hope

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From the Arm Chair….. 4-9-2020

I have to apologize for not starting Make April a Month of Hope sooner.  On April 1st, my first day working at home, my computer died. Well, the battery died. It has enough power to turn the computer on, but not to keep it on.

At first, I wasn’t worried. I could easily get a battery. Yeah, right. Everybody business I checked not only didn’t have the battery in stock, but it would take at least 2 – 4 weeks to get it into their store. So I gave up on the battery.

Okay, I’ll just get another inexpensive computer. How hard can it be? Amazon items come in within two days.

Oh, no. Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, none of their computers could arrive to my home before the 12th through the 20th.

Finally, I decided to just go to Walmart and get a computer, which was when I realized how bad things had gotten. I got their last computer! At Walmart. What?

Really?

The last one!

Suffice it to say, I now have a working computer and hope to be back on track as soon as possible. Which means now!

Again, I apologize for my disappearance.

 

Connie

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Christmas Time is Here! 12-22-2017

Image result for christmas horse images

Day Two of Christmas Horse pictures!

Have you ever been walking along the road, seen a path heading into the forest, and wanted – just for heck of it – to follow, thinking it might lead somewhere rare and magical. I do. In fact, I was doing so yesterday during my at-work-walk. I wondered what it would be like to just step into the woods and disappear.

No, worries. I am not going to disappear. I’m not brave enough for one thing, but the desire is there, singing in my heart, calling me to step off the safe road and onto, and into, the unknown. Why do I think that if I just follow any of these paths, I might just have found my wardrobe?

Do you ever feel this?

We all long for the rare and magical, especially when our lives seem so dull and dreary, so bogged down in petty details and endless duties. Who hasn’t wanted to step into another world to find the adventures missing in their ordinary lives. Maybe you want to step into a bodice-ripping romance, a fantasy quest, or exploration deep into outer space.

These urges, these dreams, are what life is about. We dream to achieve.

So what am I dreaming into my life? I hope financial security and love and (mostly) free time, but is hope enough? Hoping is wishing. Wishing is what we do when we are afraid to dream, afraid to take the chance of asking for what we want.

I can long to step off the road into the unknown for the rest of my life without ever managing a single step. It is all up to me. To dreaming instead of wishing, hoping and pretending we don’t want what we want.

How does this relate to yesterday’s Christmas Tree dilemma?

I was saying I asked my adult kids to put up the artificial tree and it is still not up. Also, that I was refusing to do it… well…. because.

The absolute, embarrassing, truth is, I refuse to set up the tree because then I can say how horrible it is that my kids wouldn’t even set up the tree.  Does that make sense?

Like I’m testing them, waiting for them to pass or fail and, if they fail, I can say ‘well it wasn’t my job.’

There is something screwed up about my logic, but I realized I have always been this way. Leaving myself an out, just in case. So I can be the one wronged.

I hate this about myself, but it is true.

So what am I dreaming for my life here?

Nothing. I am not dreaming anything. I am wishing for what I want but afraid to ask, afraid to open up in case I am hurt or disappointed. I am afraid to take full control of my life because then there will be no one else to blame if the tree isn’t up. Or the present wrapped. Or the trash out. Dishes washed.

I am doing a disservice to myself and to my kids.

So maybe instead, I disappear into the woods and land up in Narnia. Or Middle-Earth.

Probably not. And, you know what, in those places I’d still have to do dishes and put up the Christmas Tree and take out the trash. It wouldn’t be a different life, just a different place.

But that doesn’t mean, just for an instant, I’m not tempted to see….

 

 

 

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Friday Fictioneers 9-16-2017

PHOTO PROMPT © Kelvin M. Knight

She wiped away tears, caught in the echo of the slamming door. When had she lost him? Had she failed him in some very basic way she could never have imagined?

How she hated the sound of their silence. The emptiness behind closed doors.

Heading to the kitchen, she stopped dead in the doorway.  Amid the litter of breakfast, lay a slice of bread, heart cut out of the middle.

Tears sprang back to her eyes, his feelings clearer than any words ever spoken.