A Road Less Travelled

Here is the first series of vignettes based on Adiel’s suggested phrase “It was almost like a dream,” If you have no idea what I’m talking about just read the comments here. If you would like to suggest a phrase to help kickstart my creativity just leave a comment there.

It was almost like a dream. She had been focusing so hard on her hands in the rich garden dirt she hadn’t heard him bark until he was almost upon her. She turned at the last moment and threw her arms out wide as he tumbled into them. A laugh burst from her throat for the first time since he’d vanished last week. They wrestled in the sun, laughter mixing with joyous barking.

It was almost like a dream. The sun shone off of her golden hair as he walked through the meadow towards her. She was bent over a notebook, no doubt writing a letter to him. He tried to be quiet, but the clink of his medals betrayed him. Her head snapped up at the noise and then she was buried in his arms, the letter forgotten. He held her close, never noticing that they were ruining the perfect creases in his uniform. He didn’t plan on needing that uniform anymore.

It was almost like a dream. I came to the window when he yelled “Look at me, Mommy!” I saw him poised at the top of the slide, I saw the tricycle, I saw the rock at the bottom. A shout formed in my mouth, but time stopped as he pushed off. The pedals whirled as he and the tricycle plummeted down the slide. I shouted, “No!”, but it was far too late. He hit the rock at the bottom and the great trick ended in a tangle of metal frame and little boy. Time started again and I rushed to him. I unearthed my little boy and found him smiling at me. “Cool, huh?”

It was almost like a dream. I was driving down a lonely road when I saw the first one. I slammed my foot on the brakes when he stepped into the light of my headlights. We stared at each other, his brown, soulful eyes staring into my brown, startled eyes. He looked away first, glancing over his shoulder to summon the rest of his herd. They crossed the road behind him, calmly, orderly, silent in the night. When the last speckled body was across and had vanished into the trees he bowed his antlered head to me and rejoined his herd. I didn’t move for a long time.

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 Ever since Christmas I have been trying to be very responsible in choosing my craft projects. I knew I needed to finish up some ufo’s (Isn’t knitting language great? For the uninitiated UFO stands for UnFinished Object), and start working on birthday presents for the year so I could get them out of the way and have plenty of time to make Christmas presents. All very logical and responsible.

Sadly, logical and responsible are not my natural keyphrases when it comes to my crafts. Perhaps because it is the one area of my life where I don’t have to be logical and responsible. (This is part of the reason I finally realized that a home business relating to crafts is not for me. It sounded like such a natural fit for a long time–so logical even–but crafts don’t mix well with deadlines and obligations for me.) I think the only reason it works so well to make gifts for people is because I find patterns that make me go, “Ooooh, that’s the coolest thing! I want to make one! Who do I know that would want one of these?”

I have forced myself to impose some order on my crafts in the past, but this is only the result of ending up with half a dozen tiny orange baskets, several doilies, unfinished sets of coasters and the like, all of which were fun and exciting to make and things I would never actually use, and didn’t know anyone I could palm them off on…. er, that is to say, gift them to.

However, after a month and half of responsible knitting my wild side has broken out again. I couldn’t help myself. I have cast on and begun knitting a lizard scarf. I don’t think it’s actually supposed to be a lizard, but that’s what it looks like to me. A scarf that looks like a furry lizard. Isn’t that ghastly? And so much fun! Next week I will desperately search for a use for a furry lizard scarf. For now I merely knit in happiness.

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Dear Readers, you are all cordially invited to The Waggle Room, a blog my sister Adiel, Raquel and I have started as a place to have discussions about movies.

Once a month we will pick a movie to watch and discuss. We will announce the movie on the first of every month (or sometime around then) and then you all can watch the movie at your leisure sometime during the month. Post your thoughts, comments, complaints, etc. about the movie and read what others thought of it.

We are hoping to having some interesting conversations here as we discuss the art of movies and what they tell us about our world and our Creator.

You can find a link in our blogroll to your right or, if that is too hard, right here.
Please come join us.

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I’m hoping to get another renga started soon. I’m also hoping to have a smidge more participation than last time. (Well, I can dream, right? ) In light of that, I was curious as to the reasons people have for avoiding the renga.

Lack of interest? Is it just that it sounds boring or poetry (or at least Japanese poetry) just isn’t your thing? I can’t do much about that, but it might be interesting to find out why it sounds boring.

