Tag Archive: writing

The Ever-Shortening Days of Summer

August 9, 2012

It’s been a long time since my last post. In fact, it’s been almost two months! When I last blogged summer had not even officially begun. School had just ended. Nico and Erica had just graduated from 8th grade and said good-bye to the school and classmates they’d known since kindergarten. Olivia finished her finals and was sleeping away the first days of her summer vacation. I was on a weekend getaway with Juan and Diego to a quaint seaside town in Central California. Best of all I looked forward to the promise of Summer. The possibilities of long, lazy days, free from kids’ homework, sporting activities, and obligations. I looked ahead to warm evenings on my front porch sharing margaritas with my neighbors during impromptu happy hours, family dinners al fresco, and roasting marshmallows on our backyard fire pit. Most of all I looked forward to slowing down and being able to spend some of my evenings writing and savoring the ever lengthening daylight.

My last blog post was just before the summer solistice and the longest day of the year. As I enjoy the lengthening days, I tend to overlook the fact that what immediately follows the longest day of the year, is that the sun sets just a bit earlier, every day. Summer, known for it’s long light-filled days creeps its way to Fall with the light-filled days getting shorter and shorter. Summer days pick up speed as I soak in the warmth of July, and I am surprised by the arrival of August and its accompanying swealtering heat. I was as sad as Diego the other morning, as I drove him to summer day camp in the foothills of the Angeles forest, and he asked me how many more days did he left of summer vacation. When I did the calculations and told him just a little over 20, he replied wistfully, and almost tearfully, “Summer is going by just too fast.” I know Diego. Perhaps, that’s why I haven’t blogged a lot lately. I have been spending my evenings trying to capture summer, trying to stop it and realizing another day is closing before I have even powered up my laptop, I go to bed without writing, resenting the fact that the days are getting shorter, and I am unable to memorialize the season with my words. My blog and I are at a stalemate. Until this morning, when I woke up early, read one of my favorite blogs and felt inspired by these images of summer. I knew I just had to break this stalemate. I knew I had to concede that even though this summer hasn’t been exactly what I idealized, I don’t need to be resentful and I can enjoy what’s left of the season. While I can’t slow the ever shortening days of August, I can look back fondly on the memories we created these past couple of months.

Did you slow down during your summer? Did it go by too quickly?

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Blogging, Children, Holidays and Celebrations, Thoughts, Uncategorized

Paradox

November 22, 2011

My plan was to leave work, come home and make a second trip to the grocery store to pick up the remaining items I needed for my Thanksgiving feast. Then, I would come home and prepare the cranberry sauce, pecan pie, and cornbread. I also needed to help Diego put away his toys which had migrated from his bedroom to the family room. It sounded like a good plan. I’d finish getting this done by 10:00 and then get started writing. I wanted to  finish writing and editing a blog post I had started but not completed.

Olivia came back from her whirlwind weekend in Chicago at a speech and debate tournament. She had a good time and learned a lot. She also came back and was facing a mountain of homework.  Olivia’s plan was to come home, eat dinner, and get started on her homework. One of her assignments was to write an opening paragraph for her paper discussing Hamlet.  Her thesis explored the paradox of love and the love within the dysfunctional relationships between the lead characters. Olivia explained to me that her teacher helped her to understand that a paradox is a set of contradictory ideas or concepts which may, nonetheless, be true.

Olivia was struggling to articulate her thesis. She was becoming frustrated and overwhelmed at all the work she had ahead of her.  I saw her frustration grow and watched, with my own growing frustration, as she kept clicking onto Facebook when she should have been doing her homework.  Finally, she asked me to review her paragraph and we spent the better part of the evening discussing the play, its characters and her thesis. Since I spent the better part of my night discussing Hamlet with Olivia and helping her with her paragraph, I did not get to the cranberry sauce, the pecan pie, or my blog post. But, I did get to understand the meaning of paradox and its application to my evening. Here it is:

The contradictory ideas:

That I can get some writing accomplished this evening.

