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Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Currently


Exhausted November has passed by in a blur of goodness. Or at least I think it was good, I have been super busy but have a hard time remembering why. I do know last week I celebrated two Thanksgiving dinners which were both filled with amazing food and awesome friends and family!

Packing or at least I should be? We are hoping to move in December but it is still unknown due to waiting for our kitchen to be built. Plus I may be procrastinating a tad. I know organizing and packing our stuff will be a huge task that I’m not looking forward to. We are only moving a few miles away but I want to clear out a lot of our stuff and try to make it easier on us unpacking. Otherwise I would just run through the house throwing everything rather unceremoniously into boxes. There’s still time, I may still end up doing that.

Eating things involving leftover turkey and pumpkin. Its the end of a long, busy month, and there’s plenty of leftovers to be had!

Writing or not actually writing. Sadly with all of the holiday craziness I fell behind in my word count goal to meet at the end of November. It's looking doubtful I will meet the deadline, but I will give it my best shot!

Listening to Christmas music! I don’t know when I started loving Christmas music, I’m thinking it was somewhere around the time Michael Buble released his Christmas album. Now I have quite the collection. I want to name them all because I love them and want you to love them, but here I am, showing self control. (I will email you the list if you really want to know)





Crafting has taken a break this week. I did pull out my knitting (and by knitting I mean I am still working on the same scarf I started 2 years ago- my first knitting project ever) I want to finish it because I have plans. Bigger and better plans. Seeing that Christmas is coming up, this week I plan on getting all my Christmas crafts together. Time to pull out the advent calendar!

Celebrating Thanksgiving is over and its time for Loy Krathong. In Thailand it is one of the biggest holidays and is the celebration of light. All of the fireworks and lanterns are breathtaking as they are constantly being launched into the night sky. As much as Thanksgiving is the precursor to Christmas, Loy Krathong has joined the line-up and it truly won't feel like the Christmas season without celebrating Loy Krathong. It is simply stunning.



[Currently blog inspired from Adventure + Ink]

Yours Truly,
Kara

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Failures as Mom

Lately I have struggled, awkwardly, through answering the questions “what do you do during the day?” or “what does a typical day look like for you?”. First off, I find it such a strange and rather personal question but in the last month I have been asked it several times. As of late it has especially been difficult to answer because I am not particularly pleased with the answer. Because if I answer honestly it feels like I am giving rights for judgement to be passed on me. I feel like the true question is “what kind of mother are you?”

The thing is that I know that is not what they really mean, but while my brain racks to think of what to confess to, I don’t admit to how often my son watches movies because I am afraid of how poorly that will reflect my parenting, or how messy my house is more often than not.

What is the right answer? I know I have this ideal of the type of mother I ought to be, which might be as extreme as a 50’s housewife. Nonetheless, I live with a sort of guilt that I am not able to do it all, that sometimes instead of cleaning the house I take a nap or spend too much time on Pinterest.

Most of all I regret how very often I say “no” or “not right now”or “maybe tomorrow”. The days are too short, time slips by too quickly; me, floundering to grab hold but never being able to get a firm grip.

What I am deciding in all of this, is to choose to be glad that I am not content with my life as it is. I want to always strive to do better, to be aware of the things in my life that need to go or that I could learn to do differently. While I may be at a place, currently, where I can see a lot of things that need to be thrown out or changed about my everyday life, I choose to let go of the guilt. It holds me back, making it more and more difficult to invoke positive changes.

I guess this post is for me more than anything. Thanks for bearing with me on this, even if its scattered and incomplete.

And wrapping up so I can get off my bum and tackle this messy house.


Yours Truly,
Kara

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Fiction

As some of you may know I am participating in Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month), which, as you may be able to guess, is writing a novel in a month. Or more specifically writing 50,000 words in the month of November. Its a time for writers to come together and write with reckless abandon, forgetting punctuation, spelling and too often their own plots. 

This may be the reason why I have been lacking in the blogging area. So rather than procrastinating, because my creative processes are so consumed by novel writing, I am pulling out the archives and am sharing a story I wrote a few months ago.

I have written this sentence ten different times! I am super nervous about putting my writing "out there" even though I know most of you who read this are my family and friends. But it still gets my heart racing and worrying. Well without further ado, and before I change my mind....


The Burden of Life

Tears and sweat ran freely down Beth’s cheeks, spreading the streaks of dirt she hadn’t bothered to wipe away. She was surprised by being able to produce any more tears, if only she could drown in such.

The gray-cast morning offered a gloomy light for her morbid task. The Monday morning air was fresh from the night of rain, fog still remained hiding the rest of the village from sight. A distant wail of anguish echoed across the hills, but Beth paid no heed to it. There was nothing she, or anyone else could do. There had been nothing for anyone to do for her either. She was left alone with her anguish, her wails silenced days ago.

She hurried to finish so she would be gone before too many others joined with their own tedious work.

Day number seven. Over a week ago her life had reason to fear and worry, now her worry lay dead, her fears a haunting truth.

Today she buried her baby. Yesterday had been her husband and her fifth. The day before that- she couldn’t remember. This week of hell had melded together into one unimaginable nightmare.

Her warm tears flowed anew, clearing the dirt from her face. The grave master had helped her with several of the graves, somehow he had managed to be unharmed from the disease, as did she.

She thrust the shovel hard into the soft mud kicking the head down into the earth. She tossed the new load aside bringing with it the smell of grass and soil. Some of the harder clumps of dirt rolled from the pile trying to settle, coming to rest at the feet of Thomas. 

Thomas laid beyond the pile too weak to sit up. Beth wished she could have him home in bed, tending to his fever, but her baby had died in the night and needed to be put to rest. Thomas would have to wait and endure, wait for death to take him soon, as surely it would as it had with all the rest.
The hard black tokens covered his frail little body. The only sign of the life still within him were his eyes following his mother as she toiled.

Beth paused for a breath and looked down the row of graves she had dug over the past week. This was her sixth, Thomas would be the seventh. Overwhelmed with her loss Beth’s fingers lost the grip of her shovel. Her knees gave in, pulling her to the ground. Banging her fist against the moist grass- against the evil that stole her family from her- she gave in to her pain. She begged and wished that she could join them. How could she have been left alone? Alone to dig their graves.

Her silent sobs heaved in her chest, she could not go on. Minutes passed, the fog gently rolled across the hills offering no clemency. Still life favored her and would not adhere to her pleas for death.

She slowly sat up, Thomas’ eyes were wide with fear. Her moment of self-pity was gone with a renewed sense of burden. Today she would bury her baby, tomorrow she would bury Thomas.
Her arms and back ached from the relentless digging. She wished she could dig both graves today and get it over with, but she dare not leave an empty grave waiting, for fear of someone taking it in the night, too wrought with grief to dig. 

The small village had rules, to minimize the spread of the illness. The only contact she had had was from her own dying family and the lone grave digger who had fallen ill but had somehow cheated death. Or as Beth liked to think of it- death had cheated them. 

Her body was thankful but her heart was sore at the size of grave she dug today. Her dirty, blister-covered hands shook as she reached for the small bundle. With great care she placed her sweet little child into her new resting place. A silent prayer was all she could offer, as she began to refill the hole.

Before the village had broke their fast, Beth returned home. Little Thomas strung over her shoulder, his wide eyes staring back at the small graveyard where he would soon be laid to rest.



Yours Truly,
Kara