QUIET WEEK

Good morning friends,

 

I’ve been busy sorting notes for over a month now, and I am still struggling to figure out how to tell the interesting tidbits about family members.  Lots of drama in my family.  Seriously intense stuff.  I’ve already covered some of it in my fiction, and that’s cool, but I want to tell some of these stories for real so that my grandchildren know the truth from the made up stories. 

And sometimes I look at them and just wonder if they will ever really give a damn about the past.  I have all these notes.  I might as well get them into some kind of format and at least get them on record, and whoever’s interested will have access.  However it’s a lot of hard work but then, if it’s all online perhaps some writer will come along someday looking for fodder….

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 “Never let schooling interfere with your education.”—Mark Twain

 I was reminded of this quote recently, when I heard my seven year old granddaughter say she hates school…now mind you, she vacillates between hate and love from moment to moment, so I take broad-stroke statements like that with a grain of salt.  I had a love-hate relationship with school too.  I never hated school altogether, but there always seemed to be one subject each year that tried my patience. 

 However, the rewards for persevering through the difficulties were rewarded in spades.  Like from the age of five when I learned to read a whole world opened up to me and I was never bored again.  I never went anywhere without a book, and consequently waiting in lines, traffic, doctors’ offices, never really bothered me, but consequently just provided me with an opportunity to read another chapter. 

At eleven I began to write and English classes helped me hone those skills. 

And then as I entered middle school teachers introduced me to genres of literature that I hadn’t even imagined before that not only tantalized my intellect, but fired my imagination and launched me into writing dark fiction, which I write to this day.  And it all sparked in 8^th grade when I read “The Telltale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe.  The hour or so that I spent reading that story shaped the rest of my entire life. 

One class, one story, one magic moment. 

However, I must admit I had to wade through a lot of far less than magical moments to get to that one.  But I took a lot of notes, and even today I sift through them for story fodder, so it’s all a matter of perspective.  I try never to waste anything. 

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As for chronicling my present, it’s been rather a quiet week.  Last Saturday Cait and Joe had a bunch of friends over, and laughter rang through the upstairs, which is truly music to me.  Cait and Joe work so hard, and Cait does it through a lot of pain, so whenever they relax with friends and have some fun I am always very glad. 

The sound always reminds me of something a relative of mine once said about her daughter and her friends’ laughter within her earshot, that it made her really happy on the weekends to hear the hilarity. 

Broken Old Broads must content themselves with simple pleasures and often live vicariously through others.  You can’t live in the past, but you can run through your memories like watching old movies. 

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Today should be a good day for Cait and the kids.  She’s taking the kids to her mom’s where her sibs are gathering with their kids, and they’re going to hang at the beach for a nice chunk of the day.  After last night’s storm I’m relieved to see the sun in the sky this morning.  I hope it’s nice all day for them. 

So it’ll be me and Joe and the dogs here today holding down the fort. 

Earlier in the week, Cait found Capris Sun on sale and had several cases delivered.  We opened up the large boxes on the porch and pulled out the smaller boxes, whose weight we could manage.  I passed them in the door to Joey and Rosie and they piled them by the basement door.  The stack was more than half of little Joey’s height.  The kids played assembly line, came down the steps on their butts with the boxes in their laps, handed them to me which I stacked on my office chair.  Then we rolled the office chair over to the door of the pantry and passed the boxes to Rosie who stacked them on the bottom shelf in the pantry.  Quite an impressive operation.  Wonderful to have minions!  Muahaha!  The best part was that we could surprise Mommy when she got home by having a really grueling job completed. 

I added “Eye of the Needle” with Kate Nelligan and Donald Sutherland to my movie collection this week.  On the same dvd with “Gorky Park,” which made for a good buy.  “EOTN” is intense.  Very well acted.  I remember seeing it when it first came out, and am very happy to have it in my collection. 

I also added “Spinning into Butter” which was well acted, but I had it figured out 15 minutes into the movie.  Especially if you understand the title.  I guess that’s a spoiler…

Like I said, quiet week.  I did write a little mini-memoir which I published here this morning.  And I’m going to try for an essay this afternoon.  I’m running on fumes today—only slept about three hours last night—ugh! 

See you next week!

Ter