I love to write things down, writing gives me a way to organize my thoughts, helps me to remember an experience, a feeling and often it is my way to truly express my heartfelt thoughts.
So I started purchasing steno pads, they are easy to carry around, I can take out a page if I've changed my mind, I can make a grocery list, write a poem, "practice" a letter I want to send to someone special, record a dream or even to monitor my Bluebird boxes.
I try keeping one at the computer, jotting down something important, a recipe, or vital information about our families history from Ancestry.com, a quote, an address I don't want to forget or even a phone number. The problem comes when I take it to the other room to transfer the information into my address book or the kitchen to try the recipe.
The one I use for Bluebird monitoring goes with me in the field, where I record what is happening in each of the twenty something boxes once a week. I often find myself also taking notes about weather, butterflies, flowers blooming or crops in the field, or I might be inspired to write a poem.
I have a notebook for dreams, I am amazed at the dreams I have had and nearly forgotten, until I read it in this little steno pad. I take it to share with my wonderful hubby and it gets mixed up with another notebook that belongs by the computer. Now I have dreams written in the notebook with quotes and recipes from beside the computer.
I also do travel journals, in these notebooks. I can go back to the first trip I took to Texas and read the heart wrenching account of my experience there, the family I met for the first time in my entire life. Then I will have some poetry related to that visit. A couple years later will be another account of a trip we took to Texas and rode motorcycles. Then suddenly in this notebook there is my sales made at an art show........... seriously?
Now I am going through these notebook, looking for my information on art sales because I must report my Ohio Sales Tax! It's like looking for a needle in a haystack and I only did three shows this year! Not only that, I find myself lost in my writings, crying, laughing and remembering special times, special people and wishing I was more organized.
My real question today is, "Do I just start fresh with brand new notebooks?" or "do I continue in my old notebooks, filling in the blank pages with my random, meandering thoughts and ideas?" I always want to be organized and it seems to always elude me.
You probably know how sentimental I tend to be, if you read my blogs. I struggle with changing times, not wanting to forget the past, my need to remember things that are a part of me and who I am today.
A couple years ago I learned that someone new purchased the home my family lived in for most of my life. A place we called Hidden Acres, nestled in the woods and built by my step-father and my mother. Shaded by trees, off the road a quarter of a mile, and it was a home to my parents, my sister and my brother and me. The entire open back basement was the living quarters in the beginning and then slowly but surely the split level was built and then the upstairs was added on.
There I learned to play in the woods, climb trees, ride bikes, take care of our animals and grow up thinking that everyone wore sweatshirts most to the summer. I shared a room with my sister for years and eventually we had our own bedrooms when the upstairs was built. I had wonderful slumber parties with my friends in the big room up-stairs, it was where my brother recovered from a broken leg and for a couple years it was even a pre-school classroom. More memories there that I can possibly take time to acknowledge.
Two years ago was the first time I'd visited our old home in over thirty years. I still lived just a field away from the house I grew up in. One day I went exploring, I walked around, marveling at the changes. Trees were bigger, the chicken houses gone, a big ugly garage had been built that distorted the view of the house when you drove up the long lane. I took pictures and reached back in my memory and enjoyed the innocence of growing up in the 50's and 60's. I took my girls and my grandchildren to see the house I grew up in.
The house had been abandon by the third owners, they just couldn't take care of it properly, it was pretty much a hoarding mess. They picked up and left everything. Vandals broke windows and animals called it home. And then the most recent owners started cleaning it up, hoping to restore it to it's original beauty. But living in a woods and trees growing close to the house caused damage to the foundation, the expense of fixing it would be great. So it sat empty another year.
It was decided, the house must come down. My parents sweat and labor of so many years was going to be destroyed in a day. I had sense enough to ask about the two old doors I remember going in and out of all those years. Those heavy old handmade doors my step-Dad made, were solid wood, bolts holding it together, and black hardware hinges. A very small part of the solid and well built house we called home. There were two such doors that stood the test of years and I ask if I could have them.
I came home one Saturday night and found them leaning against a wall in our barn, the only part left of the home we grew up in. Yes, sometimes it is just hard to lose something that held so many memories.
