the tastes and sounds of summer.

I have just officially posted the same photo on two blogs.  Oh well, it's not that I don't have other photos it's just that I like this one very much.  This morning's breakfast, that's banana there in the middle and fresh blueberries, all the farms are touting their blueberries right now.  Strawberries are gone until next year (boohoo) and blackberries are just coming on, we had some of those also, not shown.  This is the time of year that I am happy to live in the country.  Not so much in the winter when I'm sliding and weaving my way down the  back roads, white knuckled in the snow and ice home from work, but this time of year is lovely.  The crickets and the cicadas are kicking up some beautiful music at night.  I know you detest flying bugs so I'm guessing jumping crickets and giant cicada's aren't high on your list either?

But I love them.  My ex-husband hated crickets.  He grew up in the outskirts of the city.  If we got one in the house the sound made him crazy, not me.  I grew up surrounded by ten acres of woods so that is summer song to me.  We had no air conditioning and the upstairs was always sweltering and we always had the windows wide open to get any sort of breeze you could in.  Hearing those babies is like being home to me.  Add the call of a whippoorwill and I'm twelve years old again.

Last night I stood in the window about midnight, getting ready for bed and just listened and listened.  Time is going by so fast.  One season seems to roll right in to the next and then all this will be gone.  Soon though we get fall, perhaps my favorite season.  Crisp air, falling acorns, the smell of woodsmoke again, apples and pumpkins, colored leaves.

Aah, I'm in a good place this weekend, a complete opposite to earlier in the week.  Another reminder that letting go is the best medicine.  And those twelve thousand things that were waiting to be done here this weekend; they are still waiting.  I know you know how that goes.  Life is too important to let the petty stuff get in the way.  The layers of dust on my surfaces will still be here this fall and winter but a moment standing in the peace of a summer evening, that goes all too quickly.

To Be Read

Hi there. I am sorry you had such a rotten day. I just read your blog and I just love 'I know it could be worse but I don't have to like it'. I certainly know that feeling.

It would be nice wouldn't it, to move somewhere away from all the cares and troubles? When the Prof and I first got together we spent a lot of weekends at his house in Kent. I always felt really carefree and relaxed when we were there. These days I regularly run away, I guess that's what the country drives are all about.

Mrs Biddlebox sounds funny, though I am not sure my cake baking skills are up to the task. I last baked a cake in 1994!  Mopping skills not that great either, sadly...

I have just finished Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger, who also wrote the Time Traveller's Wife. I found it interesting, moving, unbelievable and predictable by turns, but I enjoyed it. Next on my pile from the library is Glasshopper, but I feel like rereading One Day so I might start that this evening as the film goes on release soon and I'd like to read it again first.  A trip to the library is in order soon, I think, maybe this weekend. I am reading so fast lately, often a book every couple of days, so I like to keep myself stocked up.

Truth be told I have books on my bookcase I have had for a long time that I have still to read - I think we talked before about how one has to be in the right frame of mind for a particular book. I will get to them all eventually! I put the book you picked up at the library on my list, it sounds interesting. I loved the Secret Garden when I was young, too. Do young people still read those old books? I know I could never interest the Young Philosopher in anything he called 'old fashioned', although he loves books.

I think I am coming out of the relapse I seem to have had, fingers crossed, I am feeling a little better today. I have decided against the few days away I was thinking about, I couldn't really find anywhere suitable to stay without a car. I think instead I will plan a few treats for that week as the Prof will be away. Seems like a good idea to me.

I hope you are having a good day today. Almost the weekend!

I'm so sorry you are having a rough spell.  There is a book both I and my girls read called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day; he resolves to move to Australia.  After my terrible, horrible, no good very bad day yesterday I resolved to move to an island off the coast of Maine or Florida.  Anywhere far from everyday life.

Everyday life can get you down sometimes can't it.  Last night I just couldn't take the responsibilities of work and having a home and family anymore.  It sounds childish and selfish, but I just wanted to be a child again.  Or in the case of another favorite children's book of mine, Mrs. Biddlebox, (you would like her) she takes her bad day and mops it up and bakes it into a cake.

If only we could do such things, what say you?

I didn't write this last night, like I usually do.   I was spent.  So I am writing this morning before I go to work today (please let it be better, or as my co-workers might say, please let her be better).  I'm sitting here early with a bowl of oatmeal and fresh blueberries and a warm cup of tea.  I'm hoping to have a better day today, mind shift please. 

I hope you will upswing soon.

I took my very bad mood to the library last night.  Moved up and down the stacks with no book in mind, just seeing a title or a photo and pulled it down off the shelf to peruse.  I spent about an hour there, winding back and forth.  There was an odd woman in the next aisle talking and laughing to herself which made me feel a little better about myself as cranky as I was. The library and all those books made me start to feel better and so I picked and took home this one, about an American woman who goes to care for her 8-year old Goddaughter after her best friend dies in  London.  I'm about forty pages in and really liking it.  It's a lighter style of writing given the situation compared to the book I just read and it references another book I loved growing up The Secret Garden. 

