*yawns*
*stretches*
*drags her butt out of bed...finally*

It's almost 1:00 in the afternoon and I'm finally waking up.  I've been fighting a mild cold all week, but this morning it has kicked my butt and robbed me of my voice.  Happy Mother's Day.  However, my husband and daughter have taken marvelous care of me and let me get lots of sleep.  So, I consider myself one lucky momma.

Yesterday I got out my camera to take a few pictures of the garden.  When we bought the house, I inherited a number of flowers and plants as well.  This is our first spring here and every week there's a new surprise budding up from the earth.

There's the Pink Tennessee in front of the driveway.


There are shy little violets along the side of the house.


I have tulips...


...bleeding hearts...


...and a new peony bush.


But when I turned on the camera, I discovered something rather curious.  Someone had been taking pictures without my knowledge.  I have let her use my camera before, but always supervised.  I found almost fifty pictures of our cats.  And some of them were pretty good, actually.   I was impressed.

And this one is my favorite.

Not a bad photo for a seven year old.  What do you think?

*yawns*
*stretches again*
This post has worn me out. 

*she leaves in search of a blanket and a hot cup of tea*

Edit: more stories added at the bottom

You always leave me such lovely and humorous comments and I never get around to replying.  I'm terrible.  I know this.  You still love me anyways.

So, I've been leading this class on writing, but I haven't been writing about it here.  Again, I know...terrible.  Anyways, each lesson we have an in-class exercise to help stretch those writing muscles.  This week we did an exercise called Seven Places, Seven Smells.  Care to have a crack at it?  I'd love to read the results.

Seven Places, Seven Smells:  In this exercise, list seven places.  Anywhere will do; your kitchen, the office, the streets of Venice, whatever pops into your head.  After you have listed those seven places, list a smell that comes to mind for each place.  Once you have them all listed, circle the pair that you find most intriguing, then start writing.

April's List:

[1] mom's kitchen - the scent of fresh baked banana bread
[2] the beach - coconutty suntan lotion
[3] Donnell Lake in Michigan - dad's fishing tackle
[4] the streets of Venice (yep, been there) - stinky canal water
[5] my grandmother's backyard - sweet williams and roses
[6] the nursing home where my great aunt stayed - boiled cabbage
[7] Haiti - diesel fuel

And this is what I wrote:

I used to hate the smell of diesel fuel and the flashbacks that came with it.  The dead man lying in the road covered with a single palm branch.  The sound of Voodoo drums in the night. The look of emptiness in so many eyes.  I was only there for ten days in 1995 and still these shadows lingered.  So, I started writing.

I went back through the journal I'd kept and tried to decipher my handwriting, in French, written during a long bumpy truck ride.  Why had I written it in French?  I barely remember any of my French, now.  Why did I have to be so bloody esoteric?  I gave up on trying to crack my own code and wrote from memory.  I wrote about the whole experience; the good, the bad, and the funny.  I wrote until nothing else was left, and when I'd finished, I felt at peace with my memories.  I haven't had a flash back since and the smell of diesel doesn't bother me so much anymore. 

That's my story.  What's yours?  Post this exercise on your blog.  Then come back here, leave me a link, and I'll post it here.  Happy writing.