There's No Place Like Home

I’m thinking…

My thoughts are, at the moment, focused with some slight frustration at the header to this page. For some reason the font I have chosen isn’t looking right to me this morning. Which is quite ridiculous, I know. I often use this font without a thought of its uninteresting qualities. In fact, it is because it is the most uninteresting, staid, font that I choose it. Often having a rather boring font helps me to focus away from the appearance of the type to the actual words that I am typing. I am easily distracted, I know.

You ask why I am not instantly switching fonts if it is a feature of frustration to me? Well, you see, I’m trying to be a good little writer and not so easily distracted. I know that the instant I start critiquing the font I shall feel that the words I have thus far written are all wrong and that I should fiddle with commas and sentence flow and in the end I shall never get anything written at all.

I was thinking the other day of different places you could go to write; coffee shops and libraries and parks. I would rather like going to a coffee shop to write I think. There is something about the smell of coffee flouting around on the air that simply asks for words, words already written by someone, or words asking to be written down by you.

The funny thing about writing in places like those is that the attraction is also the drawback. What I mean of course is being out and about amongst people.

On the one hand there’s nothing that sparks inspiration so much as “people watching.” Just sitting in your chair watching the people go by, wondering who they are and what they are like. Story ideas just seem to come from nowhere and suddenly you are writing out thoughts that have been in the back of your mind for years and years but you’ve never yet put them into words.

Then again on the other hand there’s nothing so distracting. You think of those moments when you are trying to read, say in the library, and you desperately wish to get back to the lovely scene in your book, but you just can’t focus. That happens to me all of the time in the library. I end up sitting back in my chair and staring dazedly around the bookshelves thinking thoughts of great weight, or perhaps no weight at all.

I think, really, there is no place to write like home. No place where you can settle down properly with your inspiration and make something of it. My favorite place to write is of course, my bedroom. I will settle down on the chair in the corner or perched atop my bed and write wildly into the night. The hours slip by like minutes and the light fades from the room. My word document goes from a blank page with a few scattered words to a thing of several thousand words, and I go from being calm and happy to feverish and excited to sleepy and contented.

I suppose those other places are the places you go to when you are looking for inspiration, and home is the place you go to when you wish to make something of that inspiration.

In the end, there’s no place like home.

 

From the kitchen…

The coffee pot just gave its final noise, showing that it was turning off and the coffee was about to begin to grow cold. Of course I had to dash across the wood floor as quick as my feet could scamper to refill my red coffee cup with steaming coffee before it all grew cold. Law of nature, one must always do that when they hear the coffeepot alarm going off.

 
Outside my window…

The first thing my eyes settle upon as I glance out the window are the little baby daisies still all closed up in tight little buds. Is there a proper name for those daisies? I’ve always just called them the “baby daisies” they are the little ones with all of the small white petals just tipped with pink. I like them much  better than the big daisies that you see sometimes. My favorites are these little ones that cluster in the yard in little clumps. I love how they close up in the evening time and open up again as soon as the sunlight hits them. It’s so sweet, as if they are bidding you goodnight and then sleepily waking up in the morning. *beams* and yes, I did make up stories about the little daisy fairies when I was little.

 
I’m wearing…

 A deep blue peasant blouse with white beading all around the neckline, jeans, and black ballet flats.

 
I’m reading…

 I’ve just started reading ‘The Three Musketeers.’ I was going to start that one as soon as I finished reading the Sherlock Holmes but I was distracted by some fairytales by George MacDonald. I didn’t remember how absolutely funny his writing is from when I read it when I was much younger. I remember the ‘Light Princess’ always rather frightened me for some reason. I think it was how well I visualized the prince almost getting drowned and I was at a point close to tears, but dear me, his writing is just hilarious. I was stitches. I suppose it’s the sort of humor that a child doesn’t quite get at first and then when you read it years and years later you are just giggling and chortling with every sentence.

 Quotes that I like today…

 “Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.”

Brideshead Revisited- Evelyn Waugh

“It’s all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it’s not so nice when you really have them, is it?”

Anne of Green Gables- L. M. Montgomery

 “Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different.”

-C. S. Lewis

Picture thoughts I’m sharing…

Little things that are making me happy today...



