A Poem... On Your Bookshelf

      My teaching partner got me on the trail of these: book spine poems. How much fun. Imagine--having the lines of a poem already written. All you have to do is pull some books off your bookshelf.

      Granted, the added punctuation is mine, along with the "and" but the rest wrote itself. (And that is so rare--when your lines just come flying at you with little or no effort.)

The Things They Carried:

Prayers for Sale,

A Thousand Splendid Suns,

The Yellow Birds

and

The Unknown Errors of Our Lives

        Now your mission (if you choose to accept it AND if you're old enough to remember the opening bit of every "Mission: Impossible" show) Create a book spine poem. Have fun with it. After all, this poem will be almost effortless...

Troublesome Timothy

         This Saturday I spent the night with my granddaughter. Her parents never go out--just the two of them--so this was a real treat.

        On the agenda: 

• do some fused glass (using a microwave oven kiln)
• make some chocolate goodies for Riley's mom (bake brownies, then crumble them up. Add a 1/3-1/2 cup of Nutella, and a splash of kahlua or vanilla. Roll into balls. You can then roll them in cocoa or sprinkles or crushed nuts, but it's not necessary)
• eat dinner (or those brownie things)
• watch a movie (or two)
• entertain my granddaughter with my ability to fall asleep in a sitting straight-up position repeatedly
• make my granddaughter laugh with my snorting-myself-awake skills

       After she went to sleep, I had a secret thing to do--do something with her Elf on a Shelf, named Timothy. Apparently this Elf is a way to get revenge on your kids, because the first year, and during the first few days in December, it's fun. They alternate with who is responsible for making sure Timothy has the chance to get into some mischief. 

       But after the first year, or on the 24 day of keeping up with that prankster elf, parents are getting into fistfights. 

        "It's your turn with that %$#@ elf."

        "I'm too tired. And besides, I've run out of ideas. YOU do it."

        "Go, and do something with that elf."

Last night, Timothy slipped into a giant vase-like bottle.
What is that next to him?
(The opening looks huge, but my arm is a bit fat, and I almost got it stuck as I dropped Timothy
into the bottle. THAT would have been like an episode of "I Love Lucy.")

Here's a close-up. Timothy was eating some of
Riley's Cheezits in the middle of the night.
The nerve of him! Riley told me that no matter
how much aggravation he causes, he always has a smile on his face...

          We got everything accomplished. In fact, I was a true over-achiever when it came to the last two things on the agenda.

        However, as I read for a few minutes before falling asleep a little after one o'clock in the morning at a reasonable bedtime for a nine-year old, I came upon a solution for a pesky problem I was having with my WIP. 

        I wasn't fretting over it. It just came to me.

        Agatha Christie said, "The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes," and I'd have to agree. When our brain is not engaged--or so we think-- it is engaged. The cogs turn without our prodding. Things surface.

          So, if you have a grandchild and would like to get back for all the gray hair their parents caused you, it's not too late for "Elf on a Shelf."

           And if you're revising/drafting/puzzling over a piece, do something that is off-track (like washing the dishes or walking the dog) and maybe... just maybe... you will get back on track in no time...