Peanuts, Life and Hope

What is your favorite Peanuts character? Linus, Lucy, Pigpen, and Charlie Brown have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Yup, that makes me really old! This might sound really odd to some of you, but Charlie Brown has always been my very favorite character because of the hope that continues to come from his life. He always tries to kick the football, and to be a friend even though many of those around him don't seem to care.

Life isn't easy, and it's never fair, but you can find that little scrap of hope to continue putting one foot in front of each other. Why has Charlie Brown continued to hold our interest and be so much a part of our lives? He's been a part of how we think - think of the terms that have come from the strip. Security blanket, Pigpen, there are so many little things that were fun, and have given me that okay feeling about myself and that piece of life that surrounds me.

Like Charlie Brown, I was taken advantage of by others in my younger years. And like him I finally got the guts to stand up for myself against people who hurt me. So like him, I also have that little piece of hope that keeps me going.

But I am also a bit like Snoopy. I love his ability to be crazy, and to dream. Kissing Lucy is his payback to a rather mean tempered, controlling little girl who can make life a bit uncomfortable for all of us. His life is filled with friends and laughter. He gets away with a lot, mainly because he's a dog, and no one in that world seem to expect much from him. He's allowed to simply be himself.

I could go on and on because each character seems to have a bit of me, and maybe of all of us in them. What the Peanuts gang has to offer is real life - the pain, frustrations, and that ever present hope and laughter.

Who's your favorite person in Peanuts land...

Vacations Instantly!

Times away from home are always lovely. They give time to look at where you are in life and sometimes how to make changes that are needed. But, it also is a time to escape the ordinary things of life and give a taste of something different.

If you are a history buff, you can visit a museum or local historical places. Places that take you back and help you learn something new are a great escape. If you're a gardener during the spring, summer and fall there are always gardens to explore, even garden centers are fun! Whatever turns you on is a way to have fun on that break from your normal week.

How about a weekly vacation, is that a possibility? You bet! An escape to a meal with friends, or a trip to the library can make personal time great. I am a library fanatic and enjoy wandering the rows of books looking at what is available to read. Taking time to read can be a vacation in itself! How many of you have gotten to read a book all night and finished it in the morning? That can be a real luxury. Anything can be that vacation for me. A walk along the woods with my dog or simply a little nap when you first get home from work can be an instant break from the world. You know something, I SIMPLY love vacations!

Relatives...

Visiting relatives...Hmmm. Mostly not a looked forward to event, right? Well I have just expereinced the opposite and I had a great time! The weather was hot, humid and wet! Oh, and I had a ball!

So what made the trip so grand? The person I visited, definitely made a difference! The weather was way to hot, but we did fun things together.

So what makes a visit liveable? More than anything, it is the people you visit - in my opinion!

It Was A Dark and Stormy Night...Sort Of!!!

Vacations are good. I keep reminding myself as to the truth of that simple statement. But every time I begin to prepare for one, something fall apart! It's like I'm a bit haunted. The biggest mess this time I thought was a topper since it will involve an electician and a pile of money. Let me lay the torid story out for you.

We had invited my brother, Scott and his son, Trav down for the weekend and were having fun just being together. Saturday night we were, or should I say the guys were deciding what to watch on TV. It was going to be a Nascar race which my nephew really wanted to see, or the Antique Road Show. We'd just finished dinner and I was working on finishing the the dishes and smiling at the rather heated discussion that was coming from what should have been a simple choice of programing. I finished quickly not wanting to get into the middle of this discussion and headed off to the TV room/computer room to get some time online before they all invaded the area.

As I clicked around to find if I had any email, everything in that end of the house went totally black. I sat there in the dark wondering if, or when we might get everything back on again. When I realized it was just the area where I sat that was dark and that it wasn't coming on any time soon, I decided I needed help.

"Could someone check the breaker box downstairs, I think we've blown a circuit braker!" I yelled. I didn't want to try to mess with electrical things of any kind since that whole thing is confusing to me and I haven't been able to figure out which switch was for what room.

"Yea, yea, I'll check," my husband yelled back.