Organization and Outlines

I’m thinking…

Recently this prompt has been one of my favorites to write. In a way I think this is because it’s a bit of an easy out. There are so many blog posts I’ve been wanting to write up, blog posts on this that and the other thing, random thoughts that I should like to sort out, but truthfully writing a blog post on a single subject it a bit intimidating for me. I’m not quite sure how to begin these blog posts I have contemplated writing in my head. That’s always the trouble, finding where to begin. This is why I find writing up this prompt so very enjoyable, because it is as if the beginning is paved out for you. You can take it anywhere, beginning with “I’m thinking…” and watch one’s thoughts unfold on paper.

I think though, I need to get a little better at writing out blog posts. Where I begin with an organized subject and proceed to write out my thoughts, sticking to that subject without drifting all across the map with my thoughts. There is something to be said for organization of one’s thoughts as well as free-writing. I think I talked of free writing in my last journaling page. Of how I liked reading a person’s writing as if one is reading their thoughts, and writing that way as well. Rambling, drifting, flouting easily from one subject to the next, like one’s thoughts drift through one’s mind. However, you really needs to be good at writing something that is more to one subject I think.

I suppose it’s simply a balance. You have to find a balance between writing easily and letting your thoughts drift out into words, and sticking to a more organized subject and group of ideas. I suppose this is where outlines would be helpful, right? I’ve always hated outlines though. Skimpy things formed of the strict idea of something, the bare bones. I want to add so much more to an outline than the barest of details. I want to go in depth, search deeper, find greater meaning to the words I am choosing, but then it wouldn’t be an outline.

I think I need to get on better terms with the outline, rather than he and I eyeing each other warily like two arch enemies I should realize that the outline is there to help me. I can’t help but feel he is my enemy though, I want to kill him dead and unleash the pent up words he hold prisoner.

I shall try to resign myself to making better use of the outline. He should be my map, my guiding light as I wander through a dark tunnel of thoughts, wondering wherever I should come out. I like that feeling though, that feeling of uncertainty, wondering where I shall end up with my thoughts by the end of whatever I am writing. I especially like looking back at the end of it, retracing my steps and looking at the finished item.

Anyways, this really leads me to what I was going to say originally, about wanting to write some more focused blog posts. A little more centered one idea, and the thoughts surrounding that idea. I love my journaling pages and I love writing out this prompt, but I need to write more focused things too. Mondays are for journaling pages though, so I shall proceed to ramble and drift as much as I wish for the entirety of this, and enjoy myself thoroughly while doing so.

I’m reading…

A couple days ago when I was shelving books at the library I came across ‘Anne of the Island’ of course you know I had to open it up and read the first page and then I was caught. Anne caught me up with her magic, and as soon as I came home I had to go straight to my bookshelf and open up my own copy. I love books that no matter how many times you have read them they still contain some of that old magic, they still surprise and delight you with that old first time read glory. I haven’t read ‘Anne of the Island’ in a long while actually. I’ve reread most of the others quite recently, but not this one. It’s funny, it was never one of my favorites of the Anne books growing up, but I’ve found myself loving it more and more. I suppose it’s yet another one of those cases where the book matched my stage in life, and as I grow older the books that are my favorites change with me. It doesn’t mean I forget my old favorites, they’re still there, in the back of my mind, much loved and well read, but each year has a new favorite, a new insight into an old book. You are always getting new thoughts and opinions on old reads, and that’s what I love best about rereading books. You always get something new from it.

 I also picked up a book on grammar yesterday when I was at the library. Called ‘The Grammar Bible: Everything you always wanted to know about grammar but didn’t know whom to ask’ I have to say I enjoy reading these sorts of grammar books. *chuckles* really, I’m quite attached to this book I own called ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’ I dig it out and reread it just to amuse myself. It’s because the author has such a funny way about talking about grammatical errors that people make and common errors. My favorite section in that book is this chapter where it is showing a couple copies of the same letter style writing, but by switching around a few commas it means such very different things. It’s really fascinating to think about what can change in your meaning by simply putting commas in different places. I suppose it should serve as a warning too, you know, that you should be very careful about how you write something, because it can be so easily misread. I think I must work on my grammar a little more.

I’m listening to…

 I just recognized the theme to the ‘Titanic’ playing in the background. I’m really not all that fond of that movie, for various reasons, but I am in love with the music. *proceeds to listen to the soft piano rendition happily*

I’m creating…


I just finished this drawing I did for a contest. I’m really quite proud of it. I think I shall post it and perhaps some of my practice drawings for it soon.

 Outside my window…

The pond is glistening back a reflection of the lovely blue sky and the puffy white clouds. A gentle breeze brushes the top of the water from one side of the pond to the other. A soft sprinkling of rain is falling.

