TToT: Landscapes of Skies – Morning Chatter, #AtoZChallenge #10Thankful

“I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl could be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

—Daisy Buchanan, The Great Gatsby

For April Fools’ Day this year: Tourism Ireland claimed they were saving power by having sheep keep the grass trimmed, George Takei announced he was running for office, and that’s just the start of it.

It may have been a week of
tomfoolery,
but also of sunshine, birds, flowers, and beautiful skies.

I learned my brother and Vincent Van Gogh share a birthday.

Thanks, everyone, for your delightful and helpful descriptions last week, for what a rainbow looks like to you.

Anyone want to take a crack at describing Van Gogh’s painting? I’ve never seen a rainbow, but I’ve also never seen the stars.

Ten Things of Thankful

I am thankful that I was published again.

My Wedding Won’t Be Like My Sister’s, but That’s Okay – A Practical Wedding

I received a lot of positive reactions that I wasn’t necessarily expecting.

I am thankful to learn that writing is hard for everyone.

You have to be able to stand not knowing

Oh, of course, I am not glad to hear anyone feels this way. I just know it’s easy, as a newer writer, to feel like things will never go where I want them to. This writer has been published, books, and she still gets down on herself. It is oddly comforting, that it isn’t likely to get much easier, the further down the writing path you find yourself.

I am thankful for writers who are willing to stand up for others.

The Men Who Won the Presidency – Full Grown People

This essay hits the nail on the head. I am glad Full Grown People has returned, after being on hiatis. It seems to be moving to publish more of these kinds of open statements and I think that is important.

I am thankful, again, for a doctor who cares.

This doctor is doing all she can to help me feel better. In my experience, that doesn’t always work so well, but her sincere desire to try means a lot to me at this point, after some doctors I’ve seen over the years.

I am a little nervous to try her latest suggestion, but I will see how it goes. If it doesn’t help, then we return to the drawing board.

I am thankful for my brother.

He turned 30 and we didn’t get to celebrate like you should celebrate the start of a new decade of life, but I’m just thankful he’s here to celebrate it at all.

He had a seizure on the eve of his 30th.

I am thankful that my brother is okay.

It’s not a good sign that he’s had a seizure twice in only a few weeks, but luckily he has a doctor appointment this week and maybe he’ll have to increase his medication.

You never know when one will come on. He must have bumped his head on something as he fell because there was blood everywhere.

We’re all just so relieved he came to and phoned his friend, who thankfully could tell right away that something wasn’t right, and went straight over to check things out.

I am thankful my violin teacher and I could work on some problem solving and practice strategies.

When most people move out, I prefer to move in.

We discovered I could keep my arm straighter, in the proper position, if I stand against the wall to play. I rest my right arm against the wall and then I know not to bring it inward any.

It’s a bit of an odd place to be, but hopefully it’s just until I get the hang of things better. I need to know the feeling of where my arm should be, just like I need to learn to feel where my fingers should be.

We are working hard to find ways so I can practice more efficiently. Every lesson we discuss things in a slightly different way.

It was exhausting, but a good kind of exhausting.

I am thankful I got my entry in by the deadline.

The Alice Munro Festival of the Short Story

I doubt my abilities sometimes, but if you don’t submit, you’ll never win.

I wrote something that I quite like. I am proud of it, but we’ll see what the judges think.

I owe some of my family for their input.

I originally did not give my main character a name. Then, as I was working on the final touches before submitting, I realized what day it was. I am not a fan of April Fool’s Day because I am too gullible for my own good, even on a day I know jokes and pranks will be occurring. I did snap up a bit of, what I hope will be good luck, by naming my main character April.

I thought since the deadline was April 1st, it felt meant to be somehow.

Speaking of jokes and pranks…

I am thankful for humour and light things with Canada’s leader and a sitcom star.

Did you hear about this?

Matthew Perry responds to PM’s April Fool’s Tweet

I can’t tell you how nice it felt to read this and be able to smile at a story I read in the news for once. I say I can often be gullible, but I can’t believe some took this seriously. I needed this kind of lighthearted humorous exchange, between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Matthew Perry (Chandler) from Friends.

I am glad Canada has a leader with a decent sense of humour.

I decided to try the A to Z Challenge, for the first time, on a whim this year. I hope I will be thankful for that decision, as April goes forward.

A to Z

We shall see.

