Dreamers use their imaginations

I just finished having shot four of eighteen.  And while my butt is absolutely burning, I'm trying to think about all the good stuff.  And I'm at that stage when I'm starting to use my imagination.

See, I can feel her moving around.  According to everything I've read, how active the baby is in the womb is a good indicator of how active the baby will be after birth.  We're going to have a mellow baby.  And I need that.

I'm getting too old to run around after a little one.  I've always been too busy to run around after a little one.  I have mellow life.  Such is the life of a writer.  The imagination is part of being a writer, too.

These days, I'm dreaming about what this new daughter of ours is going to be like.  I wonder if she's going to be a ginger like her father or a brunette like I can be...when her father isn't convincing me to go black and blonde.  I wonder if she'll be all creative or athletic.  I wonder if she'll be musical.  I wonder all kinds of things about the life we have in store for her and with her.

As a child of ours, she'll have to like s'mores.  As a child of mine she probably won't have food allergies.  As his daughter, may she love to sleep...all through the night...and take naps.

I have a long way to go.  And though I would love to sit back and imagine, I have to turn that imagination to more important endeavors.  We have a big future to build.  And it isn't going to happen with me just sitting around imagining.  Dreamers have to be doers, too.   We have that covered.

And when we sleep, we dream

This has been one heck of an exhausting week. We have the bathroom remodel that will not end, still going. We have Rachel and Austin here. Sam has been working, and estimating, and working on estimates. And I have pretty much been holding down the fort.

It's been a week of late nights and early mornings. It's been a week of running errands and staying busy. It's been a week that I look forward to ending.

And I suppose that it's no wonder that when I get to sit down for too long, I start to get sleepy.

I've been working on SEO articles for Sam and Carolina Home Enhancements. I've been working on a novel that I need to finish. I edited 224 pages yesterday. That'll wear a person out. And I've been keeping up two blogs, two Twitters, three Facebooks, one Google+, and a partridge in a pear tree. Or it feels that way.

Rachel had me at the grocery store at 7am, since she needed to pick up a few things and it had to done before the tile guy arrived. I was still sleepy then, even though I had been up since 5:30am. Stupid mornings.

So Sam came home around lunch time. He had been to the siding job twice. And he had done a glass replacement once. We were on our respective pieces of furniture. That's pretty much all I remember. Luckily, Rachel recorded it for posterity. But I'm pretty sure I dreamed. Happy dreams.

What makes me think so?

I woke up relaxed...and happy.

There's something about having a passport

It makes me long to travel.

I have signed up through the years for various offers. And it seems as though my inbox is constantly inundated with opportunities for vacations at deeply discounted prices. And some of these prices include airfare. And I love to fly.

See, it didn't bother me so much in the past. Before this, I knew I couldn't get too worked up over any of those glorious Caribbean locales. I couldn't then...because I didn't have a passport. Oh, but now...it's different.

Have passport. Dying to travel.

Of course, I have no money to do this. I'm still waiting on a check that may not come for weeks from the IRS. And I have so many other places that my money needs to go. That doesn't make it any less appealing.

After all, I'm a dreamer. And if there's anything dreamers do well...it's dream about all the places they'd like to go and all the things they'd like to do.

So lately, I've been thinking about...

• The Dominican Republic


• plotting trips to every place with a Margaritaville


• hopping on a cruise ship


• trying out the all-inclusive resorts


• writing the coolest travel blog eva!


• visiting Greece and Italy


• warm chocolate crepes in Paris (they have crepe vendors like we have hot dog vendors!)


• gelatto. lots and lots of gelatto.


• swimming with dolphins


• watching the baby turtles hatch


• sailing to Isla Margarita...because it has to be named after my favorite drink

I want a passport loaded with stamps. I want a mind filled with happy memories of all the places I've been, all the marvelous things I've done, and all the wonderful people I've met along the way. In time. With some patience and careful planning. I can do this. I feel it.

For now, nourishing the dream.

Help a dreamer out...

Where's one place you wouldn't want me to miss in my travels?

I'm not settling...

That's what I have decided. No matter what, I refuse to settle.

I am at a point in my life where I really know what I want and I finally have the confidence to achieve it. I can do this, whatever this happens to be. I can. I've got this.

I am a different woman than I was when I married nearly twenty years ago. I am a different woman than I was when I decided to end that marriage. I am different from the woman who started dating Sam three years ago. And different is better.

For years, I accepted less than I deserved out of fear. I accepted less because I was afraid of being alone. Then I learned that there are worse fates than that...like lonely and with the wrong man.

Now, I'm not afraid of being alone. And I'm not afraid of being lonely. There will always be someone if I want someone.

That means that the one question is...what do I do about my heart? It's a problem because I have to tell you, this dreamer has loved this man more than she's ever allowed herself to love anyone. This dreamer still wants the dream. And I can have it. I can. I just don't know if I should.

Weighing the options here. Weighing the pros and cons. Weighing pretty much everything but me. I have a good idea how much I weigh already.