First Person Writing

I’m thinking...

Last night the urge to write was strong, however, inspiration was sadly evasive. I feel like starting on a new story, but I’m having difficulties deciding on a plot line. This always seems the way, whenever the urge to write is the strongest, inspiration as to content of your story is always the hardest to find. Anyways, I was thinking of various writing styles that I could choose from, and I'm finding myself rather fascinated with writing in first-person. It's so very hard to write in first person well. I used to write all my stories in first person, and then I went through a stage where I realized how much easier it was and I felt that it was an easy way out, so I avoided it like the plague.

The truth is though, I think it is almost more challenging to write in first person because of that initial feeling that it is easier, because really, it isn't. I remembering that was what struck me the most when I read "Brideshead Revisited" for the first time. It was the gradual realization that I did not like the character from whose point of view the story was told, and I wasn't really meant to. It's interesting, I think, because when a story is told in first person you almost feel automatically an identification with the person through whose eyes you are seeing the story. It's hard to help- it's one's natural impulse, you are seeing the world through this character's eyes, so you can't help but feel attached to them in some shape or form. So I've been finding stories where it is told in first person but you end up disliking that character rather interesting.

Agatha Christie has written a few of them, another one that jumps to my mind is "Rebbecca," you don't really dislike the young woman from "Rebbecca" however, she is rather insignificant. She seems to be rather unimportant and we end up looking over her, seeing her only as a tool to view the more important, significant characters. The whole thought rather fascinates me, the idea of the character we see in first person being dis-likable or even insignificant as we view the bigger fuller picture of the other characters. I'm rather tempted to try my hand at writing in a styling like that.

Also, sadly, I think I'm in a rather melodramatic mood. I feel like writing a story of cutthroats and pirates and ruffians. Which is strangely out of my comfort zone as I've never written something like that, or at least, not for a great many years. I prefer to write "everyday" stories, stories of ordinary people living mostly ordinary lives. I'm not really sure if I could write a truly melodramatic story anyway, I would have too much fun with it and be poking fun at all the characters. Oh dear, the idea is getting rather more tempting with each second I turn it over, a tale in the first person with a bland, boring character who no one much likes. A melodramatic tale in which I make fun of all of my characters and their dramatics.

I definitely do want to attempt to write something in first-person again. It's really much more challenging, I think now, to write in first person without loosing the identity of your character and making them blah or making them into this super human with perfection in all things. Interesting thoughts to think about.

From the Kitchen...
Crumbs lying on a white plate with blue rim. A red mug, half filled with steaming coffee. An almost empty Coffee-pot sitting on the counter. These are the items our kitchen is made of in the morning.

I'm reading...

*scuffles bashfully* Emily has leaped to yet another book, last night I went and read a copy of L. M. Montgomery's short stories, cover to cover. All her stories make me so happy. I think carry them with me for always. Whenever I'm in a rather gloomy mood I shall whip out one of her books from my purse (that's the other nice thing about quite a few copies of her books, they are all so nice and small and yet plump at the same time that they fit especially well into one's purse) and I shall read a page or two, wherever I am. Then I shall go prancing around throwing flower petals and sunshine at the world.

I'm wearing...

Storybook description time: the girl writing away at her desk hunches over so she can adjust to a better positioning in which she can smack at the keyboard with her long fingers. Her blond hair is twisted and pulled over her shoulder. She looks rather sleepy and shivers for all of her warm red sweater. It is a cold, sleepy sort of morning.

Around the house...

There is really nowhere else I would rather be at the present moment. I'm really quite content sitting here, writing away at my journaling page this morning, though later this afternoon a nap might be nice. Is that too much of a luxury for me to ask for?

I'm listening to...

Pachebel Cannon is playing in the background. Do you know, I think it is fixedly in my mind Wedding music, because when I close my eyes I can picture the bride dressed in white, walking slowly up the isle, with the rest of the wedding party walking slowly after her. I feel like going to a wedding. I love weddings. They are just such beautiful, happy things. *beams happily as she thinks about it* Someone should get married and invite me to the invite me to their wedding. *contemplates* I could write a story one a wedding. *blinks* that could be a simply marvelous idea...I must think on this.

To live the liturgy...

I would like to make it to part of the twenty hour adoration this Friday. I'm not sure if I will be able since it's Eli's tenth birthday, but if not this week I definitely will make it the next week, and I might still be able to go this week, we just need to think how to plan it all.

I'm creating...

