A book meme!

Ree did the meme, and challenged her readers to do it, too, so here's mine! :)


Most memorable place/experience reading a book?
On the back porch at my husband's grandfather's house in NE TN ~ it was foggy, there were geese honking overhead, and I was freezing, but I loved every second of it.

Most unusual place/experience reading a book?
In my treehouse. It wasn't really a house, just a bunch (like five!) trees that grew together in such a way that there was a reading nook amongst the branches. I hung out there all summer one year, reading Nancy Drew books and Trixie Belden books.

Most dangerous place/experience reading a book?
On the front of a speedboat in the lake. I lost my Wayfarer sunglasses (!!) AND my book when the water-skiier we were pulling fell, and the captain of the boat made a radical right turn to go back to collect the skiier. He also had to come back and collect me. I couldn't swim, but fortunately was an expert treader of water. The book? Not so much. It was fish-food. :D

Most luxurious place/experience reading a book?
In the Mayflower Hotel, NYC. A ginormous claw-footed tub, a ton of bubble bath, and a very damp novel. :) It was heaven.

Funniest place/experience reading a book?
I read everywhere. On the toilet, while cooking dinner, while watching bad television, while walking...and walking and reading is NOT recommended for klutzy people like me. I walked myself right into a light post. Had a big ol' black eye from that experience.

I've been writing...

...but I can't post any of it here. Too open. I know I don't have very many readers, but I am easy to locate IRL with this blog address. I think I may have to set up a private blog to deal with some of my life confusion.

I got my first diary when I was 7 years old. It was small, with a tiny brass lock and key. I didn't have a key to our house, so I didn't have a key fob. I made one from ribbon and buttons from my mom's sewing stash, put my diary key on it, and started to write. Since then, I've filled countless pages with thoughts and doodles, lists, goals, dreams and aspirations, the occasional pressed flower or leaf...just my small life writ even smaller, I suppose. I rarely look at my old journals ~ once something is written there, it generally stays there. (An aside: My mom read my diary [oh, the betrayal!] when I was a teenager, so for a couple of years the books are full of code words and symbols. Also many blatant lies to see if she was still reading. [She was.]) The thought of writing in those books for an audience? Not gonna happen. They are written to purge ~ to get the broad strokes of my feelings and thoughts out of my head so I can concentrate on looking at things logically.

Blogging is different. The expectation is that I am writing for an audience of one. I am writing for me, of course ~ after all, what else is blogging but navel-gazing? ~ but I am also writing for you. So not hitting "publish" is kicking my butt. Besides, I'm guessing that there are others who read me who are or have been at the crossroads I find myself facing.

All of this to ask, if you have an opinion ~ where should I put my private blog? It can't reside on blogger, obviously, since all my IRL and wider-web stuff links up here. I need the ability to password protect postings. Typepad? Moveable Type? Some other platform? Help a girl out, please?! :)

Linky Love

I can't help it ~ I don't wanna write tonight. Too much swirling in my brain to pin anything down coherently. I've been noodling around my "Favorites" list instead of writing, so here are a few things that I love today:

mimi smartypants: "MARSUPIAL SMACKDOWN! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!"

Joshilyn Jackson at Faster Than Kudzu is having a contest. Go enter if you want to read Stieg Larsson's current release The Girl Who Played With Fire. JJ is one of my super-favorite Southern authors, and Larsson's writing is superb. Highly recommended!

I love free internet radio. I've been jamming at Jango for a couple of weeks now. I started at Pandora but much prefer the search functionality at Jango. Go! Listen to music! Be inspired!

(Start here: http://www.jango.com/stations/105349068/tunein?proxy_id=41310193&song_id=177526 )

And have a fantastic Thursday.

This song is rockin' my Wednesday morning

Toby Lightman has a fantastic voice and I love this song.

Strange how music grabs you in marketing ~ "Let Go" is featured in a new ad for Redken products, which popped up while I was listening to Dave Matthews Band and noodling around on Facebook this morning. The song grabbed me, and I stayed right there and watched/listened to a Redken ad on a video on how to choose your blonde color and then style your hair like Farrah Fawcett just so I could maybe find out who it was in the end credits. Lucky me, they credited Toby and gave a link to her web site. Check her out ~ I listened to a bunch of her songs on youtube and will definitely be picking up her album.

Disclaimer: Redken has never heard of me. My hair products come from the local big box discount retailer. I haven't colored my hair since 1988, I think. lol Toby Lightman? Has also never heard of me. I was just blown away by her voice and the sassy tone of this song.

Eh, why are you still here? Go listen to the music!

What feeds you?

One of the blogs I read regularly is Red Stapler. Today, I read SueBob's post and she wrote:

It's always interesting to me, the things we need almost as much as food and water to keep us alive. Art. Drama. Literature. Music. Beauty. People will die for these things, literally. Something in us is fed by these crazy, abstract things we do. What feeds you?

What feeds me? What gives nourishment to my very soul?

Words. Music. Laughter. Beautiful art.

Words. Oh how I thrilled to learn to read them. I read banned books, blogs, the backs of boxes and bottles. In a pinch, I'll read the telephone book. I've read some 160 books so far this year, and I think my total will easily reach 200, despite my life butting into my reading time. lol I'll never understand people who "don't like to read", and since you're reading this I figure you probably don't either! lol I love to read things that challenge me ~ that make me think. I like to read scary pulp fiction, and thrillers, and true-crime novels, and short stories and poetry and quotes of famous people. I really love epitaphs. I write in my journal. I write notes to school and to friends and to strangers on the interwebs. Words ~ those of others and mine own ~ open my mind and my heart to the possibilities of the Universe.

Music. I was raised in the Church of Christ. We learn to sing harmony in preschool. LOL All CoC hymns are sung a capella. Verily, NO instruments other than the human voice are allow'd in the church. Regardless, I love listening to all kinds of music, and I love to dance. Gives you a general idea of how far from my roots I have grown, I suppose. ;) Watching a live performance of any piece of music thrills me to the bottom of my soul. Music can make me soar, cry, drive too fast on the highway, laugh out loud. It fills me up to the top and moves me in a way that nothing else can. Music can bend time and place and cross thousands of miles and hundreds and thousands of days.

Laughter ~ I try to exceed the recommended daily allowance for laughter. I love comics and puns and rhymes, pratfalls and comedic geniuses. I love talking to my family and friends and hearing their latest stories and jokes. I really love it when my daughter finds something I said or did hilarious, because guaranteed one or both of us will wind up with the hiccups from "too much" mirth. Laughter feeds my heart.

Art ~ I just love to look at beautiful things. Art can mean, quite literally, anything ~ from a gorgeous patina on an old lawn chair, to Nature's color palette in a Texas sunset, to a silky, cool river rock, to Fine Art in a museum somewhere. (I'm particularly fond of two of our local museums.) Since I've never been able to draw or paint or sculpt, and my powers over Nature are somewhat lacking, I make scrapbooks and collages, using scraps of paper, cloth, pressed flowers, ephemera...gluing it all together to please myself. Art fills my eyes and my hands with beauty and peace.

So, what feeds you? What moves you? What makes your heart sing and your soul soar? Do tell ~ and leave a link so I can read what you have to say.