Lack of time? This is also a reasonable and acceptable excuse. I will not beat you about the head for using this excuse. Still, there’s no commitment to adding the renga. You can bop over and write a verse and then drop out entirely if life gets crazy. You can just read as we go, and add a verse if you happen to feel inspired by the last one. Or even just read along and drop a quick comment if you like it.

Lack of skill? In this case, simply shut up and go directly to the renga blog. Okay, okay, I’m exaggerating, but seriously, if you’re interested and just holding back because you don’t think you’d be good at it, you should come give it a try. None of us here are really experienced at collaborative Japanese poetry. It’s just fun. And, the collaborative aspect means that even if a few specific haiku are lacking in polish, the renga as a whole will likely be more interesting because they were included.

So, anyone up for some renga?

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(I apologize in advance for all the people who don’t understand this blog post. My brother Seth has been working on a game which is probably better understood as an improvosational play. If you are out of the loop and you want to know more about A Flower For Mara go here and read everything in this category.)

Last night we played Seth’s new game A Flower For Mara. It was beautiful. We played with Raquel, Seth and I, Jana who is a new friend and four other people I know on varying levels of a bit. I was excited to be playing with this particular group because they were all people I want to know better.

Seth told the group at the beginning to do the obvious. Often when you try to be clever you just end up being dumb, but if you do what seems to you as blindingly obvious it’ll sing more often than not. What I hadn’t realized is that seeing what someone thinks is obvious is a wonderful way to get to know him on an experience and assumption level. It’s hard to tell someone your assumptions because they aren’t things you think; they are things you assume without thinking. But when the characters were sitting around the table at the funeral dinner and one of them brought up the matter of family heirlooms that now needed to be divided up I could see where the player has come from and some things he’s had to deal with. It isn’t anything he would have thought to tell me in conversation. “Oh, and by the way, in my experience a funeral is the time for the rest of the family to squabble over the dead person’s stuff and I don’t like it.” It might have happened, but I think it’s unlikely. But now I know. I know him better. This happened with each of the players at different times. I found out a little or a lot more about them and what has gone into making them the way they are.

I was glad that everybody decided to trust each other with our sorrow. Sometimes trust is earned through a long process of giving a bit, seeing how someone deals with it and if he does well giving a bit more. Or sometimes trust is a decision. I decided to trust these people with some of my sorrow and I hoped they would trust me. When they did I tried to be gentle with their sorrow and I am very glad to say they were gentle with mine. And now the long process won’t take quite so long. We’ve taken the first three, four or five steps along the way.

Something else I noticed was our laughter. Some things were honestly humorous and some things were painfully funny. There was too much truth is some statements to take all at once so we would laugh together to get over the first bump of understanding. Sometimes laughter is almost as sacred as tears and it can bind together the same way.

Thank you, Seth, for being vulnerable enough to make this game. I know it hit close to home. Thank you to the group for a fine evening. I’m glad we had a chance to craft this experience together. I hope it blessed you as much as it did me.

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It’s like Merry Christmas, except earlier. This is the time of year where I desperately try to finish Christmas presents and wonder how I could possibly be so far behind when I’ve been working on them all year, become convinced that I’ll never really finish in time this year, and finally slide in just under the wire with everything wrapped up and wrapped by Christmas Eve. The time of year when I stare in puzzled confusion at people complain about the snow and look around thinking we could stand to have a few more inches of fluffy white stuff on the ground. (For the record, I really like ice too, but that does get inconvenient when it comes to driving around.) The time of year when we pull out all the classic Christmas music (Piggy pudding?!?), try to keep the baby from eating the decorations, and brush the tinsel off our clothes.

This year I even got around to decorating my room before Christmas. It’s mostly some silver garland, but hey, I’m too busy to make black ornaments to go with it, so I’ll take what I’ve got. I’m considering getting a tiny tree to do up in true gothic Christmas style, but I doubt it will happen. Perhaps I’ll get one for next year at the after-Christmas sales.

I’ve discovered that actually enjoy the pre-Christmas rush. I’m not convinced that extends to the desperate push to get presents done, but I suspect that it might. I know that I like Christmas shopping, even when that means standing in the middle of the thrift store with two children who have bags full of change, presents to buy for each other, and two presents they’re going together on for two different people (with different prices, of course), trying to figure out how much money each of them have left and how in the world we’re going to check out without anyone seeing their Christmas present. I love the thrill of having cut forty-seven two-inch lengths  of dowel rod for some mysterious secret project no one can make any sense out of. Oooh, and yesterday I made the cutest little secret project spoiler removed you’ve ever seen! I can’t wait until Christmas! Did I mention that I love the feeling of not being able to wait until Christmas?