I just finished a four page letter and drawing that I'm going to be sending off to Australia today. Good speed to you, little letter.

A few plans for the rest of the week...

This week I'm going to be very good. A good scholar. I refuse to make any other little plans that might distract me from this goal. Emily has been bad girl recently. *hangs head*

One of my favorite things...

A spring breeze in the air, a book in my hand, a warm patch of sunlight out in the grassy yard, just reading. I'm ready for spring to come, can you tell? *beams*

Emily Writes

I'm thinking...

At the moment I'm bemoaning the fact that I am writing on a program that apparently doesn't have a feature to check my spelling for me. It is most unsettling, truthfully. For, as I write, I'm begining to wonder rather frantically 'did I just mispell that?' 'how about that?' and there is no way of knowing. So then I begin to feel that perhaps I shouldn't be writing at all, if I'm to be mispelling every second word (I know I can check it later, but I want to know as I go along. Yes, I know, I'm spoiled.) Really, I need to be more determined. I sat down to write, and I'm going to write, come mispellings and grammer errors! It is unerving me though, and I must try and stop thinking about it.
Actually, on a more interesting strain of thought, I was just thinking about free writing. It's really a good practice. I was just reading in a book how they all sugest that the best practice at becoming a good writer is to sit down and force yourself to write unstoppingly for however long, without thinking about mispelling and grammer errors and wondering if your topic of discussion is interesting. The thing is just to sit down and write whatever thought comes into your head and not correct or worry but let yourself put your thoughts onto paper and see what comes of them.
I was thinking however, that really, that's how I write normally. Okay, so I'm constantly slowing down and backspacing and looking for a good subject to talk about, but the general idea of writing to get down your thoughts is how I write normally, and Iove reading when people write like that. The very best emails and letters are the ones that you know the person writing you has done that. They've written to you exactly how they were thinking and how they would talk to you. I think that's really a sign of someone who writes well, you know. Writing is the way they pick up the stream of their thoughts and put it into words.
So many people's writing in letters and things happens to be very stiff and formal. Unlike how they would talk to you. They pick their topics carefully, put them into stiff paragraphs with stiff formal periods at the end of each stiff formal sentance. I find myself writing like that actually too, when I write to somebody I am less comfortable with. I was just picturing how it would be if we talked like that sort of letter to each other in real life. I can just picture the two people sitting straight up in their seats, their hands sitting on their laps and their feet tucked neatly under the chair as they looked at each other formally.

"Dear Fredricka, How are you?"

"I am quite well, dear Jane, and you?"

"Oh quite well, quite well."

"I planted a garden yesterday."

(insert look of interest and yet not over interest by anymeans)

"Oh really?"

"Yes."

(Insert awkward silence as we search for a new topic)

Nobody talks like that, you see. So we really shouldn't write like that. Well, you want some formality. Some proper organazation of the thoughts, but other than that we should write as we talk- only more so. Writing seems to be a way that you can get out all those words that you couldn't find the voice for in normal speech. Writing is a way that we can put down words that there didn't seem to be words that would be good enough when we were trying to speak them with our voice.
So there is nothing better that I like than an email or letter where I feel that the person writing it is talking to you, specifically you, and letting the words carry them away. Writing out their thoughts as they come to them, and not sticking stiffly to point one, two and three, in that order. You can always tell the people who love to write by their letters and emails, you can always tell they enjoyed themselves writing it because you enjoyed reading it. Right now I'm feeling rather blessed with my correspondants. I love people who write. I love people who read so much that they practically eat the words up off the page, and I love people who write like they are spilling out a box of words they had stored up just for the occasion.

I'm reading...

This morning I went and hunted up 'The 101 Dalmatations' to read aloud to my younger brothers for a little bit while they played with legos. Confession: I believe it was me that really wanted to read it. A friend was talking to me about it the other day, all about reading it again and this part and that part and fond memories flooded back to me. Memories of the funniest lines and of darling little scenes. Ever since then I've felt the urge to read it again myself. I think that's always the way, someone mentions a title and a few scenes they loved paticularly and after that you simply have to hunt up your own copy and read it again yourself.
It's suprising how much I love some of these books. I would almost say that 'The 101 Dalmations' is almost more of an adult book for all it's being a book for children. Every line is formed in this comical way that just makes me shake with laughter even when it's not a scene that is paticularly humourous in itself. I can just picture Dodie Smith writing it, she must have been chuckling to herself as she wrote each line. It's so unforced, you know. In some books the comical lines are very pointed, a character says something and you can tell it was meant for comic, but with 'The 101 Dalmations' no one character is saying anything very funny. The humour is deeper within the book than that. It's in each line, each sentance, practically vibrarinting from the very soul of the book.
Most of it is things that it would take a much older reader to comprehend though. A child listens and accepts the words without a question, giggling and clapping to hear about the doggies, but an older reader pauses over a sentance, reads it again with widened eyes, chokes, and bursts out laughing. There is so much humour hiding deep within the lines that unless you are reading carefully, you will never pick up on.

