Category Archives: 1 Day 1 World

This Moment – Morning Flight

A Friday ritual.

A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week.

A simple, special, extraordinary moment.

A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.bee hives in the morning

 

If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.

Inspired by SouleMama.

Now that those nasty early morning hours have gone by I am again linking up with Northwest Frame of Mind  and her 1 Day 1 World project.  I was outside taking care of chores and watching the bees this morning between 8am -9am when I took this picture. Find out what others around the world were doing by clicking over!

Practice Makes Perfect

I went from sleeping to sitting bolt upright in bed with a shout that I”ll not repeat in print. I looked over at John who had been startled into the same position, our eyes met, we both groaned, got out of bed and followed the noise of little feet.

It takes much less than a giant clap of thunder to pull Clara into our bed and we hadn’t made it to the bottom of the stairs before she passed us at a run and was burrowing under our covers.  I checked on Ivy, who wasn’t even wakened by the rain coming into her room, and listened to John and Jane try to come to an agreement on going back to sleep in between the rumbles as I checked the rest of the windows. Jane has never been the snuggling type but the storm was right on top of us and they headed down to our room. Soon windows were closed against the rain, the air was getting thick and hot, and I went to climb into my considerably smaller portion of the bed to fall back asleep…

Then, there was more thunder.

And more lightening

And quaking girls.

And little girls hiding under the covers.

And little girls playing peek-a-boo.

And little girls giggling.

And hot.

And stuffy.

And crowded.

And one grumpy Dad leaving to find a different bed.

And a sad, Jane following him.

And a sad, small girl coming back.

And a sad, small girl wanting to sleep on the couch…

… on her bed…

… on our bed…

…on the floor…

… by her sister…

…by her other sister…

…by Dad…

…by Mom…

… with a cat…

While the other happy, small girl continued to gleefully snuggle into my spot in my bed.

Hours went by.Jane watching thunderstorm

I’m sure that there are proper ways to parent a two year old who is roaming the house during a thunderstorm that involve something more than following them about wishing that this will be the spot they want to sleep. Something more than wishing with all your exhausted body’s might that this time they will actually want to cuddle, so that when the next flash of lightning comes they don’t come looking for you even though they very clearly just told you to “Go away!” Some ingenious parenting technique that calms the two year old enough to lay down with a parent and at least attempt to sleep.

I’m sure there is a proper way to do it.

At four in the morning I can’t figure it out.

The following day after five hours of broken sleep the idea eludes me.

In fact I still have absolutely no idea what to do.

But with more thunderstorms in the forecast I’m afraid I’m going to get a chance to figure it out.

After all, you know what they say, practice makes perfect.

We got up around 3:30 with the first big boom, and I thought, “Dang, I can’t even use this for the One Day One World Project.” Be careful what you wish for. Before we were all back asleep I had my (admittedly poor but cut me some slack I’d only had two hours of sleep at this point) picture. Check out Northwest Frame of Mind  and see what other people were doing between five and six am. 

 

 

 

 

 

Bee-Beep, Bee- Beep, Bee-Beep!

Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep!

The house is on fire!

I elbow John’s sleeping figure.

He doesn’t move.

Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep!

….No, that’s not the smoke detector…

It’s the alarm going off- we’re late!

I poke John.

He doesn’t move.

Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep!

…I peer closely at the alarm clock, 4:23, alarms do not alarm at that time in this house…

It’s the cell phone!

I poke John.

He doesn’t move.

Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep!

…It’s not the phone…

THERE IS A PERSON IN OUR ROOM!

I poke John.

He doesn’t move.

Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep!

…Oh – It’s Jane…

She wants breakfast.

I poke John.

He doesn’t move.

Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep!

She tells me she needs yogurt.

I look at John…  give up, and get up.

Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep!

I follow Jane, toward both the yogurt and the beeping.

It’s the refrigerator door alarm.

Jane appears to have  been up for sometime.Jane in the fridge

Sadly for her I do not serve breakfast at 4:30AM.

The next twenty minutes crawl by in a sleepy, horrible, tangle of whining, crying, and waking of sisters only ending after a terrible game of musicale beds.

Finally, Bee-Beeping silenced, kids settled, I find my way back to my own bed.

I poke John.

He lifts up his arm to make a space and I scoot back under the covers with the sudden, suspicious anger that he was feigning sleep earlier.

But John is warm and his arm is heavy over my chest.  I snuggle in, sigh and barely have time to mentally forgive him before I drop headlong into sleep.

 

And that is an unfortunately true story of my wee hours of the morning this week. Clearly my brain has absolutely no idea how to function at that time. Grabbing my camera as I walked through the house was a minor miracle! I am again linking up with Northwest Frame of Mind  and her 1 Day 1 World project.  Check out who else was up between Four and Five this week.

 

 

 

Round One

I sat among the giant crowd, yet isolated and alone.

The rickety bleachers worn to grey and splinters rough beneath me as I faced off with a large man.

First it was his turn, then it was mine.

Winner lives.

Nothing to protect me but a tiny pair of gloves and the fact that his bow was yet untried.

I clutched at the small scarlet gloves. What to protect? My face? My heart? My neck?

The crowd cheers.

Winner advances, and I waited to meet round two.

Trapped in the roiling crowd, I had no panic, just icy, calm fear.

Could I win all three rounds?

I am again linking up with Northwest Frame of Mind  and her 1 Day 1 World project. Sadly between the hours  2AM and 4AM I couldn’t seem to muster the will to get up and take a picture.  But my sleeping mind has always been full of vivid pictures, this was just part of my nightmare Saturday night.

Storm – The Amazingly Dense Dog!

Storm isn’t really a snuggley sort of dog, so much as a the-bed-is-comfortable-and-I-want-some sort of dog.

