Julie Unplugged

What Would You Name This Color? Input, Please... for The Day this Color was Made

Do you see the color on the outside walls? What would you call this new color?

Did you catch the recent post about DIY and art projects speaking to you, as if to help you along with the creative process?

 

It’s the wildest thing. I can be moving right along, happy as a creative flea on parade when I get this inkling I ought to try… something. Like today, working on my bookshelves it happened again. These bookshelves were each purchased for $5 from a sale at a now defunct preschool, so I have much more time invested in them than money.

I have to admit, the paint color wasn’t precisely Julie-esque. I do get most of my paint from the “ooops” jars at nearby Lowe’s or from the free paint at the recycling center here at Kern County Waste Management, so to start with my colors may be a bit – well, not all that attractive.

This morning my shorter bookshelf wanted a change. She had given me the idea for a finish yesterday when I was sanding her, so I was a bit surprised she still had advice for her main undercoating color. “Mix a light purple,” I got from her, “by mixing the off whitish sorta pinkish recycled color with the deep purple from the ladder shelves.”

She – my furniture projects tend toward the girly so a feminine pronoun is absolutely necessary – told me to use the ladder purple. My ladders are a deep, rich sort-of-like-eggplant-but-not color.

I don’t make color using any standard measurement, its more “put more paint than you need in this color and mix with just enough color in that, stir and pray!”

Here is a larger photo with the new color. I put another work of art on top of the shelf for contrast. (Plus I love that little girl with the music, what can I say?)

As soon as I started stirring I knew this was a color that is just about as Julie-esque as I can make without having a professional do it. Even more exciting for me is it will go perfectly with my living room décor.

 

My aim now is to get them installed by Tuesday.

Monday would be great but I will be gone for most of Saturday and Sunday so it doesn’t look like that will be happening… I trust my furniture-girls will be telling me exactly what to do next!

 

 

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© 2013

One Tip to Create More Travel Delight: Plan to Not Have Such a Dense Plan

Leaving space for delights & surprises in your travels plans brings big travel bonus adventures!

There are certain techniques I use when I plan a trip.  One strategy is to have succinct, reachable – yet challenging – travel goals. I tend to hit the ground running early, stay out late and come home from vacation needing a vacation to recover from my first vacation. I was reminded recently how important it is to leave space open for surprises and interruptions during travel in order to let unplanned jaunts delight you in ways you hadn’t expected.

In other words: plan to not have such a densely packed plan that it eliminates chances for spontaneity.

My GPS found a place for dinner on the first night of my trip to the Washington, DC area. I found myself in a unique sandwich/salad shop type place in a remodeled house near the corner of two highways.  I liked it because it was locally owned and the people working there were also the owners and nobody could tell I was a tourist. I was content as I ate in what was more a neighborhood joint than a place where people from the other coast wander in for a meal. I didn’t know the trip back to the hotel would be an introduction to one of my favorite surprises of my trip.

The GPS took me a slightly different way back to the hotel. I turned the corner and saw a pond: quiet, serene, with platforms jutting into its waters. “I can literally sit in the pond and write!” I thought.

The park and I were a match made in GPS heaven. I couldn’t stop myself from parking

So much dense green: an unfamiliar sight for this Californian

and taking a few moments to enjoy the setting.

Several mornings later, I found myself back at this park – which I had discovered was called the Ellanor C. Lawrence Park after the wife of a one-time-magazine publisher who donated the land to the city with a caveat being they must keep the grounds in their natural, normal habitat.

Little could make me happier. The next time I visited, I had a plan. Well, I sort of had a flexible, “let’s see what will happen next” sort of plan.

Unfamiliar birds kept me company along the path in the untried to me park. I didn't know it at the time, but this park is home to 133 species of birds throughout the year. One of my new bird friends had feathers of deep bright orange, the embers in the fireplace before you call it a night.

Birdcalls I haven’t heard in decades reach my ears as the leaves whisper, “Hush…. “ to anyone who was listening.

“Toot a loo à Toot a loo à”, says one bird, getting faster and faster until a response comes, “tweet a, tweet a, tweet a.”

I tucked myself away on this bench to "converse" with some of the 133 bird species at the park.

I discovered if I kept my eyes steady, the birds would fly into my line of vision. It seemed when I tried to visually hunt them down, they all disappeared. When I relaxed and stayed still, they were friendly and happy to show me their feathers in yellow, in grey, in black, in ecru and naturally that bold orange, completely different from the finches I feed at home who are also a bold, bold orange.