To live the liturgy...

Ash Wensday was yesterday. I'm really going to try and cut back on my computer time this Lent. In paticular I'm giving up a writing site connected with the school program I use and I am rather obsessivly attached to. I'm missing it. I'm missing reading through all of the threads, the debates, the crazies, the conversations, but the real reason I'm missing it is because I'm missing my friends there. They are all such dear people, and I miss them all, but there is a reason for this. A very good reason. I'm giving up a lot of my computer time because I want to create for myself a quieter atmeshere. Time of silence, for thinking and praying and opening up to a beauitful Lent full of growth. So I'm trying not to think of simply how much I miss talking to all my friends, since that isn't what I'm supposed to be focusing on- that would be taking away from the point. They will all be in my prayers, and I can still email some of them, so I'm trying to embrace these forty days of Lent, of quiet, of thought, of prayer.

I'm creating...

*cough* just because I'm not going to be going on my writing site doesn't mean I can't still partake in the contest does it? *giggles* There is a story contest for us poor suffers giving up our favorite thing. *grins* A contest for rather long stories. I'm rather excited. I have to think about the requirments a little more, and what I want to write with them, but I think I'm going to take part, and write a very long story.
Mom also found a contest that is going on in town for highschool artists. I'm thinking of attempting to draw something for that. I believe you are supposed to draw something of Victorian era in connection to an author of that time. I have to read up a little more on that one too.

Around the house...

I should really go do some tidying up now. Major tidying up. You would think I had been watching two tornados with the mess my little brothers have created this morning, and after that I should practice my violin, and read, and do some school work...and maybe take a nap...all before work...I should go get busy.

As I sit by the Heater

Outside my window…the light of day is growing dim. It is not yet night time by any means but the light of the afternoon is fading quickly, and it looks more to be evening time than afternoon now. I am sitting with the laptop placed atop my knees, with my back leaning against the wall so that I might sit cozily by the heater as I write. The heater is giving off a nice warm glow of heat and I feel that I could really be a little grey kitten and curl up in my little warm patch. A little patch of warm just like a little puddle of sunlight streaming in through the window just meant to be curled up in. Except you see, there is no sunshine streaming in through the window, only a soft sort of green light. It sounds strange saying that, a soft green light and you rather think of an eerie sort of light, or what it reminds me most is that place in-between our world and Narnia described in “The Magician’s Nephew,” and really that latter description fits rather well come to think of it. Perhaps it’s just the mood I’m in, but the world has that sleepy peaceful sort of feel that accompanies the soft green light of that enchanted forest. I’m looking up out the window again now and studying the different shades of green to be found in the grass, I never noticed how many different shades you can find there. Streaks of light green, and mossy green, and a deep damp sort of green, with patches of brown all intertwining. The light is fading away quickly and a soft evening feel in the air is developing.

I’m wearing…A blue knit dress with buttons running down to the waist accompanied by a little blue ruffling, a pair of black leggings and a silver grey cami with lace embroidering the top.

I’m listening to…for a long time all I could hear was the voice of my brother as he read some story to little ones but that is gone now, and all that I can hear is the skipping of my fingers across the keyboard and the soft piano music of a cd playing in the background. It is strangely quiet at the moment, quiet and peaceful. It’s funny the little noises that go unnoticed till you listen for them. When I pause what I’m doing to listen I can hear noises that you wouldn’t think of hearing, noises like a quiet little hum of the oven. Little noises that we are constantly hearing but that go unnoticed I suppose because of the more thought provoking noises that we are listening to most of the time.