That Olivia can complete her introductory paragraph on Hamlet this evening.

The truth:

I accomplished some writing this evening helping Olivia with her  paragraph on Hamlet, thus she was able to complete her assignment, and I was able to blog about it.

That is the paradox of my evening.

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Blogging, Children, Thoughts

Happy Birthday to My Blog

May 12, 2011

Today my blog celebrates its one-year birthday. This has to be some kind of record for me, because while I have started countless journals in my life, I have never written enough to keep them going for more than a couple of months before I abandon them to other pursuits.

But blogging has been different. I have posted something just about every month. Some months more than others, but baby steps, right? I  didn’t know it then, but when I started  this blog shortly before my birthday last year I thought I was checking something off my bucket list, and fulfilling this little writing fantasy of mine. It turns out this blog has been more than that to me. Besides finally being able to say that I “write,” blogging has taught me a few more things about myself:

1) I am creative.

When I was younger I would make doll clothes, do needlework, knit, and craft. I would write short stories, and poetry. Over the years I stopped being creative. Except for the occasional scrap booking party, or kid’s school project I stopped making things, I stopped creating. I also stopped writing. Maybe it was when I realized there was a lot of technical craft to it. As much perspiration as inspiration, perhaps? Maybe it was later when my writing was critiqued for poor grammar, and misplaced commas. Whatever. I stopped enjoying it, so I stopped doing it. Blogging has helped me remember of how much I enjoy being creative. And how a little perspiration isn’t such a bad thing after all.

2) I have something to say.

It may not be profound, or funny or amusing, or even interesting, but in my blog I get to say it. Enough said.

3) If you write it they will come.

Even though I had something to say, would anyone listen? I mean, besides my husband who has to listen to me. Based on some of your comments and my growing number of subscribers, someone out there is listening. Thank you.

3) I am (more) present.

My day flies by with work, kids, family, and chores. I am in a state of constant motion and I rarely stop to appreciate a moment, to capture a thought or preserve a memory.  Blogging has allowed me pause and take it all in. Sometimes my thoughts and ideas are fleeting and they leave my mind before I capture it in a post, but more often now I find myself jotting it down and taking time to preserve these thoughts and construct words and phrases about an experience or event in my life and the life of my family.

4) There is community in the blogosphere.

Sure, virtual contact is not the same as human contact but I have built some relationships with other bloggers just by reading and commenting on their blogs. Blogging also has given me a reason to attend blogger events and meet some of the bloggers whose blogs I’ve read, which leads me to my next point…

6) Its a small world after all.

The world is a lot smaller than we think. A few of the bloggers I’ve met ended up living only a few miles from me!

6) You can teach an old dog, new tricks.

Before I started blogging I was pretty good at navigating my way around MS Word and surfing the net, but launching my own blog? I did not know the first thing about it.  Well, it turns out am not as technologically challenged as I thought I was. I have actually had to learn two blogging platforms. I started out on Posterous and then moved to WordPress. Even though WordPress blogging platform is user friendly, it took me over a month from the time I decided to launch my blog and actually posting something. My husband teased that you would have thought I was launching a major website. In reality, I was working up my confidence and familiarizing myself with WordPress. Now that I have been doing this for a year I have learned just enough to be dangerous and throw out words like, URL, domain name, posts, tags, RSS feed.

So, that’s my year in review. I hope you’ve enjoyed something here at my blog. I know I have enjoyed doing it. I look forward to writing more posts and hearing from you with your comments and subscriptions. Thanks for stopping by and sharing this anniversary with me.

Here are a few of my top posts from the past year:

What’s Good About Good Friday?

