The Joy of Reckless Abandon

Because I’ve been turning to pages randomly, I didn’t realize until I completed this page on Friday that Wreck This Journal comes with a WARNING statement at the opening of the book. It states:

During the process of this book you will get dirty. You may find yourself covered in paint, or any other number of foreign substances. You will get wet. You may be asked to do things you question. You may grieve for the perfect state that you found the book in. You may begin to see creative destruction everywhere. You may begin to live more recklessly.

Well, that explains my nearly uncontrollable actions this past week doesn’t it???

I was also thrilled to see on Keri Smith’s acknowledgment page a dedication to perfectionists all over the world and a thank you to Brenda Ueland–one of the people “whose ideas and perceptions continue to rip [her] wide open.” (That’s one way to put it!) Brenda Ueland happens to be one of MY favorites, too! She was a very spunky writer and the author of If You Want to Write–my favorite book on writing and the creative process. Now I feel like I have two more connections endearing me to the author of Wreck This Journal.

And not only that, my other sister, Darcy is going to join in on the fun! She couldn’t resist buying Wreck This Journal, too. Time for a book par-tay! Wahoo!

Back in the Blogging Saddle Again?

 

Well, I’ve been missing in action from the blogging world for the past eight months and I thought it was about time to make a reappearance even though I am probably only writing this for an audience of one–myself. Any readers I may have accumulated last year are doubtless long gone by now, tired of waiting for this reluctant writer to post something…anything…

Why this sudden interest again in my blog? Julie and Julia. It’s one of those movies that was meant for me to see at this time in my life. It’s a lovely story about a woman named Julie, who in the quest to find something fulfilling to do with her life decides to take on every recipe in Julia Child’s The Art of French Cooking for a year and blog about it. There were countless things in the movie that resonated with me, but suffice it to say, Julie’s need to have a worthy goal and to express herself are two things that I also desperately need in my life right now.

I’m not sure what goal I want to tackle yet. Like Julie in the movie, I’m really good at starting things and not very good at finishing them. I am certainly not at all interested in deboning a duck, cooking a lobster or making boeuf bourguignon, though. I love eating, but hate cooking and all the attendent time-consuming and labor-intensive  things that go along with it. So taking on Julia Child’s cookbook is definitely out for me. Perhaps I can tackle the recipes in the past 10+ years of my cooking magazine subscriptions to Taste of Home, Quick Cooking and Simple & Delicious and try putting something interesting on the table instead of the same old boring fare…

NAH!

I need to do something I feel passionate about, not put what little spare time I have into something that I basically detest. Hmmm…what will it be? There are so very many possibilities :-)!

The Hardman Family Blog

My husband took the initiative this week to start up a Hardman family blog. At least somebody is blogging around here… 🙂

Check out the fam at www.hardmanclan.wordpress.com/

Mi Bolsa

 “As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled.”

-Victor Hugo

The other day, I was chilling out on the front stoop of my house with my toddler and thought to myself, “I could be doing something productive while he’s out here running around.” So I got my overflowing purse out of the van and dumped the contents out onto the sidewalk just to see what had accumulated in there. This is what I found:

• A small, spiral notebook I use for writing down anything and everything
• 5 pens
• A book of selected poems by Christina Rossetti
• My son’s scorecard from his round at the Sandia golf club in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the beginning of August
• My wallet
• A bag of trail mix leftover from our family road trip several weeks earlier
• Receipts for Safeway (5!), Target, the dentist, the college bookstore, Children’s Place, and Ben and Jerry’s
• Coupons (which I get with my Safeway receipts and never use)
• Writer’s notebook (barely written in)
• An old grocery list
• A ticket stub to the Debbie Reynolds concert I attended at the Arvada Center at the end of July
• Appointment reminder cards to the dentist and oral surgeon
• 2 containers of breath mints
• My cell phone
• A $5 bill (a very rare find)
• My teenage daughter’s Jonas Brothers wristwatch
• A kid’s hairbrush
• A small tube of lotion (a free sample picked up in the pediatrician’s office)
• 5 matchbox cars
• A partially-made friendship bracelet (dumped in my purse by youngest daughter)
• A feminine hygeine product
• A Brio-train car
• A small hand mirror
• Girls’ small hair clips
• A blue Crayola marker

I’ve heard it said that you can tell a lot about a woman by the contents of her purse. So what do these items reveal about me?

#1 I spend far too much time and money at the grocery store.

#2 My life revolves around my kids.

#3 I secretly long to live the writer’s life.

#4 I’m too busy to get organized.

#5 I believe a matchbox car (or 2 or 5) can save the day.

#6 You can never have too many pens on hand.

#7 My life is often a tangled mess at times, a receptacle filled to the brim and spilling over.

What do the contents of your purse reveal about you?