I’m reading…well, I’ve been reading half of the day today, you know. Not just on one book either, oh no I have been reading two. One to myself, “Little Dorrit” and the other, a book to read out loud to my brothers (I have read it over half a dozen times myself of course) “The Scarlet Pimpernel.” I think I shall wait to talk about the actual aspects of the book when I am a little bit further into it but as far as the physical aspects of that little book I’m getting rather attached. Now, normally I don’t like hardback books, they are rather harder to get cozy with, but this one is such a cozy little bit. Nice and plump, with a nice manageable little red cover and gold printing for the title. Oh I do love nice plump books, the type you can just curl up in a corner comfortably to read. This one has a nice little red ribbon bookmark attached to it too which is always the nicest thing. I actually am not too terribly fond of real bookmarks, not from any good reason but because I have an awful habit of leaving them places and I can never find one when I need one. Which is my own fault of course but they are a bit of a nuisance to keep track of, so the little ribbon is just the thing to suit me and save my little books from being badly abused by being left open all over the place.

Around the house…well, of course describing the books like I did for the previous prompt makes me want to go hide with them somewhere.

One of my favorite things…I’m looking up at the lights hanging around the roof of the house in this room and of course because of that they are the only things I can think of to fill this prompt. Pretty Christmas lights glowing and lighting up the room cheerfully. They make me so happy.

I’m thinking…I’m thinking of nothing of real consequence. I’m thinking of the blog post I want to write, of the book I want to read, of the different stories I have resolved to continue. I’m thinking of a new name for a character that is beginning to form in my mind’s eye. I’m wondering when I shall see the lights of Daddy’s car pulling up the drive and home. I’m thinking about a drawing I started of a character in a fairytale story that I have yet to finish coloring.

Love of the Library

As you can probably tell by the title I’m going to write yet another “I love” post. Yes, I do write a lot of those, don’t I? But it’s so much fun writing about things you love and enjoy. It’s so lovely looking at the world and bits of your life and picking out things you love especially well as your topic for a post or two. It’s like counting your blessings and then writing about them, which I love. So many times we overlook our little blessings, the little happiness’ that make life such a beautiful thing, and writing blog posts on them helps you focus in on them I think. It helps you appreciate them and realize how blessed we really are. If you’re looking around at daily happenings in your life as possible blog post topics you are suddenly aware of how much you love these things that you are writing about. I write numberless blog posts in my head. Much more than I actually sit down and write. I’ll look at something and in my head start writing the beginning of a blog post about that thing, and they are lovely posts, but you see I always forget to actually write out those blog posts so they go bouncing and spinning away from me across the horizon. I am much too distractible you know. For when I sit down at my laptop, as I am now, I forget all about those lovely already-written-in-my-head blog posts and my fingers go pattering along on some other previously unthought-of strain of thought.

Now, I will be wandering altogether too far away from the point of discussion if I continue much longer on this stain, much as I would like to. One of my “in my head blog posts” was a blog post I often think of when I’m working. I work at the library, did you know that? Well, as I go around with my cart of books, lovingly putting the dear things in their proper places on the shelves I often think of a blog post just on how much I love the library. This blog post has many beginnings, many different turns and twists as I rethink it in my different moods in the different days. Most often it begins just as I’m beginning work for the afternoon and I’m feeling quite chipper and so happy with my little duties. I love starting work in the afternoon, I love putting those books down on my cart and alphabetizing them and that warm happy feeling of perfect happiness for no real reason at all. Just being happy.

A lot of people don’t like working in the children’s room, that’s because out of all the library (of course) it gets the most disorderly and messy. All of the children coming in and pulling out picture books and shoving them back in with grubby little paws. I used to not like that room quite as well because of that, but recently I’ve been falling more and more in love with the children’s room. Maybe it’s because all of my old friends are in there. All of those books I remember pulling out and sitting on the floor browsing through. I love watching the kids come in and browse around in the books. You can always tell the ones who love the books. There are a few who irritate me, these children always go instantly to the computers, yes, these ones are the trouble makers, but the book lovers, oh I love those little dears! The go quietly through the shelves with small fingers touching each spine. They get out great stacks, books of all different sorts and shapes, picture books, fiction, nonfiction, comics, but always great stacks of them and they sit down at the tables and rifle through them. Yes, they leave rather a mess for me to tidy up but it makes me happy to put away the books that they were looking through and reading at those tables.

I love looking up from my cart of book and hearing the little girl in the corner break out into a happy giggle at some funny part in her book. I love listening to the Mother sitting on the couch reading a picture book to her little boy cuddled into her side. I love the little boy who comes and tugs on my sleeve and asks “where are the books on dragons?” I love the sisters browsing through the books, the older poking the younger and saying “get this one! This one’s good!” and I love that I get to set out my favorites on display. I get to pick out the books that I remember loving and setting them up so that they gleam alluringly from the top of the shelves, saying “read me! Read me!”

