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September 12, 2016h

Sweatshirt weather.  I am a person made for sweatshirts and mugs of coffee on cool evenings.  It takes me back to camping and bonfires.  Perhaps I have not told you but I was a very good storyteller and memories of autumn evenings take me back to my outdoor education days.  I was in my twenties and could run on very little sleep when I was the program director at a place called Nature's Classroom.  Every week from September to early November a new groups of junior high students would move into the valley on the Illinois River with the education staff.  Other then during heavy rain, we were out in the woods.  Dirty, wet, silly, serious, and involved.  Suddenly math and science were fun as they were cleverly disguised in building rope bridges, calculating how many trees you would need to cut to build a cabin, and identifying animal prints.  In the evening we would gather around the fireplace and I would tell stories.  Not too scary but eno...
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September 8, 2016

It has been too wet to sit outside in the evening so I content myself with knitting until my hands are tired and my brain is numb.  Sure that sleep will come quickly I head to bed and..... No.  Minutes drift into hours.  My fan drones on, cooling the room but blocking the outdoor chorus and sleep is elusive.  I try listening to the radio but news and weather reports are neither soothing nor quieting.  I once had a radio that also had nature sounds but that has been gone for several years.  Tonight I try to imagine the fan is actually a distant waterfall that is full from recent rains.  I try to imagine the cool green valley.  Our brains can do amazing things when we allow it.  Not tonight, though.  Tonight my brain mocks my attempt.  I think it is appalling when I flip from a cool valley and find myself standing inside a large empty factory dominated by a huge industrial fan whirling out a tornado. Sigh.
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September 6

Sitting on the concrete porch listening to the late summer evening.  Early visitors were the cardinals who were constant companions.  There were several babies this year and now their chorus is full.  Then the cicadas began followed by katydids and tree frogs.  The sounds of lawn mowers fade away as darkening takes over.  I will wait for the owls. The time of the fireflies is done and the songs of the crickets have arrived.  This is the beginning of my great longing.  As Autumn nears the primitive need to ready for winter grows strong.  If I had a fireplace I would be worrying if there were enough logs split and dry.  The bounty of the garden would need to be canned and soups would be prepared for the freezer.  I would walk through the room that serves as my library checking on my stash.  Is there enough to carry me through a long winter? Ahh, my inner child whispers.  Not yet.  Not yet.  Sit and watch for shootin...
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Procrastinating

I am procrastinating.  Yes, I have several things to do.  Yes, I made a list this morning.  Yes, I have deadlines.  Yet here I sit, trying to not do what I need to do.  I don't think it helps to know that other people also procrastinate as this seems to be a singular occupation.  The minute I allow someone else to participate I am no longer procrastinating.  I am then socially occupied.  I would rather procrastinate. I did make a cup of tea and sat my computer by the window so I can see the warm sunshine.  It is February here in northern Illinois so an above-freezing day with sunshine is not to be ignored.  So I'm not.  Maybe that is a cause for procrastinating? I do have a meeting tonight.  In one of my social moments I volunteered to fill a vacancy on my town's Library Board of Trustees.  Somehow I was elected to both the Board and then to the presidency of the board.  Maybe confronting such daunting obligations...
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February 4, 2016

I love overhearing random conversations. Yesterday as I sat in the waiting area for my car to be fixed (again) an elderly couple came in and found a seat amongst the rest of us. Being in a rural community we have our own way of establishing credentials so talk turned to who do you know, where do you live, what do you do. By this we sift out the city people who probably wonder why anyone would answer such questions but we're comfortable with this cultural handshake.  It turned out that the elderly gentleman had been a taxidermist and, despite early stages of alzheimer's still went down to his basement most days to work. My mind instantly turned around on wondering what was the oddest thing he'd stuffed? Did a lot of people bring in pets? (Remember my mind runs off in odd places.) Had anyone asked him to stuff a family member who had died? When you have alzheimer's what might you be stuffing down in the basement?
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January 3, 2016

No resolutions.  No false promises.  No judgement.  Well, one promise to myself.  I will write more this year.  There are days I feel lost and my mind gives me words to write but I ignore the offering.  Sometimes I give in and post something on Facebook, which I then delete a day later.  The nice thing about doing a blog that no one reads is this is my most private diary.  Now, what to do with this space?  True memories or, finally, start the book?  Sigh.
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Preparing for Autumn

Should I not be heard from, or seen again, I am heading to the BASEMENT to change the filter in the furnace. I publish this as a note to future mystery buffs who will, on some cold October morning, sit over steaming cups of coffee pondering my fate. Was it the giant spiders that cocooned her and gradually wrapped her DNA into their silken webs? Perhaps the obese mice that lived a free and easy life in the darkness under the stairs, descended on her back as she bent over the hidden space in the furnace as she slid the new filter in place? Maybe it had been massive bats, the likes of which had not been seen in the midnight skies wrapped their giant wings around her body as her screams went unheard? I hope you remember me fondly as you reach for the pumpkin spice coffee creamer. Here I go....................................
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