The Chill of Winter Melts

The sun is warming up the land, I grab my coat and run outside. The snow melts, the ice disappears; the world is coming alive. Grass is visible everywhere and pools of water lie deep. The cool breeze blows in my face; refreshing, not cold. I play in the mud, I play in the puddles, I follow the trickles of water till they become rivers. Bluer than jewels, the sky opens wide above me, and the sun warms my face. In bare trees, the birds sing loud and cheerful; but I can only identify the Chickadee. Although I had been feeling bad before; the warming world heals me. I run for joy, my tan pants wet and muddy. For once, I don't care what people think! I have come alive along with the world.

A Super Short Film

Here is the first film that my little sister and I have made with our movie company, DayDreamer Productions

What a Thursday All to Myself Looks Like

Waking up. That’s always the first thing in my day. Usually an hour of just laying awake and thinking/drifting in and out of sleep also takes place from about 5:40 – 6:30 (A.M.). But today my parents are going to be gone all day, so I tell myself I need to get up sooner to receive instructions for the day. It’s still 6:48 by the time I’m done reading my Bible. I tell myself I have an excuse this time though; yesterday I had been sick with a fever and today I would be having the hangover from it. My prediction was correct; all day my brain’s been in a fog. Thinking is taking place very slowly in my mind.

Everyone’s done with breakfast already when I come down… but that’s a new normal for me. Sister leaves for school and after telling me that I can have leftovers for lunch; Mom and Dad leave also. I always look forward to a day on my own. After chores and school I sit down at the computer. Thursdays are my computer days, and today I’m glad that I don’t have to move around a lot. 

Email draws my attention first of course and I decide to delay my more important work to clean it out. I gather healthy breakfast recipes (which I probably won’t use until I’m twenty) from the only practical website I go onto for pleasure, Real Simple; which I love because it’s… real simple. One of the recipes is Baked Eggswith Asparagus, Ham, and Gruyere which sounds a little complicated but looks delicious.

Interviews with my two favorite actors, Michael Emerson and Elijah Wood, break up the monotony of copying and pasting ingredients and directions. Spotify plays the whole time in the background. With the help of this useful online timer I found, I can stop every twenty minutes for a break. Being sick, I switch out my more energetic stretches for slow walks through the house. The towels get into the washer during one of these breaks.

Pinterest sucks me in for a little and the only thing off my to-do list that’s done by lunch is looking up some blog post prompts. I decide to do the “a day in the life of” prompt; hence this post.

Lunch is quiet and peaceful; a bowl of left over broccoli soup makes up the whole meal. I find that when I’m by myself I eat smaller, more healthy meals. Shredded cheese garnishes the green soup in an attempt to make myself feel a little bit like a chef. At heart I'm a rule breaking cook who doesn't like to follow recipes. I just imagine the end result and throw a bunch of ingredients together. 95% of the time the results are good.

I thought up some of this post while eating then cleaned up after myself in the kitchen. That brings me to now; listening to Studio Ghibli music and typing. How will the rest of my day go? Right now, with a Sherlock background on my desktop, I’m feeling like curling under a blanket and re-watching an episode off of Netflix. Later I’ll update my Etsy shop, Sparkle Flair, which sells pin-back buttons. My blogs will probably also get some tweaking done to them.

Then my sister will come home and I’ll be talking my head off because I haven’t talked to anyone (except to pictures on the computer and to myself). She’ll do homework and I’ll do my “official” writing hour; after which will probably end my electronic time.

My parents will come home at an (as of now) unknown time and we’ll have supper; but maybe not in that order. So will end my wonderful and rare time of solitude. I’ll have my nightly performance of reading The Two Towers out loud, then my sister will go to bed.

That’s when the most looked forward to part of the day comes; watching TV. I predict that tonight will be the new episode of Psych that recorded last night; even though Elementary and Touch are waiting to be watched (and all recorded Person of Interest episodes were finished last night). My mom and I have been waiting for Psych to come back on for what seems like an eternity.

I used to let myself be talked into watching a couple shows per night, going into late 11 o’clock. But when I realized one episode pushed out another in my memory; plus the bad sleeping habits, plus not being able to read; I now draw the line at one episode and make it to bed by about 9:40 P.M.

If there’s time, a chapter of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes will be enjoyed and then my day ends in sleep.

So that’s the whole of it; I hope I didn’t bore you with the details my life. If I did; I would just like to say that in my opinion, it’s a pretty good life to be living.

From My Sketchbook: A Tear Drop of Sorrow

The inspiration for this painting came from a scene from the T.V. show Prison Break as well as the movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The concept was to capture the pure heart broken emotion of losing a loved one; to put the feeling of complete sorrow and despair into color. (The faint line through the middle was added by my scanner)

From My Sketchbook: Eating Fluff

A quick sketch I did that's lightly inspired by Studio Ghibli's movies.

When Words Fail

I’m sitting behind the Christmas tree, surrounded by yellow star like lights and colorful reflective balls. The music drifts up from downstairs in the kitchen faintly, the soundtrack from The Hobbit. The lights are all turned off except the tree and everything is peaceful. 

As a writer, it is frustrating sometimes. A million words and ideas buzz around in your head and they’re all beautiful, but there’s never anything enough to expand upon. I sit at the computer and want to write something; come up with an amazing blog post, a heart rending short story. I want to capture fleeting feelings down onto paper and into words, but they refuse to be tamed. So I sit around and wait for those moments, those rare moments of magical inspiration where all my thoughts line up into one cohesive thought and the words brim over from my mind and through my finger tips. But those moments are very few. It is said the hardest part about being a writer is actually writing; and though I do love to write the words down; when my wonder struck thoughts whir unceasingly and words do not seem sufficient for what I want to convey, then yes, the actual writing is the hardest part. Someone who can consistently turn out beautiful work is the one who can take hold of a single thought at any time and expand upon it; not letting it dance tantalizingly just out of reach. This is probably one of the key things to learn to be a good writer; one that I’m still trying to figure out. Inspiration isn’t what is really lacking though; it’s the inspiration that drives out inspiration, the distractions that flood in from everywhere. But when I do capture what I want to say; when I put into words a feeling that was so elusive and mysteriously beautiful; I get a feeling of contentment, of satisfaction with my work. This feeling is enough to drive me ever on, through all the days when the words don’t seem to want to come and my mind is filled with frustrations because the ideas don’t want to sit still long enough for me to think them through. Being a writer is a very hard and patient trying job; but I wouldn’t want to do anything else, not ever.

The music from downstairs fades, the lights on the tree go dim and the entire world goes black. My mind, it goes black too, and there is nothing left. No words, no busy thoughts of things to do, no anxious worries. Just the heart beat of a trembling, wonder struck soul and this one thing also; the ability to create anything, to write anything. To be, experience, travel and explore… anything. The ideas explode and collide in my mind, a beautiful cacophony of mysteries to be made known. This is what words will do for me; they will help me unravel the mystery of life, in all its endless, breathtaking possibilities.

From My Sketchbook: The Cards

I've always imagined that the dragon in this picture is a fortune teller of some type (hence the crystal ball) and lets the cards that he's holding decide the fate of his victims. The girl here is Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. I made this collage by cutting out the two figures from advertisements, then drawing the rest with a pencil around them.
Here is the caption I wrote to go along with this:

"The cards, my dear, are telling me you must die."