This Has Nothing To Do With Anything

I was originally going to title this post ‘Four Shoots’ but after yesterday’s hemi-demi-quasi-diatribe I decided not to, but the concept came from my drive to work: four distinct and disparate threads of thought.

It takes me a solid fifty minutes door-to-door in the morning, assuming nothing untoward has happened on the road ahead of me. That time allows my mind to wander through the field of random thought. I think of that like a big open meadow sprinkled here and there with wild mustard. What can I say about that? I like yellow.

Anyway. Yesterday, as I always do when I’m in the car, I was listening to my favorite radio station – kdfc.com. It’s a classical station that provides the soundtrack for my day. It’s easy on the ears, stimulating for my brain, not strident or distracting. There are no commercials because it’s a public station. The hosts are funny (ever hear of the cellist ‘Yo Yo Da’?). They never take themselves too seriously and make no excuses if they flub. It’s great, it’s sometimes amusing and it’s always pleasurable. Kind of like sex, without the naked part.

So, I’m in my car, driving up the freeway, the radio is on and my mind is wandering through the field of random thought. Four things sprout – the shoots of directed thought upon which I was going to title this post.

First, is The Pain In The Butt database.

For the past several months I have been less than delighted with the structure of a database that I created. Since then, I have spent weeks trying to decide if I can do better. If I can do better, how do I want to present the information?

Now, before anyone who doesn’t get their rocks off thinking about, talking about, designing, creating or administering databases starts yawning or falls asleep, I’ll let it go at that. It’s a nut. I have to crack it. I’m wrestling with the ‘how’.

Second are recent changes on the work front. One directly impacting, another that’s affecting. Naturally, being human and a selfish creature, I wonder how these changes will impact and affect me.

Third is the prompt from the Flash Fiction group on Authonomy. This week it’s ‘Irreplaceable’. A great prompt with so many different shades and connotations and possibilities that I’m not sure where to start. I fondled a few different ideas during my drive and have some concepts to try to develop. That will likely occupy my drive home.

The fourth shoot is just storyline. My post about the guns reminds me of one of my stories.  In that, the main character (MC) owns guns but they don’t make an appearance until she’s threatened one afternoon.

She’s standing in her front yard when she’s approached by a group of neighborhood ‘thugs’ who are rumored to have gang raped a high school girl, leaving her naked, bloody and unconscious on her parent’s driveway after using the girl’s cell phone to call the girl’s mother.

My MC has heard the rumor and, when they confront her, she warns them that ‘Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson’ don’t like midnight callers. It evolves from there until she shoots and kills two of them. The police investigate, determine it was justified, and pass on prosecution. Along the way, there’s evocation of guilt, effects on her psyche, how it affects the broader neighborhood, etc., and the impacts on her life (her job, etc.).

By then, I was close to my exit for the drive up and over the hill. Off in the distance was a cluster of hot air balloons – three of them risen up in the clear morning sky, drifting above the trees and hills. Their colors muted by distance but I wonder: are the colors bolder, more dashing up close? I should check it out sometime.

In the meantime, new shoots of thought and imagining. I’ll write and post my flash piece on Authonomy, and decide on the rest where I can impact it.

Have a lovely day!

Tempus Fugit

The other day I wrote about my drive to work and the little sightseeing excursion that resulted from another's misfortune. I wasn't really happy with the quality of the pictures I took. They weren't quite what I wanted, so I decided I'd take the same detour and take new pictures.

In just two days the landscape had changed.

As I drove up the narrow winding road to the ridge from the main highway, fog hung low and light across the hills, drifting down in a thinning veil almost to ground level. Coming around a curve, on the hillside above the road, was a herd of cows (probably steers, actually). The grass was shorn almost bare, the mist laid over their backs, and it was a great picture.

I found a turnout, grabbed the camera, got out of the car (it's so wonderfully quiet out there!) and saw that a manzanita bush was framing the head of one of the bovine critters in its branches. He was looking at me, no doubt wondering what I was doing. It was perfect! Up came the camera and... nothing. The bloody battery was dead.

Naturally, I would not accept the fact that I was in the middle of nowhere with a herd of cows, a dead camera and a great opportunity (which had, while I fiddled with the camera, calmly gone back to grazing, ruining my shot anyway). I kept messing with the power, the settings and got nowhere. Except, accompanied by a pique of frustration, back into my car.

Grumbling up and over, down the other side, a number of other great shots appeared - none of which could be captured. The narrow road sliding between trees dark with moisture, the mist drifting between their branches. Higher clouds at the bottom of the grade, held up by the trees and hills surrounding the valley.

When I got back to the stretches of broom, at least half of the flowers I had gotten pictures of just two days before were gone. One warm summer-like day in between the first and the second, and the flowers had become pods. Changed to seed holders that will dry and generate the next edition.

It's a reminder of how fleeting things are. Big things, little things, all things are swift and transitory. It serves as a reminder to me not to waste time, not to get so bogged down in the 'must dos' that I miss out on the 'want to dos'.

Last night I went to sleep with a long list of 'must dos'. When I woke up at six this morning, I got right to them, got them all out of the way. By nine o'clock all but one of the 'must dos' was done. I have the morning for my 'want to dos', including this and some other writing I want to take care of. Things to look forward to doing and then, this afternoon, I'll finish up the mixed up and blended must do/want to do of shopping (both a chore and a pleasure).

Hopefully, along the way, I'll find a herd of cows on a hillside in the mist and I can catch what I missed out on the other day. If not, perhaps something else serendipitous and fun.

Have a lovely day!

Best~
Philippa

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