“To be an artist means: not to calculate and count; to grow and ripen like a tree which does not hurry the flow of its sap and stands at ease in the spring gales without fearing that no summer may follow. It will come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are simply there in their vast, quiet tranquility, as if eternity lay before them.”

—Rainer Maria Rilke

TToT: Rainbows, Waterfalls, and Dreams Come True – JACKPOT!

Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose – not the one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember.
Anne Sullivan Macy

TEN THINGS OF THANKFUL

I am not much of a gambler. Never have been. I get this from my mother.

She believes in thinking things through and making smart decisions. She’s a smart lady in that way.

So I don’t understand why people do it. I know. I know. It’s a rush and a thrill. I get that. I just choose to find that thrill and experience that rush in other ways. Some are below in this week’s Ten Things of Thankful:

For a lovely lunch with a friend. It was nice to catch up. It’s been over a year.

Someone once scoffed at the term “friend” when I referred to this specific person. I am tired of allowing other people’s opinions to bother me.

Yes, this person is my friend. A friend can be any age and for any reason.

I wanted to check in with her and make sure things were alright.

You know how you can sense something’s not quite right, reading someone’s statuses on Facebook, even when they haven’t come right out and said so?

Well, I was nervous that there was something serious going on. I am glad we could have lunch and I learned that it was nothing like I was envisioning. I was relieved to learn it wasn’t cancer. It runs in her family and I was afraid for a while there.

I’m thankful she is doing better because she is an important person in my life and has had a huge influence on me, from a very young age. With all she has gone through, she continues to inspire me with her love of life.

High by the Beach – Lana Del Ray

For another late afternoon drive to the beach with family.

My nephew would not even set foot in the sand when we arrived, instead clinging tightly to his father.

By the end, when it was time to leave, he did not want to get out of the water.

For my short story, One Last Kiss, being out in paperback.

After the Scars: A Second Chances Anthology

I was just saying to my friend, when we were out at lunch, that I was waiting, not so patiently, for this. Then I get home and later that night I get the notification.

I am so excited because this will make it real for me, in a way nothing else yet has. I can’t wait to hold the actual print book in my hands. It’s not all mine, but my story is in there, down in print, for everyone to see. This is as close to my dream as you could get.

I feel like I’ve hit the Jackpot.

For the PBS/BBC series I’d been eagerly anticipating for weeks:

It’s BIG BLUE LIVE Baby!

I absolutely loved watching this three-night event. I was thrilled to learn more about my favourites: humpbacks, orcas, great white sharks, and sea lions and seals.

My favourite part was the blue whale segment. They track them along the California coast, from Monterey Bay Aquarium, and I marvel at the biggest animal on our planet.

Wait! Is it too late to become a marine biologist?

Pod of orcas all around you.

For this most recent friendship:

6 Reasons Why Having An Older, Fearless, Female Friend Is Empowering

She is adventurous and that’s just the sort of person I need in my life right now.

For a deal found by my friend and a cheap day trip to one of my favourite places in the whole wide world.

For $15 we got a bus ride to Niagara Falls, to Fallsview Resort and Casino, just minutes from my #1 spot.

For yet another rainbow!

Again with the rainbows, I know, but I consider it a sign of good things to come. I’m told a rainbow is quite common, over Niagara Falls, because of the mist and when the sun is just right. The sky was so blue and cloudless otherwise and although most rainbows over Niagara usually only last minutes, this one went on and on, as I imagined what it might look like.

Lucky me that this friend loves to take photos, or maybe not as I am not the most comfortable when asked to smile on cue, but I love my Niagara Falls rainbow.

For the help and advice I’ve received from many people, most recently from this friend in particular.

I don’t always like what I hear and sometimes I find some advice hard to take, but mostly because I know it’s true.

It’s coming from a place of concern and good intentions.

How To Live Passionately, No Matter Your Age

This TED talk, by Isabelle Allende, is inspiring, funny, and real. I want to live passionately.

I am sick and tired of my modesty. I want to grow into the person I am meant to be. I don’t want to allow my fears and negativity to stop me anymore.

I know we all age, I certainly am, and death is imminent and inevitable, so I want to make the most of my life. I want to hold the past in my heart, live in the present moment, and strive for my dreams going forward into the future.