There was a small, peeping bird. Her call sounded cricket-like and her flight floated up and down and down and up.

I wondered if my hearing had improved or maybe it is just my listening that has become heightened.

I heard birds' feet: those of a yellow breasted bird chased by another yellow breasted bird. They feasted on the shavings of a fallen tree, completely unseen by the jogger who made her way down the same path I was on. The path was moist, not muddy but moist. It called me to the pond but my feet danging aloft from the high bench where I sat whining inside at the thought. My feet, my butt, my heart wanted to stay on the bench, listening.

It was a grey bird with a yellow head that became my magnet as he flew past my ear down the path.

I was surprised as I came out the other side I was at the same place I started two days ago when I first visited Ellanor C. Lawrence Park. The pond, the same nearly covered pond, the same bridge over the creek, the same zen feeling.

I never travel without a notebook. So many insights to record!

I laughed at myself and the situation, sat at the handy picnic table and started to write.

When I created a schedule for my trip to the Washington DC area, I didn’t know this tucked away park existed, yet it became one of the highlights of my trip.

The next time you travel, leave space for surprising locations to call you to attention.

These in-the-moment adventures may be the exact jaunt you really need to take.

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© 2013

Work in Progress: What do you want from me?

Rarely do the best DIY ideas come from my left brain alone.

Today I hit a block with my writing so I went to my backyard studio to work on my bookshelves. I made forward progress on one, whose detail is musical shelves. I was excited about how it was looking but my other shelf stood there looking rather unloved. All she wanted was to be sanded. So I did.  The bookshelf seemed to let out a sigh of relief. I smiled as I heard in my mind’s ear an idea of what to do with her exterior.

 

I am new to the DIY/Upcycling world of taking a used and not-so-lovely piece of furniture and turning it into individualized, functional art. I like to use the upcycling concept in my small works of art – but when I found myself running out of space to put both my art supplies, my books and my works-in-progress, I knew something had to give.

I enjoyed the heck out of my first creation and I got lots of praise for it.

Now I am working on a couple bookshelves for my living room as well as just finishing up some ladder/shelves for both my home but also for art shows. I see my ladders as a moveable, unique shelf system easily transportable even if it is only me doing the moving around.

I do DIY projects because I enjoy them, but I certainly don’t feel expert at it yet.

I have discovered, though, as I get more comfortable with them they have started to “communicate” with me, as if they are letting me know what might be the best finishing touches for them. This is actually my favorite part of the process thus far.

This sort of thing has been going on in my writing for years. You know, those moments of huffing and complaining about “nothing to write about” when kablooey, my pencil gets pulled into the direction of a story screaming, pleading and begging, “Write me!”

The momentum of letting go of my preconceptions and giving the “canvas” more freedom also means I can’t wait to finish and show you (as well as other friends) what I have been working on lately.

I have a feeling by the end of the weekend you’ll have more furniture to look at, which is good, because there are other stacked up projects waiting for my attention, too.

 

In what ways do you give your creative projects in control of your process?

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© 2013

Sometimes It Is Perfectly Right to Be Wrong & Just Let GO!(Destructive Forces, Move Along)

Kat, today's prompt hostess from AugustMoon13, writes: What are three things you would like to let go of before the year is out? See if you can list three physical things and three emotional ones.

Oh, Lordy, sometimes these AugustMoon13 prompts get me right in the lower part of my back – the tender spot right where the bottom of my tailbone rests. I can’t stop the subtle squirming, the just barely there discomfort that makes me want to do anything but sit with the prompt itself and get to the bare bones of what it wants from me.

I picked up this prompt and ran, I ran and ran and ran right off the playing field. I know I’ve seen that somewhere in a movie – a small child has the ball and instead of staying in the play area s/he runs away and like the little piggy ran all the way home.

This is surprising since letting go is a practice of mine.

Eliminating the belief I have control over anything except for my own attitude has helped me maintain my demeanor in many circumstances. Letting control of control of circumstance while staying personally responsible for my actions - this is one of the doorways to freedom.

I can't say I have perfected this yet, but back to the prompt and my non-response so far.

