In a Chocolate Shop in Switzerland

          Daydreaming doesn't have to take place during the day. It can just as well happen at night. And although dreaming requires that you be asleep, you have to be awake to daydream. The funny things we talk about in linguistics.         

The cold spell broke and Pudding enjoyed snack-time outside!

             Yesterday the lazy writer was daydreaming (instead of reading the paragraph on the page in her textbook about international marketing) about owning a chocolate shop in the shadow of the Alps, in Switzerland. In her daydream, a group of cyclist friends met in the chocolate shop after a race. One of them was gray-haired and rather old, but several of them were young. The lazy writer wondered to herself (with her eyes intently staring at the same paragraph) whether Manny the mammoth on Ice Age speaks the truth and, "Guys don't talk to guys about guy problems. They just... punch each other on the shoulder." The lazy writer watched the young men at the chocolate shop to see what they would do. They began...to talk. About guy problems. The lazy writer jumped up from her chair and plugged in her computer, resolved to record her daydream instead of (a) waiting for a better idea or (b)  waiting until she finished her homework. In other words, she decided not to be lazy and just to write.

Sweet Mint: Bradstreet

         Dorinth and Boronovia are still frozen in time, a bit like the backyard (we haven't had so many snows or such sustained cold weather since I can remember!), and after my grand declaration that I would be posting ever-after on Saturdays, I already missed the first one!  I could rename this blog Confessions of a Lazy Writer.

        As a sort of an excuse, I spent most of yesterday at 2 different shooting ranges helping my dad gather research data. 

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     I have been trying to really soak in the good stuff from my assigned readings, to help my writing when I do actually get to it. One American author I quite like is Anne Bradstreet. She was the devoted Puritan wife of a prominent colonial politician and the mother of their eight children. Her writing is from the same period as the explorer narratives of men like John Smith and William Bradford. After listening to my classmates rip them apart for their hypocrisy and shameful treatment of the Native Americans (I plead the fifth as to my political/moral opinion in this discussion), Bradstreet's poetry was sweet mint to my ears. "To My Dear and Loving Husband" is in some ways rather generic, but her deep sincerity of feeling struck me.

     Click here to hear it read aloud (by me! I'm trying something new).

     Those of you who enjoy hearing poetry read aloud, try the If Poems app (available for purchase on iTunes). I got it for Christmas, and it's a little bit cumbersome to scroll through and find the poem I want, but it's worth it to have Tom Hiddleston read me poetry while I make my hair &c! ♥