Many nights, while I am reading in bed, she crawls up and falls asleep near my feet. Which is fine – until I’m ready to go to sleep. I put down the book, turn out the light, curl onto my side and pull the blankets up over my shoulder- and the blankets don’t pull. They are stuck under fifty pound sleeping dog, fortunately I’m an in-shape sort of lady – I’ve got muscles.  So, I shove my feet under her hoping to either annoy her off the bed (that works for Trip) or shove her over the edge.

But Storm doesn’t so much as budge.
DSCN8221-(2sm)I was puzzled for a long time how a medium sized dog could grow to mastiff sized proportions in her sleep making it near impossible to push her off the bed. Now, after many nights of study, I’ve got it figured out.

As soon as she gets the slightest hint from me that I’d like her off the bed Storm continues to “sleep” while pushing her head down into the bed as hard as she can and noodle-izing the rest of her body. That way if I stick my feet under her belly or shove at her middle, she is still firmly attached to the bed at both ends. This density-increasing technique of her’s seems to effectively double her body weight – at least.

I always win the who gets the bed war, (you can see she’s on the couch in the photo) but I’m hoping she never teaches the kids her density-increasing technique in retaliation for getting kicked off every night. It’s tricky enough getting those girls out of bed in the middle of the night, if they turned into NFL players in their sleep we’d be doomed!

It took me all week to stay up late enough to get a picture but this is what goes on at our house around one am. I am again linking up with Northwest Frame of Mind  and her 1 Day 1 World project. Click over to see who else was up in the one o’clock hour.

Note: For those of you who are sticklers for accuracy (Hi Honey!) Yes, I am aware that the dog isn’t actually increasing her density and NFL players weigh much more than twice what our kids do.

 

Night Time Guest

We have many night time visitors that pass by.

Some, like the furry, masked ones that have a penchant for chewing on chickens, I’d rather keep on going.

But, I love seeing the grey tree frogs come out on a warm summer night.

This little guy was on the screen outside the greenhouse looking for bugs drawn by the house lights.Grey Tree Frog

 

I’m again linking up with Northwest Frame of Mind  and her 1 Day 1 World project. Click over to see what else was happening around the world in the eleven o’clock hour.

My Time

Ten o’clock has always been my time.

It’s the time of day I get a second, (or 45th) wind.

The time of day I’m awake, happy and with John on second shift and the kids in bed, blissfully alone.

It’s the time I bake cakes, decorate cookies, read book, write blogs, edit pictures, and often workout.

Yes, it’s a bit crazy to start a workout at ten pm. But there is nothing better than punching your cares away at the end of a tough day.

It's ridiculously difficult and silly to attempt to take a picture of yourself doing a Les Mills Combat workout. And just the sort of thing I like to do around ten o'clock!

It’s ridiculously difficult (my form here is terrible!) and silly to attempt to take a picture of yourself doing a Les Mills Body Combat workout… And just the sort of thing I like to do around ten o’clock!

For certain it’s insane to start to decorate a cake at ten. But it’s a much easier process without my band of helpers.

I do sometimes jot down ideas for a blog post during the day. But it’s not until I’m alone in the evening that I have the time and space to sit down at the computer and really write.

Ten o’clock is my time.

Which is why, on the nights that that youngest girl of mine shows her night owl tendencies, I get a touch irritable… perhaps a smidgen cranky.

I could pretend it’s because I know that if her sisters wake her up early she’ll be tired and difficult next morning. But if I’m being honest, I must admit I turn into a surly, jealous monster because that little girl is usurping my time.

Mama’s need their time.

And ten o’clock has always been my time.

I’m again linking up with Northwest Frame of Mind  and her 1 Day 1 World project. Click over to see what else was happening around the world in the ten o’clock hour

 

 

Hay Field Magic

It was years ago when I followed the ghostly white patches on my dog through the trail in the woods.

The trees blocked the moonlight and only by occasionally calling out to Piper could I keep her close enough to see, as she guided me down the path. It was the route we walked every night. And as we had done so many nights before, she cut to the side, through a narrow opening in the brush and ran out into the neighbors hay field. I followed, watching my toes, stepping over the fallen log out into the open field and looked up stunned.

The field was a mass of golden lights, slowly rising into the sky.

Thousands of fireflies lit the air. Each of them flashing one long golden stream of light as it rose up into the night, only to settle back to the ground and begin again. A bunch of bugs had turned a humble hay field into effervescent magic. The two of us continued our walk. Piper trotted through the rising lights and I followed, soaking it in, hoping to remember forever the night we stepped out of the dark into a field of light.

It is again just that time of year, the rising one blink fireflies are out. Not as many this year and the white spots on the dog I now follow through the dark run too fast to use as a trail guide. But every year at this time when I see those slowly rising, one blink fireflies I remember Piper and one very special night.

After nine the fireflies came out and I headed out to lock up my birds, camera in hand, hoping to get a picture. Instead I got a swam of mosquitoes up my nose. I decided it was probably better this way. My night time photography skills aren’t up to illustrating this story even if there were enough fireflies in the air. But picture or no I’m linking up with Northwest Frame of Mind again this week. Click on over and see what else people have been up to in the nine o’clock hour!

 

 

Sky Full of Martins

As evening approaches, the wind dies and the cries of the purple martins ring out across the lake. purple martinsSitting in the grass, camera in hand, I watch the flock. Perched all over their gourds and supporting sticks, they twitter, preen and suddenly take to the air. Purple Martin ColonyCalling, swooping and diving, the sky is filled with purple martins, glowing orange in the light of the setting sun.

I’m again linking up with Northwest Frame of Mind  and her 1 Day 1 World project. Click over to see what else was happening around the world in the eight o’clock hour.