Dear Blog (I have missed you so!)

Dear Blog,

I have missed you so!

I have been very frustrated lately because I seem to have few words left over at the end of the day and fewer yet at the beginning. I was worried that I had run out of words, ideas and original thoughts. My quota was spent and I was done.

Then I got busy.

Mom came on Thursday and stayed until Sunday. I started a new daycare-family-of-two. I invited people for supper. I took a (short) road-trip with Mom. I coffee'd with a friend. Another friend phoned and we talked for hours. I had to send off some columns. I was in 'negotiation' with another newspaper. Two other friends dropped by another day. One in the morning. One in the afternoon. I cleaned the sandbox.

Yes. I am living an off-line life as well as this strange addiction to the on-line world.

As one of my blogs is a 'pay-per-hit' variety, I wondered if I should immerse myself in the Twitter, Facebook, Pintrest and/or Instagram as a way of promoting my writing. Then? I read this: http://momastery.com/blog/2014/05/07/step-one/  (a blog post about a blog writer's addiction to the Internet) and I thought "NO! It is more important to live a vital off-line life".

And that is what I have been doing.

I marvelled at the show that Nature put on for my mom and me on our Sunday drive (on Saturday). You can tell that spring has sprung. I spotted the bright green head of a mallard, alongside a mottled mate-in-waiting (I assume it was a female mallard) in a slough. The odd Canada goose was standing alongside the highway. Another pair of mallards stood and watched us drive by. Nature just kept 'showing up'.

The birds were all pairing up. I silently reminisced about the days that these natural pairings in Nature made me long for a spring romance. This year? I wondered what happens to the older mallard ducks. Do they make the long flight back and forth every year or do they start to 'summer' down south as well? Do they mate until they die? What is retirement like when you are a duck? I choose to think that they spend their summers down south. I don't even think that I will Google that because I don't want to hear that they simply die when they serve their purpose on this earth. I choose to believe that they await the fall arrival of family, friends and new grand (and great, and great-great, and beyond) ducklings.

As I drove down that familiar highway, I was inspired. "I can't wait to get home and write about this", I thought to myself. But I didn't have time.

My new daycare family is keeping me hopping. I am a regular Jack rabbit. Quiet time does not exist unless I sit in the middle of my two newest 'family members' and keep them from bickering and arguing and bugging and taunting each other. I suppose this is a perfect opportunity for me to grab a book and start reading again. I find it very (very!) hard to sit still for an hour when I have an hour and a half's worth of little items that I could be doing during this sacred hour. I miss sitting still with Senior Cat. This used to be our time...

Senior Cat used to lay upon my extended legs and force me to be still during quiet time. The new family is obsessed with bugging our cats and Senior now drops by to give everyone the opportunity to love him. He then chooses me and snuggles up on my lap. But my new family won't leave him alone and then I have to get up for some reason. It is simply not the same. I miss that forced down-time.

The sun has come out to play for two days in a row. This inspired me to sweep out the sandbox. Yes, this probably looks as ridiculous as the time my brother caught my mom sweeping the grass on videotape. We laugh at this. But here I am, doing the same thing (only different).

The winter's snow packs down the sand and enables me to sweep off the excessive pine needles, pine cones and pine fluff from the neighbor's pine tree that overshadows our sandbox. The sand is all swept off now and all I have to do is hoe up the sand to 'fluff it up' for the kids. Then they will throw it. I can see it now. They throw everything. I foresee trouble.

There was a fatal car accident in Our City. Two 17-year-olds were simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time. They did absolutely nothing wrong ... yet they were victims when police noticed a stolen vehicle, turned on their flashers and eighteen seconds later the stolen vehicle had rear-ended this innocent car into a house and two lives were lost and a third is in the hospital, in serious condition. Eighteen seconds! These teens went to the same school as my Youngest Son. The school is in mourning. Teachers are shaken. The halls were silent. Eighteen seconds ... the police simply did their job. An innocent vehicle was involved. Lives will never be the same.

I have had so much to say and so little time to do so. I must wind this up and ready myself for my day.

Oh Blog, I have missed you so! I will be back as soon as life allows it.