After a few minutes with no movement on the change in the light of the room, my brother, Scott and I headed downstairs and there we heard my dear husband, Charlie muttering to himself, "not here, either. Nope not that one." as he walked from one electrical junture box to another in the basement.

"It's not just the breaker?" I asked.

"Nope," he responded glumly, as we followed him around like curious children he checked all the easy fix problems without discovering the cause of our outage.

"What kind of mess is this going to end up being?," I thought as we looked at each other before he moved on again to inspect another electical box.

With no options for me to help downstairs I decided the tension was getting to be too much for me and headed up to entertain my nephew and to get a flashlight for my husband so he could further inspect our houses wiring system. Over the next few minutes as Trav and I talked various parts of the house's lights were uncerimoniously clicked off and on all around us in the hopes that one would help him discover which area was the problem area.

Over a period of 20 minutes this went on with the muttering getting more pronounced as each click provided no further information on what had caused this electrial mess for us. Suddenly, there was a shout of, "Eurika!" as my husband made the discovery of the circuit and then began tracing back the wires with Scott following on his heals with our flashlight.

Then began the arduious task of tracing all the lines connected to that main line and checking them to discover the culprit for the total darkness that still enveloped the rooms, which by now included our bedroom as well. A tense frustration had become almost tangible after an hour of searching with no results.

The hour expanded to two, and then three hours of poking and inspecting wires to see if the internal vessels would again carry the "juice" to those dark parts of our world. My husband stomped slowly up the stairs in a dark and disappointed mood. He went out to his shop and brought in long extension cords to get us through the next few days, since we had one more day to endure and I needed to complete an article I had been working on for the local news paper. There would be nothing more we could do until the electrician was called on Monday.

My house is my clutter mansion with fur from our sheherd mix dog scattered behind everything and I was concerned about having to do that super clean trick before I could let any repairman into the house. Monday was going to prove a marathon for me if I was to get the place spotless before the expert showed up. I'm a writer, not a cleaner!!

The end has yet to be written because the "man" has not shown up, and the electricty has gone on and off a few times since the total 12 hour blackout. My house is empty of family and fur now, but I leave on Friday and the deed has not been accomplished yet. My vacation disaster has topped any prior experience I've had, but it has also given me stories to share when I finally arrive at my holiday destination. Oh, well. The worst is over...for the time being anyway!

To be continued....

One Totally Confused Lilac Bush!

I stepped outside the door this morning with my dog and took a deep breath of our nice NEW cooler temperatures. We've been deep summer hot for way too long, but a cold front came through last night and I woke to an air conditioner that was off courtesy of my husband on his way out this morning, and open windows with the most lovely breeze sailing through my house! With a cup of coffee in hand I stepped out onto our patio. There is nothing better that the smell of coffee and fall!

I looked around and began contemplating what plants needed to be cut back this morning and my eyes stopped dead and my brown and rather rumpled lilac bush. There was something frilly and purple at the top...no! Lilacs bloom in the spring! I rose and walked a few steps to my bush to take a better look.

There at the tip of a branch were four purple flowers blooming and smelling lovely. Not a complete lilac flower - that's for sure, but a few tiny flowers none the less and the smell was just grand.

"Poor bush, it's totally out of sync," I said. This is fall, not spring! Was I crazy? I went back and sat in my chair and took another gulp of my coffee. What prompted this small burst of spring? Totally confused, I wandered back toward the flowers and looked at them again. Yes, they were real.

New flowers on a bush that was so brown and almost ready for winter's chill. My shrub had really lost it! It's confused and isn't sure what season it is I'm sure. Let's see...hot summer, hot fall, well we did have those few days of cooler temperatures. Nature does strange things sometimes, but as I sat there in that cool fall day I decided to sit there and enjoy all that my garden held for me today...the fall colors, the crisp air, and the promise of spring.

A Writer's Tale

I just listened to NPR’s Talk of the Nation and Neal Conan was talking to Dave Barry about his new book, and also about his traditional list of ridiculous Christmas gifts. I’ve always enjoyed the off the wall humor that Dave Barry epitomizes. It’s that way of looking at the common place, the every day and seeing within it the totally wacky. I know when I write I find that to look at the humor in something can make for a good story to tell at parties.