I love people who read.

Read for real, you know. Not the people who say they read, but the people who are so busy with their nose in a book to even speak up and say they love to read. I love the rustling of many pages of the books as you pass the chairs set up in comfy hidden nooks of the library. I get rather excited when I see a person with a book I love in their hand. I was to cry out “THE EMERALD CITY OF OZ! YES! YES! READ!” and start bouncing up and down as I hug that beloved book. Or say “*gentle cough* I would go to the Jane Austen section if I were you. Oh and ignore that random zombie one that’s stuffed in there. *voice drops to a whisper* that one’s a phony. Trust me. It’s not hers. You’ll see the difference.” The impulse to kneel down by the young reader in the learn to read books and say “I always loved Amelia Bedelia. She’s over here,” grows almost irresistible.

I love the quiet atmosphere of the library as I work. Now I don’t even have to think about alphabetizing the books, it just comes naturally. I can get lost in my thoughts and look down and find out that all those picture books are sorted neatly from A to Z. I also just like the feel of the books themselves, because I love books. Someone was saying the other day how they didn’t really like touching the books, but I rather like thinking of all the different hands turning the pages to those books you know. Not that because of that I don’t wash my hand regularly while handling those books, I do, but the thought of the hands holding the books rather makes me happy than disturbs me like it does some.

I think my very favorite thing to do though is pulling off the hold requests from the shelves. Especially the ones that are being sent inter-library-loan to another library somewhere. I love thinking that the book I’m holding in my hands will soon be traveling across country, on a long journey with a little yellow slip saying it’s from my library, and that pretty soon some person will be coming to take that book home with them. I love imagining what sort of person is going to be getting that book. Imagining their appearance to go along with their personality, as I get rather a glimpse of that from the books they are requesting. The sort of book a person gets says a lot about them *nods* you get just a hint of what they are like and a glimpse of their personality. Yes, I love thinking about all these things as I hold the picture book with golden leaves covering the cover. Where will that book end up before it travels back to me? I wonder.

That’s all for now. I do believe I have said “I love” rather more even than I expected to when I began this post, but it’s true. I do love all of those things, and I’m quite happy thinking about all of them now.

On a Certain Loveable Bear

I have a confession. Not so very long ago, I was babysitting for some friends one evening. It was bedtime for the kids, and after they had fallen asleep and were dreaming sweet dreams in their beds I wandered downstairs and found myself at a loss for something to do. The house was picked up, the kitchen clean, children asleep; I was free to spend my quiet time however I chose! Lovely thought indeed! Do you know how I chose to spend it? I curled up on the couch with the fire crackling, a cup of tea at my elbow and a book in my hands. A book on a certain loveable bear. That’s right, Winnie the Pooh.

I love Winnie the Pooh. In the first he brings back such sweet memories of childhood. When I think of Winnie the Pooh, I think of the quilt set that used to cover my bed. The quilt set with the Hundred Acer Woods covering it and pictures of Christopher Robin holding a balloon by the big oak tree and Owl sitting atop Eeyore’s back. I think of the soft stuffed animals in a basket upstairs in our playroom. Stuffed animals I don’t remember getting it was so long ago. You see I don’t remember when I first began to love Pooh Bear, he was always there. As far back as I can remember he was always my favorite. I have a vague idea of a memory of sitting down on the carpeted floor watching the old Disney cartoon as a tot of three, but I can’t decide whether this is a memory that I have created from stories my Mom has told me, or if it is a real memory of my own. Memories are funny like that, sometimes you think you remember something but you are remembering a picture of that something.

The old Disney cartoon is wonderful, I love the sketchy animation, and the adorable songs and Pooh with his rumbly in his tumbly. I can still watch and enjoy that movie with all the love that I used to have for Winnie the Pooh but I think to properly enjoy it I have to be watching it with one of my younger siblings in my lap or by my side. Sadly I can’t enjoy it the way I used to if I’m watching it alone anymore. I have to have my baby sister in my lap and be watching her face as I hum all the old songs.

The book however, isn’t like that. I can still pick up that book all by myself and enjoy it even more than I used to even, because I can appreciate now A. A. Milne’s writing in a way I couldn’t as a child. It is the same old well-loved stories, but now I am listening to his amazing style as I read. The thing about these old classic “children’s books” is how incredibly they are written. A. A. Milne chose, like E. B. White, to write tales for children, but they wrote them in such a way they are every bit as artistically written as any adult classic. The words they chose were carefully and selectively chosen, they were writing stories that appealed to children yet in a way they could appeal to anyone.