Perhaps my resistance is to the numeric part of it: asking for three tells my inner coach to get busy. Three things: concrete, measurable, meaningful. No concepts like “I want to let go of boring people and boring things” because what does that mean? Could you, beloved reader, know who or what I mean by boring people or things? No. You couldn’t.

So I need instead to say – something concrete, measurable, and meaningful – in that it can be translated easily and well.

First I wrote some pretty rote responses:

“I want to let go of financial fear and replace it with abundance!” I said.

Yes, that sounds perfectly fine.

“I want to let go of excess weight and replace the overweight me with a fit and sassy me!”

That is sort of specific, right?

And then I realized the “what I wanted to let go of” all seemed to fall under one

Letting Go of Being Right - Yes, it is FINE to be WRONG!

category – destructive forces.

“Fear” - a four letter word blanket over much of the darkness it sees  won’t cut it here for me because “fear” isn’t always destructive. Sometimes fear is very, very constructive as strange as that may sound for some of you. When fear is a motivator – for me that usually looks like “I am going to show that schmoe what is true and what isn’t!” the more conscious me would say, “What is up with you letting that Schmoe scare you for in the first place? Stand tall!” AND I have to confess, I have often used the fear of Schmoe being RIGHT about me to become fully engaged and overcome a fear directly.

I remember, for example, when I was starting out as a life coach. I filled my practice really quickly and easily, which I didn’t know was an anomaly for other coaches. My trainer looked at me and said, “You can’t do that!” and when I responded, “Well, I did and I am…” and I immediately felt ashamed.

Can you believe that?

I was ashamed of myself for doing something so remarkable my trainer didn’t believe it could be true. But it was true. I had accomplished this on my own using my abilities and instincts. This could have been seen as a cause for celebration but instead, it somehow hooked my trainer’s fear which he then projected onto me.

His "You can't do that!" was a destructive force, spewed from this mouth I respected as a naive newbie.

My long-lived (and often undercover) nemesis, “I-am-wrong-Girl” literally leaps in delight when someone tells me something like this, even and especially when the natural response would be rejoicing.

Today after I first started sorting this out, I made up a mantra which I have been using off and on all day: “Destructive Forces, Move Along! There is nothing for you here!”

I noticed my smile widening with each proclamation.

I almost don’t want to post this, because I am not being exact. I am not saying “Here are the three!” but this Breakthrough that I had about “Destructive Forces, Move along!” - if Breakthroughs could be Personified -  rises up and giggles, “Post this. You responded just right, lovely one!”
 

I will be continuing with this theme (and watch for more posts on the topic) as I play around with the Destructive Forces Be Gone! Theme. I want to make some sort of an art work around it, too – and use it as a visual reference, especially when the going starts to feel like quicksand, pulling me underground and gasping for air.

Come to think of it, I don’t even know if quicksand really exists. I think it is something else the Destructive Forces have told me was there via Gilligan’s Island and other ridiculous television shows of my childhood. Be gone, destructive foes in my memory! There is no place for you here!!

The image you see in purple above is my first attempt to make a visual symbol. I like it and hope you do, too.

And thank you, friends from AugustMoon13. Even when I start with running off the playing field, I eventually turn around with my baskets overflowing with word love and insight flowers and giggles straight from my belly to yours.

# # #

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© 2013

How Will You Invest Your Irreplaceable Light of This Day?

Give this some contemplative time to reflect and consider: How will you invest your irreplaceable light of today?

Yesterday morning I sat on my front porch and watched the colors of sunrise which were indescribable. What would one call the light coming off the clouds? The most gold rays hadn’t come through so it was primarily a pure high note of color. I could use a metaphor of “invocation” if I was feeling church-like. I could use a metaphor of “preface” in the next great book to come, I could use the “prelude” from the Sound of Music if I was having a musical theater morning.

None of those fit exactly, though, and my reverie was shaken by an upset Emma and the need to move beyond my porch and into the rest of my life.

It wasn’t until this morning, yesterday’s tomorrow, that I noted I hadn’t even sat at my keyboard since yesterday’s ripped from the porch reverie moments, trying to be super Mommy and wipe my child’s early frustration from the whiteboard of her day.

Twenty four hours had elapsed since I sat here and wrote a word.

I had texted and tweeted and photographed, but I hadn’t sat here in my chair and “spoken” to you, beloved reader.

Last night I watched the sunset, too. I noticed the different texture and tone of the goodbye of August 26 that was so different than the texture and tone of the hello of August 26.  It was burnt orange and red the closer it got to its final word.