I promised to put a book page here, I will no doubt eventually get to it.

So what are you reading?

Be well, my friend.

a moment this week: in my garden

Debbie: rain on the ceonothus 

Jennifer:  Summer Hydrangea

Space

It was a very quiet weekend. Despite a to do list as long as my arm, this weekend I have mostly been sleeping and I am still extremely tired.  After the outing with Gail on Tuesday that I wrote about, we had our regular fortnightly pub meeting with friends in the evening,  my parents came over for a couple of hours Wednesday afternoon and in the evening I had my T’ai Chi class. I visited  Gail with my other friend Lisa for couple of hours on Thursday night. Those things together were enough to wipe me out for the whole weekend. I spent most of it asleep. Recently I had been feeling better than I have for two months and I really don't want this recent exhaustion to be the start of a major setback, so I am just listening to my body and if it wants me to rest and sleep that's what I am doing. 

I know what you mean about literary criticism. I finished my rereading of the Time Traveller’s Wife a couple of weeks ago  and have been reading all the posts on the Summer Readalong with interest, but haven’t posted any thoughts on the book myself. I enjoy reading along with everyone’s reflections, but then feel I don’t have anything else to add. Sometimes it is hard to get my thoughts and feelings about a story to coalesce.  It’s easy to read someone else’s writing and think Yes! That! but less easy to formulate my own response. I do feel though, that it helps to work out what I like or don’t like about a book, so I try at least to reflect on other people's responses, even if I haven't got much to add.

I love the piece you wrote on your blog, you have a real gift for writing straight from your heart. That's not something I always find very easy. Until the last few months I hadn't written for years, so I am still finding out what I like to write, enjoying the process and seeing where it takes me. I agree that other peoples' writing, both in books and online, whilst being very inspirational to read, can just serve to make me feel worse about my own by comparison! You're right, we all need to write with our own voices and from our own experience.  I think it is often that voice of authenticity that comes across and makes a piece of writing resonate with me. 

As for the internet....yes, I have been avoiding it. I love the internet, the people I have met there, the ideas and inspiration...but sometimes it feels, as someone else said to me once, like everyone is shouting for my attention at once. Steering clear of the internet helps quieten my mind. Sometimes I get very tempted to unplug for a week or more, don't you? We had no internet on honeymoon and I really enjoyed the peace.  I hope to do more reading, more writing and to have some quieter head-space this week. 

Reading and Writing

Happy Monday!  It started off to be a busy weekend here.  The girls went to a ballgame and I went out to dinner with a friend from work Friday night (two nights out in one week, hey).  No great photos like you had it was dark and noisy and my friend is very camera shy.  Saturday we hauled around town, farmstand, grocery, shopping etc.

Today, Sunday, I have found myself attached to the couch.  A pillow, a book and a blanket.  My cousins daughter is here visiting so the girls were mostly occupied with her today.

I almost finished The Time Traveler's Wife today.  I'm very glad you recommended it to me, it has been on my "to read" list but that is ten miles long so it may have taken me awhile to get there.  I think I am finding a special place in my heart for it.  So having a lazy day I am almost done.  It felt good to laze about. 

I have never made a comment though on the book discussion.  I read the book discussion notes in the back of the book today as well and thought: I wouldn't know what to say about the theme of death, I just really, really, like the story.  I felt this way when I was in school and I took a Literary Criticism class.  It was all about reading what people had written about books and discussing it and it was actually the only English class I took that I disliked.  I couldn't help but feel inferior when I didn't get all these great cosmic nuances of the stories.  And who is to say that I read the story incorrectly?  Isn't the best part of reading the fact that you get to personally take something from it?  And doesn't everyone get something individual to themselves out of the tale?

So I tend to shy away from book discussions.  What I can tell you though about this book (and so many others) is they sometimes make me feel inferior.  I love excellent writing but sometimes with my favorite authors and even some of my favorite friends, I think wow, what they have written is beatiful and so eloquent I could never even hope to throw my own writing out there.

Then I realize that the literary world would be quite a dull place if we all wrote with the same voice.  What I have to remember is the words that I string together, the stories I have to tell are that, they are mine and they must be told my way, to the best of my ability.

No one could write what I write so therefore I couldn't dream to write like Audrey Niffeneger, Alice Hoffman or even you or Sara.

I have come to realize that writing for me comes from what I know best and right now that thing is motherhood. I find that is where I find my best voice, where the words tend to flow easiest from the well.  In my heart I guess I know that I should start with motherhood, with daughters, with this experience I've been given and work from there.

Friday, I wrote this piece that I have posted on my blog today about a fight I had with Emily that morning.  I wrote it at lunchtime at work, because it was still on my mind.  I don't think I could write anything with such heart that I didn't have my heart invested in.

On another note, you've been quiet this weekend.  I hope you are well.  I hope perhaps you are taking that Internet break you've been threatening.  I know I could sometimes use it myself. I look forward though to see what's going on over there across the sea.