For yet another chance to be featured on a site other than my own:

Lost and Found: Finding My Way Out of the Fog

I am proud of this essay and I wrote it about a very difficult period in my life, one I still struggle with every day, but the fog has definitely lessened.

This was one of the times I was approached, by pm on Twitter, to write for Blu Sky. Often I email someone and see if they are looking for guest writers or contributors. It’s nice to be asked sometimes.

And, finally, for all the wonderfully strong and inspiring women in my life, those who are a part of my history, my present, or hopefully my future.

To those who’ve left a lasting mark on my life and helped me become the woman I am today.

To those who I hope to meet, in person, in the future. They make me want to grow and learn, from afar.

JACKPOT!

I’m ending this week’s TToT with a Facebook status from a woman who is quickly becoming one of my biggest travel writing inspirations. Everything she says here is true and I’ve just got to begin to live her words.

“When people tell you you cannot do certain things, what they mean is not that you cannot do them, but that you cannot do them via the routes they envision them being done. So in some ways, it’s a good thing, because it forces you to think outside the box. This is something that has come up many times in conversations this weekend. Many people here have done things that to one person might seem extraordinary, and to them simply seemed like the thing they must do. Get rid of the box you are in.”
Explorers summit, Ireland.

Here’s to thinking outside the box. Thanks Amy Gigi Alexander, for this reminder..

All I See #SoCS

It’s the brand new month of September and time for another Stream of Consciousness Saturday:

http://lindaghill.com/2015/09/04/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-sept-515/

SoCS

I’m told there’s a rainbow, that it’s spread itself across Niagara Falls, clear in the mist of the roaring waters.

All I see is white.

I strain my eyes to detect a colour. Colours.

All I see is white.

I imagine I see how blue the sky appears above all this. I don’t know if it’s blue. What is blue to me now anyway?

All I see is white.

I shade my eyes with my right hand, so I can go on trying.

All I see is lite.

It’s so bright it hurts and the mist rains down so bad, my eyes are shut tight.

All I see is darkness. No more lite.

I look out and the memories come flooding back, of times spent here, days long past.

All I see is white.

I miss you and our time spent here.

Now all I see is white.

It’s Niagara Falls out beyond this rail. It’s wild and grand and masterful.

All I see is white light.

TToT: Thunderbolts and Rainbows

“After every storm, there is a rainbow. If you have eyes, you will find it. If you have wisdom, you will create it. If you have love for yourself and others, you won’t need it.”
–Shannon L. Alder

TEN THINGS OF THANKFUL

I heard about an interesting thing this week, and although I can not see it, I found the image to be an appropriate overall theme for the week that just was.

Photographer captures rainbow and lightning bolt in one electrifying image – TODAY.com

Thunder crashing, lightning streaking across the sky, sometimes followed by the beauty of a rainbow.

And then sometimes, rather more rarely, there’s all three at the same time. Life produces all of this and more and sometimes it does this all at once.

At times I didn’t know if I would even want to collect ten things this week, as the rain seemed to cloud any rainbows that might have been there, but I again think these weeks are the ones when being thankful is most important.

Ten Things of Thankful:

For YouTube.

I don’t know what I did before I discovered all that it had to offer. I can find and watch any documentary, on any subject I want. I can listen to all the songs I love. Unlimited and easy access to media and entertainment like this, for me, is extremely freeing.

For rain and thunderstorms.

I spent some time this week, just listening to the rain falling and the thunder rumbling.

I can not see lightning, for the most part, but occasionally I still can spot it, if the conditions are just right.

I have a vivid memory of driving home from my parent’s friends’ place, one night, with the sky lighting up as we drove. The sky was flash after flash and all was a bright light out the van’s window.

Now I remained inside, listening to the sound of the raindrops hitting the awning outside my window. I loved the cool, rainy air and the science of a thunder storm came back to me. I thought about this powerful charge of particles out there, in the air, and I considered, for one moment, that science is actually the coolest and nature is truly spectacular.

I read a Facebook post from my local radio station. The DJ posed a question: how do you explain what thunder is to your children?

Silly really. I heard the famous explanation as a child of God bowling, but I never believed it. If that were true, I’d also have to calculate that the actual raindrops were God spitting on us and that never sat well with me.

Still…the theme of rain, thunder, and rainbows persisted as the week continued, even just symbolically and through literature.

For my nephew and his turning another year older, as he grows before our very eyes, even if, on some level, we want to keep him just the age he now is.

