Birthday Bash Blogfest

J.C. Martin, Fighter Writer, is having a Birthday Bash Blogfest! Here are the rules:

Write a story (or a personal account) that begins with the phrase:

“A lot can happen in a year…”

The catch? It must be a drabble, i.e. exactly 100 words long, no more, no less. The starter phrase will not be included in your word count.

Some guidelines:

• Proper nouns (names, etc.) count as just one word, e.g. ‘New Mexico’ is one word
• Hyphenated phrases count as one word, e.g. ‘self-defence’ is one word
• I shall be lax with conjunctions: you may count them as one word!

And here’s my dribble drabble:

A lot can happen in a year; birth and death. Fortunately, the deaths led to the renewal of life.

Two cats and a dog provided the excitement in my life before the year began. Koko (cat) died and Oreo (cat) was lonely. With the birth and adoption of MeiMei (kitten), a revised family unit was recognized. Comet (dog) joins the dearly departed just as daughter moves on to college.

Oreo succumbed to cancer. MeiMei was lonely, so with another birth and adoption, Sunni (kitten) joins the family. It’s life and death for the year. Three deaths, two births, one off to college, and then I turned 60!

Quilting Envy

I started this blog as an effort to make myself more accountable for getting my life back on track. The first goal was to get the house cleaned up so I could relax and be less stressed about my lack of action. Wahoo — that has been working fairly well and the house is presentable for company! I now only have two more rooms to do: the quilting room and my bedroom.

I’m especially eager to get the quilting room done because:

• I miss the sense of completion when I finish something. Of course, I would never admit that I have over 20 unfinished projects, so that is quite the challenge.
• Quilting fulfills my need for order, balance, and symmetry.
• Playing with colors opens up unplanned options and helps reduce my over-planning anxiety.
• I like love it!

So my immediate goal is to get the quilting room back into order and ready for action. And as a personal inspiration, I have been seriously thinking about what project to work on first, and priority for other projects.  Am not going to share that now because even thinking about it would interfere with the clean-up activities. However, this is a block for a bed quilt for a dear friend. I came across it while moving boxes around. It’s inspiring for me; think I’ll just temporarily hang it on the wall to keep me on task.

Tracie's quilt-to-be

Wish me luck for a quick clean of the quilting room! I want to quilt!