practice writing

A white haired lady was pushing a yellow lawn mower outside my hotel window.  She wore a blue plaid shirt and navy blue knee-length leggings. Tenny shoes completed the outfit.  I wanted to be outside mowing lawn the instant I saw her. Instead I'm using a stick for support as I hobble down the hall toward the breakfast room. Arthritis caught up to me and the x-ray shows my right hip is bone on bone. Surgery is scheduled for October 9th. 

My girls suggested I use this time in between to write my book. Then Ellis was sent to Pipestone MN for a whole week, filling in for another manager that's on vacation. It's summer time. I don't have to ask the bus manager if I can take a week off. Instead, I can tag along and live in the lap of luxury and practice writing.  

Buy a cheap notebook and start in with the writing exercises this author gives. She says, "Too often we take notes on writing, we think about writing but never do it. I want you to walk into the heart of the storm, written words dripping off hair, eyelids, hanging from hands." end of quote  This sounds like Mark Twain to me. When I've read his books, especially the ones on traveling, it makes me feel like he just kept a running commentary of every thought that came through his head! 

It was fun to chatter away in my cheap notebook yesterday. I was surprised at how many memories rose to the surface just by watching someone mow lawn. All the way from dumping the grass clippings over the rail fence to our family cow - she was named Beauty and she gave a heifer calf once a year - to making ice cream, butter, cheese, and drinking quarts of chocolate milk at our round oak table in the dining room that was painted green. Grass green. A friend visited us for lunch and told us that dunking a toasted cheese sandwich in chocolate milk was delicious! I remember turning up my snoot just like you, my dear readers, are doing this very minute. Her persuasive personality soon had a bunch of us trying it and I, for one, found out she was right. It was delicious!

Yesterday afternoon I started looking through my blog trying to find some stories and essays I'd written. There was a story Krysta wrote that I was trying to find. After awhile it dawned on me - I've already written a book of essays and short stories. It needs to be organized into chapters and edited. How do I go about doing that?

I'll finish with a picture of these hydrangeas that are blooming like crazy in Mom's yard.

And pink phlox blooming in my yard. Even in the drought this summer the flowers are beautiful. 

I found Krysta's story written June 26, 2013.