I'll figure it out. I will. I always do. Just taking my time to make the best decisions. These are the most important decisions I've ever made. There's too much riding on them for me not to take them seriously. Time and patience. The answer will come.

So much for lazy Sundays while pursuing dreams

We used to have wonderfully lazy Sundays. I'm sure we will once more, but for now...it's more nose to the grindstone Sundays. It's our last hours of productivity together Sundays. Its gotta get it done Sundays.

*sigh*

And that's okay. I can look at the big picture. It's more like a huge picture.

We have an entire house of furniture and stuff to unload. It's not easy. We're selling a bit here and a bit there. The spare vanity we had in the shed sold last Sunday. The patio set and umbrella sold on Wednesday. And we sold some odds and ends...not even a drop in the bucket...yesterday.

Still, the money gets put away as we prepare for the next leg of our adventure. Soon enough this plan is going to be put on steroids. In the mean time, I have to spend every waking minute working.

I have a web designer creating a site for my new career. We are meeting again tonight because I have changed up the design. Right now, as up in the air as my life is, working with me is a bit of a nightmare.

It took Sam telling me not to cut costs on this project to get me to accept the price tag a good website comes with. It's about three times what I wanted to spend. Dammit.

And I'm buddying up to Craig again. I'm all...Hey, Craig...can I stick my prime junk on your list? Will you find me a buyer with deep pockets who isn't going to try to beat me down too much on price? Pretty please!

So far, Craig needs to work a little harder at filtering out the riffraff. Seriously.

Still, I can't complain. The excitement of what we have going on still has not worn thin. Our patience with each other and the situation has held remarkably well. And we still both like and love each other. Yay!

This is only the tip of the iceberg. I have no doubt that life will get much harder before it gets easier. There's going to be a lot of give and take, a lot of negotiating, a ton of hard work.

We're play big or go home people. We'll do the work. We'll put in the time. The payoff is huge.

Blue water=bliss...

When my fiance and I first started dating, we'd spend long hours in his hot tub relaxing and musing about our future. He was determined to leave Charlotte. He even had a plan. A ten year plan at that.

I'm a planner.

Nothing makes me happier than planning and dreaming. The best dream plans are those that involve travel. And his most certainly did.

We were going to work on remodeling his house. And then after ten years, we'd move. He was thinking San Diego...or some part of California...on the coast.

I had never been to California. Neither had he. And I suppose that sounded far off and exotic.

Me, I'm an east coast girl. I dreamed of Florida, maybe The Keys. I dreamed of being somewhere that I could explore happily for a long time. I imagined palm trees and sand and blue water.

Then we broke up. Only just before we broke up, I gave him a lead on a job. Once the job was completed, he offered to pay me for it. The industry standard was roughly ten percent. Only...he gave me a second option.

What if, instead of paying me, we went on a trip together. And I saw a way for us to find our way back to each other. So, I took the trip idea and ran with it. I did all the planning. He did all the paying. In the end, on the budget I was allotted, I managed to get us round trip flights to Miami where we would spend one night before boarding a cruise ship. We would be stopping in Key West and Cozumel. And then, we would have two more days in Miami at another resort before we flew home.

Ten days of bliss. Ten days to see if we could handle being together without killing one another or growing bored.

We weren't bored. We didn't fight. We faced the challenges that come with travel with humor and sarcasm. I fell in love all over again.

It was easy to fall in love with a man who made me towel animals to recreate one of my favorite aspects of the cruise. It was easy to fall in love with a man who indulged my whim of driving The Keys...on Valentine's Day, no less.

That's when his dream of moving to California changed. Instead, we dreamed of blue water. We dreamed of a home in The Keys and a boat to travel by.

They were such pretty dreams. It was such a beautiful plan.

Not all who wander are lost...

I am a wanderer.

I don't know why. I don't know what it is about me that can't quite settle down. All I know for certain is that I am a wanderer.

It is the reason I married my first husband. (That would imply I have a second or even multiple husbands, but alas, so far just the one...and a half. We're engaged.) Back to the first husband.

Seriously...I married him because I knew that if I did, I wouldn't live my entire life in the small town I grew up in. There's nothing wrong with that town, located in the Adirondacks. There's nothing wrong with the people. There's nothing wrong, except that it isn't right for me.

So, I wander.

When my daughter was seven and my son was four and my marriage was on the rocks, I packed up the kids and everything my Plymouth Breeze could hold. In my purse was my entire life savings...$400. I left my mother's lakeside condo at midnight and headed south to Charlotte, NC. We made it in one day...arriving by dinner time at my now ex-sister-in-law's apartment.

That was nine years ago. Nine long years. That's the longest I've lived anywhere my adult life. And I am ready for a change. I need a change of scenery and career and life.

See, that's what dreamer's do. That's what wanderer's do.

We take risks. We deny the possibility of failure. We make our dreams a reality.

We believe that if we are willing to work toward our goals, anything is possible. That's why I continue to wander. I know what my dream is. And I'm getting closer. I live to try new things, have new experiences, and explore possibilities.

It has always worked for me. There have been struggles. There has been plenty of strife. And now I need it to work again.