The initial descent had a similar vibe to the morning: optimism still steadfast as I clicked my first photo from the close-to-my-house bluffs.

As it came closer to the horizon, the deeper more insistent colors took hold.

The sense of urgency now held the sun and held my eyes, “What have you done with me?” it asked.

“How have you invested these precious hours of light?”

Interesting, in retrospect, that yesterday was tangled up in so many things other than writing, what I lovingly refer to as my anchor art.

I had, however, collected notes in my mind, as Miss Prism reminds us in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest, “Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.”

How blessed am I to carry the memories of yesterday’s sunrise and sunset and deliver them back to you?

I think last night’s sunset is smiling, saying “Yes, you invested our moments well.” I did choose, after all, to experience both the sunrise and the sunset. Both transitions were brand new while also compellingly ancient in their retelling.

Maybe you are reading this after the light of one day has faded, in the respite of the darkness and waiting for your next day to arrive.

How will you invest (spend, use, empower, devote, endow) your irreplaceable hours of light?

Maybe your day is just beginning. The same holds true for you: How will you devote your irreplaceable hours of light?

For each and all of us: How will you use your irreplaceable hours of light?

The sum of your days and how you spend them lead, as always to, “How do you truly want to endow and empower your life?”

# # # # #

 

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© 2013

 

How to Never Be Bored Again: Embrace the Joy of Being Quirky

Raise Your Hand if You Never Want to Be Bored Again!

I will be the first to raise my hand and admit to being more than just a little bit quirky.

I wonder if you will be surprised to hear it is that very quirky nature of mine that keeps me from ever being bored.

I’m not overly fond of being called “weird” or “nut job” or “strange” but quirky, charming, unique – these I will take.

Being this way means I am attracted to some rather unusual subjects which usually boil over into one or more of my creative projects. Here’s what I mean:

I love finding strange, beat-up and not entirely legible signs along the roadside that point to either something that no longer exists or something that is an eraser smudge of what it used to be. Since I live in Bakersfield, California, the majority of such signs are right here within the range of my normal, everyday activities.

Today one of my activities was dropping sixteen-year-old Emma off for her final performance of “Les Miserable” at a high school far from home. I have become rather expert in the drive and usually take it from one of three ways, specifically so I can see more and also so I get less bored.

This Quirky Pig was once the Logo for the Kern Valley Packing Company, since 1915!

I had been having a happy celebration in my mind when I started thinking of the photo challenge I am currently participating in called AugustBreak13. I was thinking, “Sound, I need to find something related to sound,” when out of the corner of my right eye I saw… this pig, up in the air. 

Given my unconventional leanings, this meant I had to take a short detour to come to know this sign better. The back of the sign, the one which faces sweet, gentle sunrise versus tired, cranky late afternoon into sunset, told more of the story:

The Eastern Facing Side of Quirky Pig was much easier to read....

Over the past few months I have found these signs fascinating:

In Oildale, I noticed an old ice cream joint:

 

Another find on my way to and from Emma’s rehearsal and straight out of the grapes of wrath:

This treasure is easily missed... the Kern Motor Inn... South Union in Bakersfield

And finally, there are my beloved shopping carts. Since I discovered a shopping cart library last Spring on the way to my daughter’s school last Spring, I’ve been addicted. Last night I found a lonely shopping cart from the Tractor Supply Store – you can’t get much more Bakersfield than that –

I Never Stage My Shopping Cart Photos - it is as if they pose and wait for my attention.

and I could swear I could hear it humming country and western music as I snapped photos of it.

Here’s a challenge, a dare perhaps – for you.  You see, I don’t understand when people say they are bored or that the places they find themselves are boring. I don’t live in a space of that ever being a possibility.

Allow yourself to join me in the consciously lived space of, “Oh, that’s interesting…” which yes, I actually say aloud.

Instead of talking yourself into being bored by saying, “I am bored” or “This is boring” talk yourself into making your life a daily treasure hunt for quirky, oddly wonderful things that catch your attention. You know those things that make you smile and you don’t know why they do?

Become even more aware of those and get to know how easy it is to eliminate the whiny “I am bored” persona from your life.

 

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© 2013

 

 

 

 

 

Such a Word: Yearning. Such a Deep Chasm. What an Incredible Gift.

This is me, three days after melanoma surgery last September. My tactic in 2012, after my melanoma surgery, was to shut off yearning.