Mischief Remembered

Tres Generaciones

Date Night Without my Husband

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Blogging, Holidays and Celebrations

Sunday Offerings – The Body/Mind/Spirit Connection

May 1, 2011

Yesterday I went on a women’s retreat put on by the Women’s Community at my church.  I was a little hesitant about going because the last time I went to an all women’s retreat the retreat was organized by a very bible based church,
I was in my 20′s and the women who attended were nearly all  (gasp) women in their 50′s.  Yesterday’s retreat was very different.  The average age of the women was still probably 50+ but somehow now that I am closer to the average age, that wasn’t such a big deal. The bigger difference was the theme and feel of the retreat–no bible thumping, hallelujah-shouting, blue-haired women here. The theme of the retreat centered on the body-mind-spirit connection, and the ritual we all use in getting our bodies in a place to open our minds, and our spirits.

Zelda, a female Episcopalian priest from my church,  led the retreat.  She  helped to show us how some of our daily rituals open our minds and spirit. Something as ordinary like stretching in the morning, or like me, washing my face at night. As I listened to the other women offer examples of daily ritual I realized that I could use some more ritual in my life, something other than the washing-my-face-at-night-before-I-go-crashing-into-bed-and-falling-asleep-as-I-try-to-get-through-my-nightly-prayers. All, too often I don’t even get to the nightly reflection part because I am so tired at that point all I want to do is lay down and SLEEP!

One of the ways we were supposed to use our body’s on yesterday’s retreat was to walk around this amazing retreat center in the San Gabriel mountains very close to my house. Yesterday’s springtime temperatures and clear skies made a glorious day to be walking about the mountains.

Zelda had set up the walking labyrinth, and she set up a trail with small stations along the way.  We were asked to walk the labyrinth or walk along the trail (the body connection).

The labyrinth set up in the shade of the trees.

A steep part of the spirituality trail.

Along the trail Zelda set up “sacred stations,” which were meant to be places where you could stop and wrap yourself in a prayer shawl and meditate on the writings that were placed at each station, or meditate on some of the questions we were given at the start of the retreat, then we were asked to write or draw our thoughts in a journal, (the mind connection).

One of the sacred stations along the spirituality trail

At the end of the two-hour walking and journaling period, we returned for lunch and, if we wanted, we shared our thoughts, and had communion, (the spirit connection). It was a transformative day.

I came away with many thoughts and revelations but one of my thoughts was that I should really practice this more often.  I need more ritual in my life so that I can get to the mind/body/spirit connection. And, as Zelda said, if you say it aloud for the universe to hear then it often works. So, I’m saying it out load to the blogosphere–”I am going to get up a half hour earlier to walk and meditate and journal.” This is huge, because as my husband Juan says, my daily ritual is trying to sleep in as long as possible before I have to start my day. Please pray for me.

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Blogging, Spirituality/Religion, Sunday Offerrings

NaBloPoMo…The End

November 30, 2010

Sixty days ago I launched this blog. Thirty days ago I decided to put my money where my mouth is, my pedal to the metal, and commit to blogging every day, for the month of November. 30 days. 30 posts. Today I am done, finished, stick a fork in me, DONE!

 Participating in the National Blog Posting Month has been a test of my commitment to this blog and a test for me to see how serious I am about my writing. I have started many journals throughout my life, and none of them have daily journal entries. In fact, most of them just died after a couple of months.  So my participation in NaBloPo has been a success as far as I am concerned.  It’s motivated me to post something everyday. I don’t know that it’s been a complete success in getting me to write something good everyday, but that’s okay. Someone once told me that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed to write. So, I guess I am a writer, a little.

 Even though I haven’t penned the great Latina-American novel, writing something everyday has helped nurture my creative side, it’s given me ideas, and motivated me to talk to family members whose own stories need to be told. 

 Being part of NaBloPo has also given me community. The on-line community I’ve met through each one of you who has read my blog or posted a comment to my blog. This was especially evident from all the support and kindness I received after posting about my dog Mischief. I’ve also had community with fellow bloggers who I’ve met through Latina blogger conference, wonderful ladies and writers who support each other, and who are much more advanced than I am in the on-line world of blogging, networking, and Twittering.

 So tonight, I will celebrate the end of National Blog Posting Month with dinner out at a wonderful Mexican restaurant I have wanted to try for a long time. I will be meeting with two fellow Latina bloggers, and maybe they can finally teach me how to tweet.

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