On Life and Blog Posts

Writing a blog post is no easy feat. At least not for me.

It takes time to figure out what I want to write about, to do the writing, to go over it and get rid of what’s not working, and to find pictures to pair with it (which always seems to take the longest).

This is oversimplified, of course and I spend quite a bit of my “writing” time thinking while looking out the window or at the special things I have around the room.

For my last post (Curiosity), I actually arranged some of the things I have displayed in my office on my desk calendar and snapped a picture.

I sometimes have to do some research to find dates or events or call siblings to see what they remember about some detail.

And in the process of all this, life oftentimes gets in the way.

Someone’s at the door.

I get a phone call I really need to take.

The kitchen timer goes off and I have to go pull something out of the oven.

Like our traditional Red Chocolate Cake I make every year at Valentine’s day. I baked those Saturday-one for us (I put most of it in the freezer) and one for the kids.

We’ve had some spare time this week and it’s been raining so we’ve also been cleaning out kitchen cabinets.

At the bottom, in the way back of the almost inaccessible corner cabinet, we found our old Christmas dishes we used to use when our kids were growing up.

When we unboxed them, the memories came flooding out with the dishes.

On Christmas Eve after the kids went to bed, we’d put the lief in the table, put on the red table cloth, and set a table for eight with those beautiful plates.

On Christmas morning, my husband’s parents and his sister and brother-in-law would come to our house for a family Christmas breakfast with us and our two children.

Everyone would bring something and we’d have the most delightful breakfast together.

We’d have scrambled eggs, biscuits, sausage and bacon, hash browns, cheese danish, orange juice, coffee, and hot cocoa.

In the middle of those sweet memories, who could just stop and get back to writing? Obviously not me.

I like to wade right into the memories–waist deep.

Feel the feelings.

Enjoy the moments all over again.

So today I find myself finishing up in the early morning hours.

It was still dark when I sat down to write and as the day breaks, I’ve been captivated with the sunrise outside my office window.

It’s cloudy this morning, but the break in the clouds sports the most beautiful shade of blue.

The edges of the clouds are glowing.

A bird flies across my line of sight and breaks the spell.

I have to go now. I’m going to go make some oatmeal and start thinking about next week’s post.

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