Connecting the dots

Remember that children's game of connect the dots? How many times did you, as an adult, look at the unconnected dots and immediately see the picture? And how many times did you see only a bunch of dots on the page?

I've been thinking a lot about connect the dots. It seems to be appropriate in my life right now. What I might usually call "coincidences" are actually dots that are connecting--the random is becoming, well, unrandomized.

Right now there are huge huge huge spaces between the dots, and I have to confess that I've drawn in some of the dots myself. I think I'm writing my own story, naturally with me as the main character, and I'm trying to squish in a happily-ever-after.

As a writer, and especially a romance writer, I'm a bit obsessed with happily-ever-after. It's the goal of our lifetimes, whether you read it in a religious sense (after all, the greatest happily-ever-after is heaven!) or in a temporal sense.

Which leads me back to my dots. I'm watching them connect and I'm amazed. But the time has come for me to ask myself: do I dare pick up the Great Cosmic Pencil (no eraser on that baby!) and start connecting some myself?

Our 19th Amendment POWER!

Today was a proud day for me. My daughter voted! It's her first time and she was a bit confused by some of it but she did great and I'm so proud of her. It's a regional election (city/county) but every bit as important as the "big" November election.

It still stuns me when I realize that women were given the right to vote when my grandmother was a young woman. I wish I'd thought to ask her what she thought of the amendment being passed.

So here we are, almost 88 years later (the amendment was ratified Aug. 18, 1920), and I'm trying to pass on to my daughter, and my son when he turns 18, the heavy privilege that voting is. If we don't vote, we silence ourselves.

House on auto-destruct

Doesn't it seem like sometimes your house goes on auto-destruct? Mine has. Everything is falling apart, falling off, or just falling! Of course this is happening as I'm embarking on a Cleanathon. The more observant of you may notice that I claimed to have started it in May, which is true, but Life intervened and I got sidetracked. (Me? Sidetracked? How can it be???)

Right now my house is in the State of Chaos (somewhere between Minnesota and Wyoming) because projects started have been abandoned to deal with plumbing emergencies (2), computer disorders (2), light bulb catastrophes (1), and so on. And yes, there truly was a light bulb catastrophe. I fixed it and didn't get electrocuted, which puts me on some list of technological marvels, I'm sure.

And all this as I'm trying, trying, trying to get my contracted book written! Plus I have a proposal to finish this weekend.

Is there any hope?

I'd get right to work but I'm going out to hear a friend play some music and then to a movie. First things first, right?

SUNDAY UPDATE: Cleanathon was postponed, due to an afternoon of fruitless shopping for a filter for the furnace/AC. Yes, the filter we have--well, it broke. And apparently it's an odd little thing that we and only we have. Sigh....