Taking a Break

I am sitting here at my Hoosier in the kitchen on my red stool cutting up apples.  It has been a sunnyish day and a bit warmer.  It feels like an extra day of Autumn. 

The apples were picked from the apple trees we have out back weeks ago.  I stashed them in the basement recently just to get them out of the way, but decided I had better get to work on them before they rot.

I have been slicing off the good parts of the apples for a few hours now and needed to take a break, so here I am.  Cupcake is still snoozing and boys are playing upstairs.  Turkey broth is simmering on the stove to become soup for our dinner tonight.

Sweetheart is chopping wood to keep us warm.  An endless job it is.  Guess it is his version of laundry.

We are strolling along the days, thinking ahead to Christmas.  Except Pumpkin who is completely fixating on TOMORROW when he becomes six.  He has been waiting forever and is not quite sure he can wait so long. 

For some reason I am not as excited about my next birthday as he is.  (40)  I think it has something to do with not having done all I wanted and being who I wanted to be by then.  Guess it is good I have a few months to go.

Yesterday Sweetheart took the boys with him for a few hours.  It was rather quiet around here.  Cupcake slept a good part of the time.  I slept for a few minutes, but spent most of the time sipping tea and hot cocoa and reading Dickens.  I didn't want to waste the quiet by sleeping too much though I was tired.  Cupcake is teething teething teething and has a hard time sleeping through the night from it.  Looking at her gums, it appears as though all the rest of her teeth should be popping in this week.  I wince just to see it.

I finished David Copperfield last night before bed.  I started it at the beginning of the month and so feel quite accomplished to have finished it all so quickly.  ;)  I also read a few Mitford books at the same time.  As much as I enjoy Karon,Gaskell, Austen, and Alcott, I do believe that Dickens may be my favorite author. 

There is so much to each story.  Such a depth of characters and such a variety of them fill each story.  How he weaves so many different threads of storylines together to create such tales is truly amazing to me.  I even just love the names of them all!  They are so descriptive of each person.

Now, it is time to start on his Christmas Stories.  By the way, the DK Eyewitness Book version of A Christmas Carol is extraordinary.  There are so many details given on each page that make it all come to life.  I HIGHLY recommend it for adults and kids and it would make a great read aloud this Christmas season. Just a thought.

Well, the soup is almost ready and Cupcake just awakened so I am off for now!  Sorry for any typos.  No time to edit.  Not that I usually do anyway...

Writing

I love C.S. Lewis' writings, even the ones I have to read again and again to grasp. I was fortunate in college to take an entire class on him. It was wonderful, challenging, humorous and sad by turns, but isn't that life in general?

Here are some of his thoughts on writing.

"Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago."

"What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn't matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page wither of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it's thrown into the fire next minute, I am so much further on."

"I am sure that some are born to write as trees are born to bear leaves: for these, writing is a necessary mode of their own development. If the impulse to write survives the hope of success, then one is among these. If not, then the impulse was a best only pardonable vanity, and it will certainly disappear when the hope is withdrawn."

~from The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves

Graphic: Courtesy of Allposters.com Pendent by Jean-Michel Labat