When I read Winnie the Pooh now I am amazed at the hidden wit, the cleverness that went into his stories. I am suddenly laughing away at something that Rabbit has said quite unconsciously of course, but A. A. Milne was conscious of it. He had planned it out to have just that affect on his reader. He was carefully choosing each word to mean something in the long run. Creating it into so much more than “just” a child’s story. It is a story for all ages. That’s what makes him such an amazing author. He is not writing a child’s story because it is the “easy way out” (they will never know the difference will they?) his “child’s story” is every bit as complex and detailed as any learned one for an adult. It is just that he is choosing to write it about childhood and innocence and those playmates of imagination one had of old.

What is so inspiring I think is the idea that whatever you write, be it fiction, nonfiction, a child’s book or even a baby’s board book should be written with the same effort and care. Whether the story itself be simple or complex the same amount of effort and love should be placed into the writing of that story and the words chosen.

Just think of all the inspiring children’s books and their authors, it is worth contemplating. So much inspiration to be gained from something so outwardly simple.

Back to Winnie the Pooh.

Besides the childhood memories, and the lovely style of these books, who can help loving the illustrations? They. Are. Adorable. Each word deserves a period for emphases. The animation of the Disney cartoons are awfully sweet but ten time sweeter are the dear little illustrations by Ernest Sheppard. I had such fun looking up pictures to go with this post and I had an awfully hard time selecting just a couple of drawings to go along with. I love them all.

Go dig out your copy of Winnie the Pooh if you haven’t in a few years and revel in my little childhood friend, because I love him.

*says in a loving voice* Dear Silly Old Bear.

Some Books Are Such Good Friends...

"A house without books

is like a room without windows. "

Some books are just such good friends. Really good friends. The sort of friends you can’t remember a time you weren’t the very best of friends with. Some books are like that.

I can’t remember a time I wasn’t friends with “Anne” “Sara” and “Jo” (Anne of Green Gables, A Little Princess, and Little Women.) Why, those books were read to me before I could read myself! But actually, I can’t remember not being able to read. I remember first learning to read, the books that I first read, but I don’t remember when I simply couldn’t read.

Some books have a way of taking you back to the day you first read them too. There are some books that I can pick up again after years and years have gone by and I will be reading and suddenly I feel like I’m twelve again, snuggling one of my new baby brothers while reading, and thinking I was so cool multitasking! Multitasking= holding baby and reading…at the same time! Wasn’t I just so so talented?

"Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books - even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome."

~William Ewart Gladstone

Swinging in the hammock one evening reading The Scarlet Pimpernel while the sun sank down in a glowing splash of colorful glory. Reading Mansfield Park with my feet propped up on the dashboard of the car while a Taylor Swift song played on the radio. Snuggled under my covers in my warm cozy bed reading those first words of Pride and Prejudice. Curled up in a rocking chair reading Rose in Bloom, while tears ran down my cheeks (I always have a soft spot in my heart for the boyish teasing character). Lying on the cement porch one hot sunny day reading The Magician’s Nephew. Yes, reading old friends certainly takes you back…and it is a lovely feeling!

Actually what brought this on was for a while my books weren’t in their proper home in my bedroom. I had to move them out while we were painting the walls. Oh, my room did feel so empty without my books! A few days ago I finally was able to take them back (There was a rather large stack gradually making their way into hiding under my bed during this time…I really don’t know how they got there! Really! I had nothing to do with it…well, maybe one or two…okay so more than a few, but I just couldn’t stand being parted from those!) But now they are back in their proper place. On my bookshelf in my room. That is their home. As I was fingering those worn covers of my favorite books, placing them back on the bookshelf I was realizing how much I loved each and every one of those books. How each brought back a part of me from years ago, besides being such beautiful stories just in themselves.

Yes, most "post worthy"! As is the pictures of my new bookshelf all shiny and beautiful in its corner! And notice the lovely book ends we found! I liked them just for themselves when I first found them and then I realized that the quotes were Shakespeare, cream on the strawberries! You just can’t get much better than that, can you? Best friends back in your room, a new bookshelf, and bookends with Shakespeare quotes! Best day ever!  

 "Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not

know how to read a book."

 ~Author Unknown

"The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,

        And all the sweet serenity of books."

                                                                ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow