Night Terrors (a bit of flash fiction)

Waking from a half-remembered dream, my mind struggles to orient itself, like a drunk concentrating on trying to walk a straight line while actually staggering in all directions. I lie motionless, swathed mummy-like in blankets against the cold. I will myself not to look at the clock, something that invariably kick-starts my mind. If I look, I won’t go back to sleep easily.

2:37 am.

My thoughts shudder slowly to life, wondering fuzzily whether I really need to use the bathroom, how many hours until I have to get up. Since Bryan left, I often wake in the night and as always, I listen to the creaking sighs of everything gradually subsiding from relative warmth to chilly silence until the next furnace cycle. Outside, the wind alternately shrieks and murmurs in its restless quest for something, anything to liberate from its place and relocate in the neighbor’s yard half a mile away. I remind myself to figure out what makes that persistent banging and begin to drift off with the lull in the wind.

The next sound I hear is the low grumble the back door makes when opened carefully.

My house has got a lot of soul!

A room without books is like a body without a soul.
~Marcus Tullius Cicero

A few thoughts on space

The word “space” can mean disparate things. There’s “space: the final frontier”, stretching into unending vastness. There are spacious houses and those without much space. And then there are those spaces both too small and too large, although certainly not infinite or vast.

“Space” can also mean opposite things at the same time.  There’s a space between the counter and the stove. It’s not big, not wide enough for anything substantial to fall through, but a yawning cavern for bits of escaping food. An asparagus end cut off before putting the rest into water, a carrot coin afraid of steaming, anything round and distressingly mobile—all these have plenty space to take the, to them, skyscraper-sized plunge into the depths of that cavern.

The space is too small, however, to easily retrieve the miscreants. A yardstick works best, the only thing I’ve found with the perfect combination of thinness and length to reach down and sweep out. Sometime I use the reach-and-sweep from floor level, pushing everything out to the far side of the stove. It arrives coated with the dust that with unseen, relentless determination finds its way into every space, dustable or not.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Shadowed

TGIF and time for…drum roll, please…the Weekly Photo Challenge!!  The photo challenge is one of the best ways to meet people from around the world as well as to view amazing photos and interpretations of the weekly theme.

This week’s theme is “Shadowed.”  I love photographing shadows and things that are shadowed, so it was difficult to make a choice.  I finally settled on this photo, with its combination of late-afternoon light and actual shadows, enhanced with a bit of editing zoomy-ness.  I love the home-y feel of it.

Getting stoned in France

We arrived!!  We made it to France via KLM, who took great care of us, and have caught up (more or less) on our sleep.  We’re near Ternuay-Melay-et-Saint-Hilaire, in the region of  Franche-Comté (the latter half of that name also the name of a famous cheese.)  There is rather distinctive architecture in this area and one of the main features is the use of stone, which was left by glaciers many years ago.  Here are a few photos from our first foray into the countryside.

Old bread oven

 

Friday Fictioneers–A House is Not a Home

I enter the land of no internet tomorrow as I board the plane to visit my parents in Arizona.  Of course there is internet, but to get it, I have to go to the nearby library or a Starbucks which I’ll do, but not for long each day.  This will be family time and I intend to enjoy it.  I’ll be blogging every day but won’t be able to get much reading done, so apologies in advance.  The almost-two weeks I’ll be there will fly by all too quickly but will be fun, even while I’ll miss Bill.

For those of you not familiar with Friday Fictioneers, a weekly photo prompt serves as the springing-off place of a story of 100 words.  Sounds easy, but it ain’t necessarily so.   You’re welcome to join by going to the home page or just read any other stories by clicking on the link at the end of mine.  Warning!!  It’s very addictive.

My story this week is non-fiction.  We sold our house at the end of August and, in a week, moved from the home we’d lived in for 28 of our 29 married years.  When we put the house on the market, I emailed the realtor once about something at “our home.”  He told me to think of it now as a house, not a home, that you sell a house. “Home” has an emotional connection it’s best you to try to avoid when selling. This story springs somewhat from his wise words.

copyright Dawn at Tales from the Motherland

A House is Not A Home

We found it accidentally shortly after our marriage.  Light streamed in through over-sized windows, sixties-hued carpet concealed hardwood floors, the kitchen sported forest-service green linoleum.  It seemed as if we could never fill the space.

Over twenty-eight years, we chose furniture, gloried in the light, decorated, planted, mowed, set up bird feeders, fostered pit bulls, hosted friends, enjoyed two daughters.  The space filled with laughter, learning and love.  House morphed into home.

When the movers left, light shone in, floors glowed, the paint was perfect.  Memory-filled house, no longer a home, waited emptily.

We drove away.

We didn’t look back.

Just an ordinary, snowy day

Not much going on in our neck of the woods except for snow falling gently throughout the entire day and into the dark of the afternoon.  We got in early this morning from a small, enjoyable New Years Eve party and are both a bit sleepy.  Watching some football, doing a few things around the house, Bill shoveled, snow, then took a bike ride in the 6″+ of snow.  He’s recovering by taking a nap.  🙂  Good New Years Day stuff.  I’m catching up a bit on posts, email and Facebook and haven’t been out of the house all day.  All we lack is a fire in the fireplace.  Nice to just relax.  Bill put several small bottle of champers out in the snow to cool and we’re ready for a lovely evening.  Here are a few pictures from the confines of the house.

This is it!!!

The big news (no pictures today) is that we’ve managed to get our four-bedroom-attic-and-basement house-and-28 years-two-children-in-the-same-house move ready to go in a week and one day.  On Saturday, Aug. 18, we were on the way back from our Wyoming vacation, which many of you have been sharing, (and which will wind up at some point soon), and heard we had an offer. Although it was less than we’d hoped, it was more than more separation in our marriage was worth and we accepted.

We arrived in Naperville on Sunday night, I drove our younger daughter to Philadelphia and school ( 13 hours) on Tuesday, then back to Cleveland on Wednesday and began packing on Thursday morning, a week and day from today.  I had lots of help from Bill and our older daughter on Friday and Saturday and then Bill again these last several days.  Without them, I couldn’t have done an eight-day move.  And that’s not counting the six months it took me to get the house ready to put on the market.  My s-i-l and several friends provided lunch, dinner, moving materials, people to whom we could pass on furniture and best of all, moral support.

The movers come tomorrow  and a day from now (Friday night), I’ll be staying with friends and then driving to Naperville for the beginning of the next segment of our life.  Hopefully, I’ll be doing a bit more writing to go with all the photography I’ve been doing.  Thanks so much for bearing with me while all this is going on and thanks also for all the prayers and good wishes.  It’s so much fun to be in touch with so many wonderful people all over the world via this blog.

Thanks!!!

As Rosemary is to the Spirit, so Lavender is to the Soul.

For your Monday soul…

“And lavender, whose spikes of azure bloom
shall be, ere-while, in arid bundles bound
to lurk admist the labours of her loom,
and crown her kerchiefs witl mickle rare perfume.”

William Shenstone The School Mistress 1742

Photo Friday

And she’s buying a stairway to heaven….