting part.

But 16 notebooks and two years later...