a writing exercise. sort of. or something like that.

I am sitting down tonight to type with absolutely no plan.

(Is that free writing or free verse or something?)

I have Pandora streaming “The Avett Brothers Station” and I don’t know why I’ve never done this before.  Beautiful sounds from Old Crowe Medicine Show, The Wood Brothers and some lovely band called Dixie Hummingbirds.  (The commercials are a real buzz killer though.)

My stomach sort of hurts from the after ten p.m. snack of rice and black beans with cheese and tomatoes.  (It was all that looked of interest in our fridge tonight.)

Of course that stomach ache isn’t stopping my hand from reaching again and again into the jar of Starburst jelly beans Hannah left at our house.

This week I feel an overwhelming urge to rearrange/reorganize/re-everything our school room.

Its current condition feels deplorable to me.

There are at least twelve items on my to-do list that rank higher but I don’t even care about them right now.  I get tunnel vision like that sometimes.

Pay that bill?  Finish Hannah’s birthday present?  Complete the edit of Micah’s book?  Take that laundry out of the washer?  Get Riley’s birthday plans prepared?  Instruct my third grader in the fine art of the times tables?  Make dinner?  Again?  Nope.  I just need to clean up this room and move books from one shelf onto another shelf.  I need to dig around in that closet and wonder why I am saving two hundred used index cards.  For the other side?

I did unearth a brand new Elementary Spanish CD program that the internets says is valued at $104.  It’s Switched On Schoolhouse and I don’t really care for that program so I’ma gonna’ sell that puppy, you know.

Riley has a countdown of days until she graduates.

The number is really tiny.

I have to find a few pictures of her as a kid for senior slide shows and graduation announcements.  I found a row of film negatives while I was looking.  Who develops those any longer?  It looks like a picture of my mom and me and Riley at July Fourth.  I can’t wait to see what it looks like if I can get it printed.

Maybe the reason I don’t usually listen to music when I write is because I have had to stop my train of thought (what train of thought?) multiple times to see what band was playing.

Like now.

It’s Tom Miser.

(Who is that?)

Piper Finn was disciplined today for a rude comment to a friend of ours.  It broke my heart to hear the report of the unpleasant words from her precious tiny mouth.  It hurt to watch her struggle to keep her composure as she listened to her daddy and mommy explain how unkind and inappropriate her words were.  Those sad little eyes and the wiping of Eagle’s tail feathers across her wet cheeks.  Such serious thoughts she was thinking as she explained what she had done wrong and as she apologized to our friend and asked for forgiveness.  Her overwhelming appreciation of the reminder that she is still loved, by us and by Jesus, despite her tiny wicked heart.  The same wicked heart that lives and thrives in her momma and daddy and reveals itself through our unkind actions at times as well.

I can never escape the wondrous weight of parenting children.  It is heart-rending, difficult and divine.

Today we walked over to our neighbor’s yard and fed some carrots to their recently born calves.  They were as cute as I remember from the farm growing up.  Piper laughed at their slimy sandpaper tongues. And I thought of my family’s farm.  It was a good place to grow up.  Green fields.  Bare feet.  Long summer days and barns stacked high with square bales.

Well.

I guess writing with no plan still finds me in about the same place as writing with a plan usually finds me.

Thinking about now.  And then.  And tomorrow.

And forever and always struggling to be in the one without losing the others.

I think I have to be done for tonight.

With the thinking and the sighing and the listening and the recording.

And the jelly beans too, of course.