snippets.

It was just one of those days.  You know, the kind where you have to go take care of an arrest warrant in your name and watch all of the people go before you who can't afford to pay and so they're carted off to jail with kids watching.  Thankfully I wasn't that person... and thankfully my dad doesn't want to kill me.

I hate when this happens.  I was spending all of this time in my car today, and I had all of this inspiration of things I wanted to say, and now it's just crickets.

A lot of it has to do with the fact that it's Monday, and Monday is the day my ghost writing entries are due, and Monday is my day off of work, and Monday is a more stressful day for me than I'd like.  It was particularly so today because I knew what I needed to write and it was eating at me.  First I was sitting at church yesterday, and I couldn't pay attention because I kept running the scenario over in my head.  Then I was falling asleep last night after typing out ideas and I felt a little ill because of the gravity of it all.  Today I was driving to pilates and I wanted to kick myself for letting the arc get to this point.  And finally I went outside to write.

I'm not really sure why I don't spend more time outside in our yard.  It's quite pretty back there.  The trees are the right sort of overwhelming, and there are plenty of places to sit, and it's actually relatively peaceful for the neighborhood we are in.  It's the first I've spent writing back there, and it took me back to this little area we had in our massive yard in Connecticut.  There was this tiny little grove of trees - I mean TINY - and it was perfect and it felt like it was all mine.  I used to gather up a book, a notebook, a pen, a water bottle, and an Oat's 'N Honey granola bar (or sometimes a Peanut Butter one) and just go sit there on the ground.  I would sit on the needled grass, and I would feel like I was in some sort of magical spot from a C.S. Lewis novel, and maybe even half expected to see my life transformed every time I entered and exited that small area.

Why am I writing this?

There are so many parts of me that are so insanely sheltered.  I read all of these teen novels and I'm amazed at what these fourteen year olds are saying and doing.  I was eleven and twelve in that house, and I loved feeling like a child, and to think that children are growing up so much faster freaks me out.  And then I have to go write as if I'm one of them and I'm even more freaked out.

A character made a serious decision.  I say that as if I didn't write it.  But really - she's so real in my head now, and it was the right direction to go, and it freaked me out because it is so outside of my comfort zone.

Whatever happened to just sitting in pretty little nooks of trees (can I call it that?), reading Nancy Drew, and listening to the bugs and animals in the surrounding wood?