I read the prompt from Meredith today for AugustMoon13  – all about yearnings: what did I yearn for last January, what do I yearn for now, what has changed? Or something sort of like that. I actually read it and closed it, read it and closed it, read it and closed it, which started my repetitive phrasing here and the search for quotes from women writers I respect.

 

This is actually what Meredith wrote:

                                Have you developed new yearnings so far this year? Let go of old ones?

Yearning.

 “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

Yearning.

“Why is love intensified by absence?”
― Audrey Niffenegger

Yearning.

“How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.”
― Sylvia Plath

Such a word.

“I didn't know then what I wanted, but the ache for it was palpable.”
― Sue Monk Kidd

Such a word.

“I am tired, Beloved,
of chafing my heart against
the want of you;
of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.”
― Amy Lowell

Such a word.

“Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there’s no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It’s loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.”
― Margaret Atwood

Yearning is one of those words that is so deep – it is one of those words that makes a slow, careful incision in my chest, intentionally scoops out my innards and then leaves me hollow inside but all stitched up, almost like new again.

I found a quote from a writer who is not a woman and it was as if a hole was punched into that hollow shell.

“Unopened gifts contain hope.
”
― Jarod Kintz

Maybe this is why I have pushed my yearnings away or haven’t chosen to recognize them as such. If I open the gifts of my yearning, the hope, my warped belief taunts, will vaporize.

It is so interesting that AugustMoon13 arrives right on the year anniversary of my melanoma and very close to the two year anniversary of the darkest day of my life, September 30, 2011. On that same day, a giant sequoia fell along the trail of 100 Giants at the Sequoia National Monument.

My hypothesis is my heart was squeezed flat by my circumstance at that same moment that giant tree fell.

Because of my melanoma, I stepped aside from a lot of my usual activities and cocooned with myself and my children. I stopped my involvement in theater, I stopped working with coaching clients, I stopped teaching almost all of my classes.

Here I am, writing at Workhouse Arts Center. This was once a notorious prison where suffragists were force fed and held illegally. Now, it is a space for artists to thrive.

This choice allowed me the space to if not examine my choices with a searchlight and a magnifying glass, it did allow me to gently watch the unopened boxes accumulate.

 

That’s where I am now. Sitting here, surrounded by unopened gifts of hope which I now know will not vaporize, just like hope will not vaporize for you, either.

The quotes from all these glorious women writers appear to be written with the yearnings aimed at another human being to complete her in some way. My yearnings are not for another, my yearnings are for me to come even more deeply into myself and to continue to examine, gently, what I offer the world in me simply being me using the gifts of my unique circumstances and my one-of-a-kind way of looking at the world.

I look at the last quarter of 2013 with a completely different perspective I looked at the last quarter of 2012.

In 2012 I yearned to surrender and retreat, to not be compelled to be responsible to anyone or anything beyond myself and my children.

In the last quarter of 2013, I am looking toward the “What can I do with what I have in the circumstances I find myself in?”

I am facing at least one more surgery. I don’t want to retreat this time nor do I want to surrender nor do I want to fight. I want to stand, strong, with gifts opened and unopened, knowing each gift of yearning offers me and my world more light and love and hope and authenticity than I can put into words right now.

 

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© 2013

 

 

Not a Quick Jaunt AND Well Worth the Visit: Mount Vernon, the Washington's Virginia Home

An impressive view of the Mount Vernon George and Martha Washington called home.

I have spent almost my entire adult life driving my children to school on Mt Vernon Avenue here in Bakersfield. In fact, this is the first year of my entire mother-of-school-children-career that I haven’t done the daily Mom Schlep to the street with the important name.

 Perhaps that was one of the things that drew me to visit George and Martha Washington’s Mount Vernon when I visited the DC area this Summer. Well, the coupon on my rental car reservation also helped.

I thought it would be a quick jaunt down US History Lane.

Once again, I was wrong.

Someday I will get this all down but for now, no. I was very, very wrong.

I wish you could smell this as well as see it. Beautiful!

Mount Vernon is not just a little house one visits, tucked away on a country road. It is a grand estate, a mini-town. There is industry, commerce, horticulture and unsurpassed beauty as well as a large house which is in the midst of being renovated. My history books didn’t go into much of this, perhaps because history books when I was young passed up social history altogether.

