“Do the next thing”

I’ve moved my blog to this new location:

http://dothenextthings.blogspot.com/

All of my old posts and comments have been transferred over.  Hope to see you there!

I just found this post in my archives labeled as pending.  I was supposed it in October of 2007 but never did.

“Ok, I just can’t function at such and extreme level of concern for politics and the future of our country.  It is daunting and there is nothing I can do about it from here.  So, I’m just going to knit.  When I knit, I often pray…when I’m not knitting with friends…then I talk…or listen to them talk.

Look what I found!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT5MFdAB7fI

You must see these miniature knits.  I’m not kidding.  This person is knitting with thread and straight pins!!  Seriously!  They are adorable!!”

So Anna and I were riding along home.  Not really home, but to a place that many of us call home.  Some of us agree that as we make this trip, the realities of our day to day lives fall away to make room for the memories, and the potential, or almost certainty, of making new ones.  Certainty?  Well, maybe not.  Hope? Yeah, that’s it.  I drive on with a foot pressing harder the pedal that barrels our vehicle along, as if doing so will get us there faster.  Yet, faster won’t work, because our thought need time to change.  Time to transition into the slower pace of the land of our past.  For those we visit, it is their home, their current life, their day to day place.  For us, it is a page out of a history book and we are adding footnotes by our arriving, staying a bit, then leaving.

In our ears as we traveled, spoke the words of a book.  The miracle of technology connecting the words of a book through the speakers.  Christy.  Catherine Marshall.  Cutter Gap.  As we meneuvered the last leg of the trip between Kingfield and Stratton, the reader’s words narrated as if she were with us, telling us the story that was flying around in my mind.  As she spoke of the mountains I saw our mountains.  I was lost in the sight of the birches against the deep green of the evergreen, and the muted salmon color of the remaining low growing foliage.  A recent snow smoothed things over giving the final touches to that landscape painting that was to our right and to our left.  It was familiar.  It was mine.

I was going home.

Another day of sorting out reality.

Is it possible to be too transparent with those around you? Sometimes I think I say too much about how I feel and regret it.  I don’t know.  Time will tell if it comes back to bite me.

Adam just got back home from another night shift at Bean’s….the classic seasonal job for Mainer’s who are in between jobs or looking for extra income.  They all get laid off in January, with rare exceptions.  Adam hopes to hear from more substantial job prospects in the days and weeks ahead.

Christmas is still coming and I don’t want it to.

I feel the weight of the country on my shoulders. How am I “celebrating” Veteran’s Day? What? Get up in the morning, clean the house, do some grocery shopping and forget about that fact that the four men in my life could get deployed at any time and there is nothing I can do about it. I can’t wait until tomorrow when the focus is off of the down and dirty reality of my life.