He actually prefers waterfalls to rainbows.

We had a nice little family dinner to celebrate the day. I re-edited and posted the essay I wrote about his birth and the journey his parents took to bring us all our sweet little boy:

Ordinary Miracles: Part One

and

Ordinary Miracles: Part Two

For the pure joy and happiness of a baby, something so untouched by any real pain or fear.

I spent an afternoon this week with my friend and her baby girl. We had a lovely lady’s lunch, the three of us, and she was extremely well behaved the entire time.

I got to hold her back at my house and, even though she is only fourteen weeks or so, she can stand.

Okay, well I may have been holding her up, but she is already just dying to use her legs. The problem is, they don’t stay straight enough, flopping and collapsing, unable to fully support her body for any possible, miraculous baby genius behaviour, any hope of forward, upright movement.

🙂

She had a ball trying, anyway, on my lap and with my assistance.

With all the rough weather in life, the best rainbow of all is actually the noise of pure and utter happiness made by a young child. She made just that noise. It was the most pleasurable sound, one of the best sounds you could/I will ever hear. It warms your heart and I let the memory of that stay with me as the week went on.

For fresh peaches.

I ate more of that amazing, creamy, soft ice cream I spoke of a few TToT’s back and this time it was with fresh peaches. Even better. Two delicious things put together.

For discovering a tasty chocolate dessert with a friend.

The rest of the meal may not have impressed us much, but you can’t beat the company and on discovering they had three desserts to offer: strawberry cheesecake, chocolate mousse, and deep fried banana split…well, we both agreed that chocolate is the best. We weren’t disappointed.

For the walks we’ve started going on together: my friend, her daughter, and me and I like the exercise I get, even if parts of my body rebel against me a bit.

For Middle Sibling Day.

I’m grateful I get to share that honour with my older sister.

She is strong and determined. She never gives up. She is the best middle sibling around.

I so wish I could take her pain away and get her all she desires for herself. I want to be the little sister she deserves. I want to make it all alright for her.

Glad to be middle siblings together.

For the ocean, seashore, whatever you call it. It’s a wonder of wonders.

More text messages from my brother out east in the Maritimes and I am wonderfully jealous as he tells me of how much he is enjoying the fresh east coast, ocean air of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island.

I am thankful there is such a thing and hope to experience it again one of these days, but for now, I am glad he gets to experience it.

Next stop: P.E.I.

Speaking of…

And finally, to carry on with the east coast theme, for:

Rilla of Ingleside

Being from Canada and an avid writer and reader, Lucy Maud Montgomery is my Canadian author idol.

I had read

Anne of Green Gables

in the eighth grade and became obsessed with the films.

I only read the following books years later, or at least, the next several.

I love books and would have read more of them by now. Sometimes, however, being visually impaired does slow me down and delay me from reading like I’d like to.

I get books, in different ways, from varied sources. I read Anne in braille, when someone transcribed it for me. I read the next few when another visually impaired friend, much more tech smart, downloaded them for me onto my Braille Display, an electronic braille device. I found this one online and, as I’ve stated above with my love of YouTube, listened to the audio book.

Rilla of Ingleside is a beautiful book. Montgomery was the only one to write a moving account of what it was like to be female, in Canada, during the turbulent World War I days.

Most people, even if they did not read the books, know who Anne is. Well, Rilla is Anne’s youngest daughter, who is a teen during WW I and she starts out as a directionless young girl, but by the end of those four years, becomes a lot more than that.

I can’t wait to write a review of this book for my blog. It’s remarkable to me, that we can read books written one hundred years ago, and the beauty to be found there can still be so great.

The family has moved away from Green Gables, from Avonlea, and while still remaining on Prince Edward Island, now live in their Ingleside house, right next to

Rainbow Valley,

where the children used to play.

Now, as teenagers and young adults, facing a world war, they go there to talk about world events and tough choices, with one another, or to just think by themselves.

So there’s my rainbow to end this TToT with. I missed this week’s meteor shower, but I can hear the thunder, so I count my blessings.

Here Comes the Rain Again

The thunder strikes and even though, at first thought, that brings on notions of being hit by lightening, with the reaction of having to run for cover, on closer examination I see how the forces are mighty ones.

I think there can be both, thunder and rainbows, if we look for them and find the value in them both, either separately or together as one.