 

I didn’t know, for example, that Washington wanted to be remembered as a gentleman farmer. On his property was a very high tech (for the time) green house. There were several gardens where they grew vegetables, herbs and flowers.

I spent most of the time I was there with my jaw dropped.

I hung out with a blacksmith for a few minutes and talked to the gardening caretakers. I took not nearly enough photos.

Now this is what I call a writing porch!

I highly recommend you pay the extra fee for the audio tour. You learn so much with your carry-able tour guide, all the tiniest details and great nuggets for conversation if you are with others. If you have children, they can share the responsibility for holding the audio wand and pushing the buttons which correspond with areas of note as you traverse the estate.

 

The back porch is more than expansive and looks out on an enormously inviting lawn. There are chairs set up in a row for your group to sit in and I saw more than several children playing on the lawn. I can’t help but think that would make Martha and George happy.

The tour of the home is one of the better tours I have been on and yes, I have been on many. Instead of being with one tour guide, the group moves from room to room where the specialist in that room tells you about it. There are items the Washington’s owned as well as period pieces.  My favorite single item was a gift from Lafayette to the Washingtons. I am purposefully not telling you so you will find out on your own visit. The lack of interior photos is because they are not allowed. Go visit, go visit! *Happy smiles*

I also loved hearing about the hospitality of the day. It reminds me of what I experience with couch surfing. Someone arrives at the door, you welcome them, give them a place to sleep and get to know them for a bit. Instant friends, momentary family or icy frenemies all gather around the table. Oh, to be there at that time.

Unfortunately my photo of the dorm style part of the room was blurry. One of the informational boards told me the children slept on the floor.

On my private audio tour I visited the houses where the slaves of the Washington’s lived, in two separate dormitory style cabins. One was for the men and one was for the women (and very young little boys). These were the slaves that worked in the home and around the estate, so we are told their living quarters were rather fine. The homes belonging to the people in the vicinity were not as grand as these and I can only imagine what the living quarters were like for the people working the fields.

 

There is so much to see in the Washington, DC area AND I was so glad I took (not enough) time to see Mount Vernon. It created context for every other place and monument I visited while I was there. I will definitely return.

 

The Washington Monument is currently being restored

 

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© 2013

She's Living My Dream..... another Story for the Emma & Family Vault

I don’t know what I was so worried about with her transferring schools!

Sixteen-year-old Emma is living my dream.

She is obviously much more resilient than I was and she also knows how to make people enjoy her presence in class.

On her second day in the chemistry class, the teacher told them to break into small groups to complete a specific task. She hadn’t even had time to think of which group to join when a deep voice came from behind her saying, “Emma, come on, Emma, we’ve got you.”

My Emma found her way into being recruited to a group that consisted of five brawny football players and her.  I know, you’re thinking, “Julie, you are a feminist, how can you have dreams like this, carryovers from high school and all?”

It isn’t that I want to take chemistry or am interested in working alongside a bunch of brawny football players now, but I would have been thrilled if it was high school and this was the case for me. There are a few problems with my dream though: we didn’t have brawny football players at my high school, we had lanky surfers with long hair falling into their faces.

You know, I was just thinking how it does smack of equality – young men valuing a young woman for her brain as well as her ability to be curious, insightful and very quick with the one-liners and jokes.

We are on Day Four and so far there have been no bad days. Yesterday she didn’t want to talk about her day, but considering her schedule with so many late nights and performances for the past few weeks, I would barely be able to walk if I was her.

Yes, sixteen-year-old Emma is living my dream.

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© 2013

 

Whichever Way My Heart Rides the Wind...... I Go.....

One of the reasons I love my GPS is the surprising directions she offers takes us to places.

Last Summer my children and I ventured out to a Feline Zoo, where endangered wild cats breed or find safety in an effort to keep these cats alive on our planet.

We had to go to a fairly unpretty city about ninety minutes away from Bakersfield called Rosamond. I could have taken the directions the college professor gave us but instead, I turned on Charlotte, my car – whose GPS voice is hers, I am sure of it, directed us to slice through the hills in Tehachapi, right through an enormous wind farm.

It was almost like riding a submarine through deep levels of the sea you have never been before. Everything is different and slightly ethereal. There was one point I had to stop driving to take photos.

My children are used to this.

They have come to enjoy my quirky need to pull over, to look, to breathe, to let my heart ride wherever way the wind is blowing.

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© 2013