Reading about writing

Here is Fred, not quite finished and a little out of focus. I still have a lot to learn, and one of those things is having the patience to read the manuals. Late yesterday, I told hubby not to give me any more pointers on the operation of my technical stuff. My brain had maxed out for the day.

Anyway, Fred is posed with one of my favorite books on writing, which I've recently started reading again. Poor Fred is smiling because he thinks it's about the birds in the backyard. The book is Bird by Bird and the author is Anne Lamott. The title refers to one of her childhood memories of seeing her brother struggle to write a school report about birds. When the task seemed completely overwhelming, his father (also a writer) lovingly put his arm around his son and told him he could more easily complete the project if he just took it bird-by-bird. Good advice for anything in life I think.

In the introduction she says, "One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around." I have to say that the blog has motivated me to be more observant, and to pay more attention to people and things around me. There are always things to write about and stories to tell.....what with all the daily lurching and tramping.

So today I did something I don't remember ever doing before. I ask hubby, no....I pleaded with him not to do something. When I returned from the grocery store, I noticed that he had the ladder up against the house with the intention of going all the way up to the top roof (we have a colonial style, so we have two) to clean gutters. Since we're going away next week, and before that we have BCG's college graduation.....and hubby does not have a good track record for doing house projects without injury.....well, all these things combined to make me a screaming crazy woman, I mean...a concerned wife. I'm happy to say he regained his sanity, I mean...he decided I might have a good point, and put the ladder away.

Just last night, we were having a discussion about marriages and why some last longer than others. I said that I believe many marriages fail because one person always insists on being right. Maybe once in 25 years won't hurt......