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So, yesterday we went out shooting. One last post-Thanksgiving shoot at this family’s house before they move to Tennessee. Unfortunately I neglected to double-check that I had my camera, so I didn’t get any pictures, but there are a few here.

After the shooting was winding down I commented on the pretty Christmas colors of the spent shotgun shells on the ground. The idea was batted around a bit, and someone pointed out that it wouldn’t be that hard to poke holes in them to string a wire through. Hm…

I decided I bring a few home to experiment with, and the end result was this–

Not too bad, I think. Afterwards I did a google search to see what other people had done with shotgun shells as Christmas ornaments. I mean, surely this has been done before! Sadly, it seems that beyond strings of shotgun shell Christmas lights, the only shotgun shell Christmas ornaments are these. Don’t you think mine are much prettier?

I did however find a lovely song called Shotgun Shells on the Christmas Tree. I will admit to being slightly tempted to buy the album. I mean, really, what else would you expect from a girl from Possum Kingdom?

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Theresa mentioned on her blog that she’s starting a new writing curriculum with the children. I’m sitting in on the exercises (hup, two, three… no wait, wrong kind of exercises), the first one of which was to fill out a questionnaire about writing preferences and write a vignette about someone. Probably the most interesting question turned out to be, “Where do you like to write?” My first thought was “Outside, definitely.” Then I stopped. I don’t write outside. I write holed away in my room. Huh. Why don’t I write outside?

The result of this train of thought is that I am now leaning up against a post in our yard, swatting mosquitoes and letting the damp grass stain my clothes. I think I’m going to like this…

The vignette, we were informed, should be a brief glimpse of what a person and his or her life is characteristically like. I thought the writing in mine was only okay, but I like the impression I got across. I don’t have it in front of me at the moment, but as best I can remember, it went like this:

Gabrielle’s vibrant orange dress swished around her legs as she swept into the room, child on one hip, cast iron skillet in the opposite hand. “So,” she said, turning the on faucet in the kitchen sink full blast as she slipped the skillet in, “I had this great idea!”

Oh, and besides these writing exercises, I got another writing assignment from Seth. So, um, when I finally finish that one, anyone up for playtesting a roleplaying game about creating fairy tales by committee?

As far as writing outside goes, while I was sitting here I had a bumblebee either fall asleep or die on my pant leg. Has anyone else ever had a bumblebee decide to sit down and die on them? Is my writing really that boring? Or is just my sparkling personality? Sigh. Maybe I should move back inside.

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So I mentioned this road trip I am privileged enough to be venturing on. What I didn’t mention is that it has come at possibly the worst possible moment. Our family is in crunch time to publish a role-playing game Seth has written. This means that Crystal has been spending most of most days in front of the computer laying out the book and making it look spiffy. Seth is finishing up writing the book as we speak and I have been keeping the house clean and cooking dinners. Oh, and doing laundry. That’s my contribution to the final push to get this game out the door. And next week I’m leaving for two weeks.

That means this week has been insane. I’ve not only been doing all the housework, but I’ve been making meals to freeze for when I’m not here so Crystal can focus on layout. I’ve not had much experience with Chinese food and suddenly I’m making enough chop suey for two meals and a church luncheon. I’d never made granola before and on Tuesday I turned thirty cups of oatmeal into really tasty granola. And today I turned twenty pounds of raw ground beef into eight meals and a garnish.

All this extra work has made life just a little crazy around here. Today, to aid my sanity, I pulled Please Don’t Eat the Daisies by Jean Kerr off my shelf and read it in my bits of spare time. It was cathartic. And as I was doubling four different recipes I found myself remembering a Steven Curtis Chapman song my mother liked. It feels applicable.

Well the day has just begun and I’m already running late
With too many irons in the fire and too much on my plate
I’d be pulling out my hair if I could just get one hand free
And I’d stop this world if I could find the key

CHORUS
What I see is telling me I’m going crazy, but
What is real says God’s still on His throne
What I need is to remember one thing
That the Lord of the gentle breeze is Lord of the rough and tumble
And He is King of the Jungle Yes he is

People say this world’s a jungle and sometimes I must admit
I’d be scared to death if I did not know who was king of it
But the truth is God created this whole world with His own hand
So everything is under His command

-Steven Curtis Chapman
“Lord of the Jungle”

So there, that’s my deep thought for the day. Do with it what you will, I can’t be bothered to care.

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