My friend wrote a book

A friend of mine recently wrote a book. It isn't published at the moment but BAM!!!! She wrote a book, just like that!!! I was and am so impressed. I haven't read it but the fact that out of nowhere she sat down and wrote a book and is now looking at how to market it to publishers is endlessly exciting. At the end of our get together the other day we made a giggly promise to one another to be 'more ambitious'. We also promised one another that by the time that we next meet up, we will have something to report that reflects this new 'ambition' that we have committed to. With that in mind, I haven't been able to stop thinking about Susie Sue and the soon to be sequel. Ideas have been buzzing around for some time but I haven't done much more than put a few narrative ideas on paper. At the week-end however I was newly inspired after a quick road trip to visit Page 45, the only shop 'comic shop' I know that doesn't smell of fart and that I'd happily hang out at all day long! Maybe my book could be about an angsty artist/father, who bundles his wife and kids into their car for a quick road trip to explore the city where he truly discovered his Artist calling and that led him to create an independent label that releases and publishes art and music .... Oh wait, that's just what our saturday looked like and it was fun, fun, fun. I love an impromptu trip down memory lane, I love an impromptu road trip!

NB I love an impromptu blog post too but it does however mean that my phone cable is downstairs and my legs won't consider budging from my bed, therefore I can't upload photos of said road trip here tonight! Don't worry, tomorrow's another day, another blog post to be eeked out!

I love the way my heart goes *ping* when reading a great book

I explained recently that I am once again falling in love with reading. It has been a long time coming and now I am in the throes of it! My heart and head were restless last night knowing that I only had a few chapters left of a book, a piece of fiction no less, that I began reading on a train journey a week ago. So, at 2.30am I was suddenly and completely awake, heart pounding with the strongest urge to finish that book and so that's what I did! I love the solitariness of reading. It has come at a time where I feel the need for a little reflection, a time where I could use some escapism as I contemplate what the future holds for me as the time draws closer for that last fledgling of mine to begin school. It also comes at a time of year that just might be the most exhausting, those last weeks before the summer holidays. I am trying to support and guide all three men in my family through these last days, seeing in each of them a need to rest, to sit and sit and sit, to just 'be' without any great restrictions of space or time. 

So today I am being quiet, conserving my energy as the time draws in for the holidays to begin. There is school to complete and two birthdays to celebrate, a fourth and a seventh and I have not been in party planning mode. Perhaps I am just pacing myself because you see those boys of mine will always have their birthdays two days apart and there are many, many more birthdays to come. I don't much fancy the birthdays of times past where I have stayed up till 2am making cakes, making up party bags and planning crucial games. I say this but already the crazy mama in me is twitching, she will not be able to resist I am sure. In previous years I have always woken up around 4am on each of the boys birthdays, that eldest boy of mine was born at 4.39am and that youngest one at 4.20am, strangely my body and inner clock remember this and stir to remind me of it. I'll be awake anyway and so I may just make cake, why not! So, off I go now to continue enjoying and absorbing the silence that currently fills my home. In the coming weeks, this silence will seldom fall and certainly not during the daytime and so now I am still, I am silent, I am alone .... and it is bliss, sweet bliss.