There Are Days Your Life Is a Soap Opera...And You Want to Scream: Cut!

You can’t save others from themselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of their lives don’t appreciate your interfering with the drama they’ve created.

They want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but they don’t want to change.

~ Sue Grafton, T is for Trespass

In September, I’m participating in the Sapphire Even Day Blogging Challenge and the Two Pages-A-Day Writing Challenge. 

T

here are days when you wish your life resembled a fictional show or book.  Who wouldn’t want to be living at 221 A Baker street?  The neighbors are hot, the plotlines are always fresh  ~ and those are just the writers!

And then are those days where your life does resemble a fictional show: but it’s the one that got cancelled after the first season because it was so bad not even Mike Nelson and his crew could MST their way through it.

Except for Firefly~ Firefly was awesome; that shouldn’t have been cancelled after just one season.

In college, my friends would always roll our eyes and complain that our lives were like a soap opera.  Which is true because when you’re in your twenties, the hormonal and chemical balances are still crazy-ass and the brain doesn’t finish fully developing until your twenty-six.

Explains a lot of my college career.

And I’m not one for statistics, but the percentage of dysfunctional families has got to be pretty high ~ even accounting for the fact that the dysfunction is on a continuum.  Maybe that’s why fictional depictions of families that are almost unbelievable dysfunctional are so popular: at least your family is that bad!

And I bet you’ve already figured out what today’s prompt is because you are AWESOME!

Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t watch a lot of TV, so I can’t think of any shows that resemble the dysfunctional paradise I call home.  And since I’m still cramming my noggin full of paranormal fantasy stories, I can’t point to any books that look like my life.  Although, if I ever meet a werewolf or a vampire and live to tell the tale, I’ll option the movie rights. 

Because that is seriously hot.

I can tell you that there are some characters on shows I can’t watch because they hit a little too close to home.  But I won’t tell you because those characters hit a little too close to home.  Know what I mean?

I will say this however: I love Flannery O’Conner and I think she and I would have much to talk about over a glass of sweet tea and a plate of fried chicken.

Image Credit: Mama's Family

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

Do tell: does YOUR life ever resemble the set of a soap opera or TV show?

La Belle's Hobby Farm: Know When to Fold 'Em

Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears.
~ Paul Simon

A

nd sometimes, words cannot be found to describe the pain.

When this year began, I told myself it could only go up from here.  Famous last words.  I really need to stop saying such things ~ Murphy and Karma seem to team up when I do, pulling the rug out from under me with a gleeful and sadistic gleam in their eyes.

Which is a long way of saying, sorry I haven’t written lately.  My family life is taking a beating right now, and as always when that happens, my creative well goes dry and soaks up every tear that falls.  Meanwhile, I curl up inside my head with a good book, or my imagination, and escape from conflict and confrontation.  Someone else’s drama is always more enjoyable then your own.  Throw in a few werewolves, mages, vampires, and magic, and I can stay in my little world for quite some time.

So pardon the silence. 
But have no fear.
Once the storm is over,
A new crop of stories will appear.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

When life gets overwhelming, what do you do to ease the pain?  Talk it out? Ignore it. Get angry? Or do you just retreat and read?

La Belle's Hobby Farm: Same Dream, New Chapter

Don't smother each other.  No one can grow in the shade. 
~ Leo Buscaglia

 

W

hen I first planted my tommy toes, I overwatered them.  They drowned in my care, unable to breathe and become what they were born to be.  And my basil plants grew so large and beautiful, I hated to take too much.

But the purpose of a garden is to both enjoy beauty and to share it.  If you are blessed enough with a bountiful harvest, but you keep the fruit on the vine (as I did with my basil), it will wither and die and give joy to no one save the worms.  I had to step back and seemingly neglect my garden in order for it to grow.  Funny how a little dehydrataion can make them shoot up and reach for the sun.

Now in mid-October, there isn’t much left.  But despite the chillier nights, the tomatoes stubbornly keep producing, and the plants continue to creep over the edges of the garden onto the lawn.  I pick the tiny red and yellow fruit and wonder if they feel like I do.

Trapped.

In many ways, I have found myself either dying on the vine or being "overwatered" with family issues these last few months.  All of a sudden, the dreams I cherished last fall began to close around me, suffocating my creativity.  Some is due to a long commute; a lot is due to the constant rub of a critical spirit tearing me down more than I can build them up. 

In the end, I have become one very drained, unhappy, and under-productive plant.  

But these are my dreams, my story, my garden.  And so I have the power to change the plot line, the dialogue, the scenery, even the boundaries.  My actual garden isn’t going anywhere, and I do have plans to expand it next spring.  It's just that I may be traveling to it once or twice a week to tend it instead of walking out the back door.

And that decision makes me (and my creative spirit) breathe a little easier.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

The farm post is feeling a little metaphorical today!  What other meanings does your garden (and nature in general) hold for you?