There is nothing like a well balanced series of sentences:

Mother pours the coffee; I pour the tea. Chester pours his cat food all over the floor. Chester is put outside.

Today I found a Briard. What is significant about that? He is an amazing breed - those ears are butterfly like...and if I had been doing what I was supposed to do, I wouldn't have found the Briard!

The question of the day is what will I do when I grow up?

The second question is will I ever grow up?

The frightening question is have I grown up and not noticed it?

What is a drama queen? Or is that Drama Queen? I was talking to a friend whilst her one-year-old was moaning softly in the background. My friend is a very fine mother so when she said, "She's just being a drama queen. I wonder where she got that from," I knew all too well but I protested. My friend has been accused of being a drama queen. I have been accused in my day of being a drama queen. It is not a nice name to be called. It suggests a certain manipulative, air-headed quality.
My friend has handled a thousand very challenging situations with skill and serenity. She can feed fifty with two minutes notice without blinking. She learned to play the piano at fifteen and sat a performance degree at twenty-four. She has two children and one husband.
I cannot claim any of those qualifications, but I do know that I am Irish. I tend to shout then cope. And I shout in order to stop everyone or everything until I have time to cope. Shouting is effective if not done often. I even laugh as I shout, but inside I am not laughing. We do not know what this one-year-old is being a drama queen about. She is on the verge of telling us any day now! In the meantime, I trust my friend to read her moans and know that she is safe. Perhaps my friend and I aren't drama queens. Perhaps we suffer on occasion from terminal earnestness? That is another path to examine.

This is Ciboulette. She is a Maine Coon Cat...I doubt that she was an only child, but I was. Neither of us are good at confrontation. She has just run sideways down the hall looking over her shoulder. I am pathetic. I don't know how to stand my ground. Instead I throw insults at the back of my opponent. And my insults are pathetic. Your mother wore army boots isn't exactly insulting. So now I am trying to learn to confront...but I would prefer to run sideways down the hall...metaphorically speaking.

There once was a woman who lived in an isolated area and ordered her clothes through a store catalogue. One time she sent in an order for a hat for Henry. The person filling the order had no idea who Henry was and had nothing to go on. She decided to take a chance and sent the woman a generic man's hat.
The hat was returned with a note: You know this won't fit Henry.
I've always loved the faith of that woman. I never knew if Henry got his hat...but it is a wonderful explanation of the relationship between the writer and the reader. The writer is always looking for the the hat to fit Henry.

stripping

i dream of living

in an L shaped room

with bright partitions

Gordon

The truth is that I have kept stuff all my life...and now it's time to share it. Sometimes, I don't know the author, but I really respect the content. This one I suggested, but I didn't write.



Soup Aux Personalite

Take a pinch of funniness.
Melt it with a portion of sadness.
Blend with a morsel of seriousness.
Add a dash of evilness.
Slice a pound of honesty.
Immediately dice an ounce of open-mindedness.Slowly combine the funniness, sadness, seriousness, evilness, honesty and open-mindedness in a large saucepan. Simmer until the soup thickens.


Set aside a large skillet for a juicy piece of responsibility(Preferably boneless with no fat). Let the responsibility cook for five minutes.
While everything is cooking, pour yourself a nice tall cold drink of happiness. When ready to serve, pour the soup aux personalite into a bowl and the responsibility onto a plate.Do not rush into your meal. Take your time and enjoy it. Savour the taste.

Note: This meal makes only one serving.

"All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable. The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive - you are leaking." Frannie Libowitz

That just about sums up my day...I am...leaking somewhat!

I've been thinking about writing. One creates a character and one assumes the minutiae. Ones character will wash his or her face with a facecloth...naturally! But I was visiting friends this weekend. They left a towel for me...and I thought they had just forgotten the facecloth. Not so. They have British roots and the British do not use facecloths. They don't have a facecloth in the house. It left me...rootless. I recounted the experience to a friend expecting support...but instead she responded, "Oh I never use a facecloth except to wash my feet!"

Finally a third friend agreed with me, but when I laughed and said, "How can one wash ones neck without a facecloth?" she looked at me and shrugged. "Don't you take a shower?"

I reported to yet another friend that my blog for the day was on the topic of facecloths.

She replied, "Oh good - Rudy loves facecloths. Apparently his single material fetish - not shoes etc. but facecloths. I don't get it."

I include a picture of Rudy to clarify.

Moral: Never assume the minutiae!

I've always been fond of E.B. White who with a man named Strunk wrote The Elements of Style. "The mind travels faster than the pen, consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in his blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up."

This was what I created with the text: This is Carolyn's book. I assumed that my friend would modify the text to an appropriate comment...she didn't. In one sense it's sort of neat because we realized that people would go to the librarian and ask, "Who's Carolyn!"

So - this is about writing. I take my lead from Anne Lamott's book, bird by bird, Some Instructions on Writing and Life. She speaks of asking an hypnotist how one rids oneself of all those voices that interfere with an activity, be it writing or reading or cleaning house. He responded that one takes them one by one and deposits them in a glass jar until there is only one left. The glass jar can be a metaphor...but it also promises that one has saved the voices for a rainy day.

I'm beginning the exorcism of voices. A friend asked me to design a book label for a project we were involved in, that of celebrating a third friend's retirement by contributing books to the local library. I came up with the following:

This is all happening a bit more quickly than I had planned...but I will just plow ahead and add a picture.