Okay, today I am on the road coming home from my visit to my Dad. We had a great time and I enjoyed my visit with my family immensely. We weren’t able to get up there the whole year. We’d tried at Christmas but the snow storms heading in made us rethink our decision.
Now a friend and I had managed to breeze through in June when we took some things up to her son in Montana. That was a trip as we did 2300 miles in three days. Yeah, we basically started at around noon on a Friday and was home by Monday late evening. We had a great time but the whole thing was very, very rushed.
I was wonderfully surprised by the weather this time in Idaho. We had a wonderful cool streak which is apparently rare for Idaho Falls and August. My husband and I got to do morning walks though he added a run to his exercise as well. The only bad thing about the trip has been the fact we had to leave our puppy home. But he needs more socialization as well as training before we make the family deal with him on anywhere but his own home turf.
Today, I had originally planned to have a wonderful steampunk excerpt for you from a great new author. Unfortunately, it’s at home on my other computer. When I went to look for it, I was severely bummed as I had really wanted to post it. Have you ever had that moment right before you realize you’ve forgotten something very important? I got that this morning as I ran through all the spots I might have saved it on my travel machine. Ugh, it wasn’t there and I just had to come up with something new and fresh.
Now, I have a lot of fresh ideas but most of them have to do with my writing. Again, I have been pleasantly surprised as my idea file filled up even more and stories I’d been plotting on for months, who had run into dead ends, have gotten some new life after this trip. Yeah, team Lynn! One of the hardest things a writer can do is to not come up with new and fresh ideas. This can be frustrating and downright disheartening for those who need the ideas to flow so they can be creative.
I will never have the idea problem as I’ve said before. Maybe I should auction some of those ideas off as I have way too many to ever write. And that would include me being able to do a short every couple of days to finish all those ideas. I usually go sifting through those ideas once a month or so to see if something is calling me as I do finish a story once a month. It’s the editing and fixing and cleaning up that’s the problem.
I write fast and I write ugly but when I edit I am through. I try to get everything my critique partners tell me is wrong fixed then I run it through my own special brand of cleaning. This involves a whole set of rules and highlights and other things I run the finished product through. I can take almost a week, sometimes more to get the work into shape for me to turn into my publisher. Then there is their rounds of edits. It’s a thorough process which produces some good work.
Again, I’ve put in pictures throughout this blog of Idaho and the places I’ve been on this and precious trips. What are some of your best memories of vacations? Long or short…a vacation should be a restful experience…LOL! Have you ever had those trips where you need a vacation from the vacation? Let me know some of those and the one who gives me the best story will get an extra five entries into this month’s drawing!
See you all tomorrow with that steampunk excerpt. Have a great Monday!
Lynn
I came up on Friday to visit my Dad as he turned 76 this week. We’re taking him out tonight to celebrate and I couldn’t be happier. However, to my Dad, it’s just another year, which makes me very sad.
I read an article once about how an older man had cared for his wife until the end and it made me cry. What really made me cry was to realize that article could have been written about my father. I’ll relate a little of the story here.
My parents married when they were fairly young and lived in a small Ohio town where they raised their children, me and my brother, until 1969 when they moved us to the southwest and Sin City. My parents did everything together and a day didn’t go by without them saying they loved one another. Yeah, living with my parents was hard at times but I always knew they loved us.
Fast forward to when my mother turned 53 and Dad 58. They were going to retire but Mom had been having issues for a few years. Lots of memory problems and I knew where that one was headed. She asked me once if I thought she was going crazy and all I could say was I knew she was ill. They had it confirmed when she was 53...Alzheimer’s...and medicine she couldn’t take. My father dug in for the long haul and cared for her until her death in 2005. He was then and still now, my hero. If you ever read a book called The Dragon’s Lady in the near future about a dragon named Alfred, you’ll know that’s for my Dad.
That same year my mother died, Dad fell in love with a wonderful woman who loved to travel and hanging out with him. I didn’t know Patti well but the very fact she made my Dad happy after the experience with my mother, made me joyous. Unfortunately, she had a reoccurrence of her cancer and died August of the same year as my mother.
Dad was devastated and I didn’t know how to help him at all. I would have taken all his pain away if I could. I would have done it for him but I couldn’t. He stayed here in Nevada for another year and a half before he pulled up stakes and moved to Idaho to be near my brother. We helped him buy a home there and try to get to visit him as much as we can. The pictures are from our various travels there. It’s cool and green and I like it to a point. The mountains are much too far in my opinion so I could never live where he does, but I could live close. LOL!
We’ve had a great visit so far and hope to have many more! Have you talked to your parent(s) today? If not, make the effort...it’ll do wonders for your heart...have a great day!
See you all tomorrow!
Lynn
Sorry this is so late today but I went on a whirlwind trip this past weekend to Montana with a friend. We were delivered her oldest son’s things as he had decided he wanted to move there permanently.
The trip itself was beautiful as we went from the desert to high desert to mountain landscapes. The only problem was we did 2300 miles in about three and a half days. This meant very little out of the car time for either of us. Needless to say, we both came home with huge backaches and needed to go to the chiropractor right away. LOL! But we did get wonderful scenary and even saw a moose or two. Yes, that is a picture of a moose taken from a distance.
It’s amazing just how much a human body can take but cooped up in a car even with seats with a lot of padding, it takes a toll on one. By the last day when we stayed in Idaho Falls with my Dad, we both felt like we’d been beat and couldn’t wait to get home. There’s something to be said about one’s own bed.
The most valuable item I received on this trip was the rejuvenation of spirit. It’s hard to fill one’s cup up every day with a new take on writing. I hope you agree that today’s quote goes right along with this thought:
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. ~Anton Chekhov
Isn’t this what we’re supposed to do as writers? We need to make sure our readers can participate in the very story we give them. This is why we show all that happens within our pages.
What was your longest trip? How did you survive it?
See you all tomorrow!
Lynn