Stretching the truth in a story is the old tale of how big the fish really was. We’ve all heard those tales that we know have to be not true… really, they can’t be, right? That’s where the fun lies in telling and retelling those stories. Within each tale is just a morsel of truth that can make you question your own reality sometimes.

So what makes those stories so much fun to listen too - and for those of us who spin them so much fun to create, and recreate over and over? For those of us who create the fine tuning of a good story hangs on the response of our listeners. Often time I’ll write a story and if the response is half-hearted I know something isn’t conveyed quite right. I have this skewed view of the world and, “of course it’s humorous, they just don’t get it!” So where do I head for researching what needs work? To my three sons, (No, not the TV program.) who are a fountain of wisdom for why a story might not be working.

An example would be a story I recently wrote about a plumbing fiasco in our home. My youngest son reminded me that I know nothing about plumbing when he said, “Um, mom what exactly stopped the drain?” I had spent 30 minutes deciding what to call that thingy in our tub that moves up and down, as well as a stopper that holds the water in the tub, or drains it. I’ve even asked the plumber who at the time had his head down in my plumbing trying to liberate the drain pipe to make repairs that were needed. Sadly, he wasn’t sure what it was called, or if it even had a name.

We all have that moment of excitement when we’re understood. But more often than not we see and hear the story totally different that the rest of the world does. And many don’t see the same humor in a given situation. I guess you could say that it takes a great deal of practice to get the meaning across to any audience. But when you do it is sweet! There is such a feeling of exhilaration when your audience understands and gets the point of the story you’re telling.

Writing and More Writing!

What makes a blog important enough to make it to the best of the best, or the most evocative, or even the most interesting? Is it the content or how the author creates the string of words that complete the thought within what is written? Questions, questions, questions...as a writer I have had to look at what is interesting in what I read and what I write. I think on most blog pages it's how far can you go in anger or word use not in what is actually said. Does that mean that a theological treatise or anything else academic is better? Heavens NO! The other end of the scale can be just as frustrating as those that try to shock us. So what makes something a good piece of writing? In my opinion well thought out and developed ideas that take you from an idea to a conclusion of some kind. A piece that has an interesting way of grabbing attention at the beginning and holding it throughout with humor or using a different way of presenting ideas can capture and hold a reader's interest.

For me, someone who is well informed and not simply angry gives me a reason to continue to read on in any piece of writing. Some of the best writings that I've experienced have often been to persuade me to change an opinion or idea that I hold. It doesn't always make me change, but it does always make me re-examine what I believe and that is what a good persuasive piece of writing should do.

Without humor or something that catches you off guard most writing has little to peak my interest. An example for me is a very well know writer of literature who has a good way of taking you in circles with her descriptions but leaves you hanging as to a purpose for the piece, or simply a story line that will take the reader into a piece. Though wonderful at taking a reader into the character the author seems to be going in circles as to what they are saying or why. Every author has a purpose; a reason for writing. Many of us do it to blow off steam or tell of wrongs done in our world. How many of us write to tell of someone or something that has touched us in our days?

A good writer is not always grammatically correct, but they are always true to the characters, or ideas that hold their own interest. I'm a writer because I love to see where my ideas are going on a page, and always they grow like children on my page. That's like life. Each day they grow, and change with each telling. Not because we're changing them, but often because as we contemplate what happened from our own perspectives more information comes to light. We each have our own truths and they become what we believe. That occurs through what happens in our lives. As for me...I may not be a Hemmingway, or Faulkner but I too must write. It is for me simply a way of thinking and communicating.

I'm Just Tired, That's All...

What's wrong with sleep deprivation? It's getting us new cars, more money for our families...but it's also creating more people who are suffering from debilitating depression, and so many other physical problems that many of us would never have otherwise. Is it worth it? How many times have any of us almost fallen asleep at the wheel, or yelled at someone when you didn't mean it?

Each of us suffers in some way without enough sleep. Some only need 6 hours, but many of us need 8 or more, and yet we ridicule people who can't handle that lack of sleep. Creativity suffers, friendships suffer...love suffers. Is it worth it? For me, I just don't know. Part of me wants to find a way back to something simpler. What in life is worth this many problems?