Showing posts with label memoirs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memoirs. Show all posts

It's almost...

BACK TO SCHOOL!

When I grew up in Canada, the end of summer and back to school were marked by one glorious long Labour Day weekend, often spent lazing around my grandparents cottage (read about it here) and cramming in just one more weekend of summer goodness mixed with the growing anticipation of fall, felt by cooler nights and witnessed by the leaves beginning to change from bright green and shiny to an array of wonderful fall colours - yellow, gold, orange and red...

Here in Charleston, it's harder to see a definitive end to our summer frolicking - there's no great holiday celebration, the weather is still an almost unbearable mix of heat and humidity every day and the leaves won't change here until just before Christmas, if they do at all... so for the next few days the kids and I are creating our own 'long weekend' and cramming in back to school parties, trips to the water park, last minute shopping and trying to get a few more days to sleep in, although Hubby's back to work schedule is filling up fast after joining us for our month long sojourn back to Toronto...

As a Mom, I am looking forward to my 2 hours of peace and quiet every day and my special afternoon time with Liam for the next few months before Ach Baby makes his appearance but the kid in me is mourning the loss of another wonderful summer too soon....

What was your first day of school like?  What do you do to make the lead up to back to school special for your kids?

I am participating in a couple of blog hops today - if this is your first visit and you haven't gotten enough balance yet, try out these other great reads:



Bassgiraffe's Thoughts Thursday Blog Hop





Lisa's Gluten-Free Advice and Healthy Living - this one is linked to that yummy MMMmonday Recipe 

Writing Memoirs...

In a way, I'm glad I've started blogging now... because I am honing my voice and making a lasting impression of what is going on now ... I was never good at keeping a diary or journal... I guess I'm too much of an exhibitionist for that - I want to share my experiences and not keep them under lock and key... I always started with a blank journal and would get a day or two worth of entries in... and then inevitably the nice new journal wasn't new anymore and became relagated to shopping lists and phone messages...  because there's something about a nice clean start that makes writing easier for me... and I am such a cluttered person that the forced blank page of a blog is probably the better alternative to buying a tonne of journals to write a page or two here or there...
My mom has been after me for years to write books... because I am a voracious reader .... and speedy - I can knock down 'book candy' in under an hour... (read trade romance novels, which my mother got me hooked on at 10 or 11, because I was out of books from the library and bored...) and get through War and Peace in about 24 hours.... but writing is a different entity - you don't just need imagination, you need inspiration... and by choosing to blog about my family and life in general, I find inspiration in everything from watching my children to a cup of tea, to a photograph...
And the bonus of blogging is getting feedback... knowing that I am not the only one reading my thoughts squirreled away in some no longer fresh journal that will be lost in space soon...
I am finding as I explore the blogosphere I am also finding inspiration and encouragement from my fellow bloggers... I am reading more blogs than I ever thought I would when I started mine in isolation.. I had read ocassional blog entries, but never followed many blogs... I have found great blogs to follow though the SITS Girls (The Secret Is in the Sauce), an online community of wonderful bloggy women who comment on each other's blogs and share with each other.  I have also stumbled on several through NetworkedBlogs.com, which is a facebook app and sharing site. 
Today, as I sit in Starbucks, waiting for Wayne to finish in a meeting so I can take him to work (read one car family...) I can put these random thoughts into some semblance of order under the title of Writing memoirs and know that I am leaving both blogdom and my future generations a legacy of my attemts to act balanced... and as importantly, a piece of myself...