Project 365 and a Slice of Life

Every morning I like to read the daily devotional on the Internet Cafe and the post I read yesterday was about a Project 365, which is to take a photo every day of the year, preserving a moment, a memory, a feeling of the day-to capture life in photos. Not just the pretty things--flowers, landscapes, sunsets, but the not so pretty things as well, the uglies along with the pretties. I thought, 'Brilliant! Even more inspiration for daily blog posts-pictures as well as blatherings!' People like pictures and it really is a great way to preserve a year. When the time always seems to pass by so quickly, maybe capturing the daily moments will help me 'see' life a little slower, appreciate the days a little longer, savor what so swiftly slips away. And, Obsessive/Compulsive that I am, I couldn't take just one picture, so I offer up a few this morning.

One of our favorite spots in Butler is the Meridian Station. It is a gift shop and confectionary that sells all sorts of wonderful, unique gifts, along with coffee, candy, and Hershey's ice cream. They host car cruises every month through the summer out on the beautiful wooded lawn beyond their gazebo and we love to go check out all the old cars and trucks, taking a step back into times gone by, listening to oldies pumping out from the bandstand. Some nights, it's as fun to check out the people and the pets they bring as much as the cars. We stopped last night for ice cream and sat out on the front porch, enjoying the cool evening air and the quiet of the neighborhood.

Trying to lick away the ice cream evidence.

Then, in my typical OCD excitement over writing again, I pulled out a handful of my favorite writing/creativity books and plopped them on my nightstand. This is maybe a third of such books that I have collected over the years. I wonder if more wanna-be writers would actually write more if they didn't spend so much time reading about writing and the creative process. I keep thinking there's some magical formula, a great secret hidden in one of the myriad offerings I have stashed on my shelves...but I believe the secret is to just write. Just write.



Lastly for the day, checking on our parrotlet family, I noticed a chip on our second egg! Baby One is five days old with a full gullet in this shot, and if you look very closely at the top egg, you can see the little v-shaped chip! I thought he'd hatch some time during the night, but after checking the nest box this morning, there's been no further progress on the chip. And so we wait...

In The Beginning...

Okay, so I wanted my blog title to actually be:

Life in the Trenches (or Beneath the Couch Cushions)

Musings of a Modern Day Mom

But the template wouldn't let me cram in that many words...so...it is what it is. Anyway, here is today's post:

Saturday, July 30, 2011

I have been bitten once again by the bug to write. Just simple things, if need be, to get me moving and motivated to something on a grander scale as time goes by. So I will blog or journal and try my best of my bestest to write SOMETHING every day--other than my grocery or to-do list. A bite of my life, a candid shot into my world. Simple blatherings to just get words on paper. I have to do this. I am wasting my life doing nothing. Okay, I'm not doing nothing. I am a mom and a wife and a pet care-taker (three dogs and five, soon to be nine, birds--I am raising my first clutch of parrotlets). So, I'm certainly NOT doing NOTHING. I'm just not doing anything I need to do to feed my creative soul. I paint once in a while but there's that little voice in my head that says I'm not going to make a decent income at painting. Gracious friends ask for camp signs or such. I like to paint as gifts, especially for my sister, who is my third biggest fan after my husband and son. I'm just not going to make a dent in finding tuition for my son to go to Christian school with painting or fund a family vacation to Italy and I'm not making a mark for myself in the world. I would love to one day see my name in print. I may not be the world's next JK Rowling but to have, first, an article published, and eventually a book--dare I dream!! Oh Lord, I pray...I can do this! I can do this and I can get paid to do this. To quote my most recent favorite book, The Art of Racing in the Rain-"That which you manifest is before you." I can do this. I must do this.

Today's observation of the morning was Domino (one of the dogs next door). I could see a flicker of his white tail flashing between their deck railings. I couldn't see him, just a flash of white, gone, flashing white, gone--his tail wagging as he waited to be acknowledged and granted entrance into the house from the back door, and maybe breakfast. Stellar is a dog name that popped into my head the other day. I am to write about Stellar, a shelter dog, with a white tail flashing morse code signals between the deck railings: "Let...me...in...please...I...have...finished....pottying....Can....I...eat....now...??"
Or something like that. Such is how my mind works.

I love words. I love reading words and I love writing words. I love, more than both, reading my own words. I love God. I would love to write about my relationship with God, devotionals, to give glory to Him for this precious gift of writing. I would love to be heard by someone other than myself. I can't achieve that if I don't write and the only one responsible for making me write is me. I can do this.