Beth Caldwell - The View From Here

I was born with a great imagination, and as I was flying over the North Atlantic one week ago on my way to Britain, I thought my mind’s eye had a pretty good idea what this trip would be like.
Suffice to say, I had no clue. This experience has been more than anything I possibly could have dreamed for myself.

Let me begin by recanting my sad story about my home septic woes from last week.
It wasn’t a miserable Monday after all. It turned out that all I had to do was replace a dirty filter.
Thanks to “Good Man Joe,” I am free to flush!!
Meanwhile, so here I am on a much merrier Monday (May 7) and on my way to the land of the Welsh. I can hardly believe I am in this story!

Leave it to me to make a mountain out of a molehill.
I may be free of guilt trips and voyages to “regret-ville,” but I certainly haven’t conquered my anxiety when it comes to stepping outside my comfort zone and away from my neck of the woods.

I woke up in the wee hours of Monday morning to the clicking sound of my dog’s toenails in failed stealth when he tried sneaking into my bedroom to catch a floor nap before dawn.
“Cash” knows better, but who am I kidding.

On Saturday, my college kid and I filled 126 plastic eggs with goodies and hid them outside in the farmyard.
The little peppers and their moms, along with my parents, were expected for Easter dinner that night and the first-annual “Granny’s Easter Egg Hunt.”
Easter this year was an extra fine celebration of gratitude for me even though I was missing a certain someone.

It’s Monday morning and I have a hell of a lot to write about; and a whole lot of it that I really don’t want to write about, some of it that I do, and some of it that I am compelled to write about.
So in lies my dilemma.

The writing tide has gone out and it’s not flowing back in a timely fashion in my neck of the woods this week.
Today my “write” mind is as the rusty burn barrel that’s sitting upside down on the south side of the old red barn in my farmyard. There’s nothing in this noggin but an empty space.

It’s been nearly 45 minutes since I sat down to write this column and I am doing everything BUT writing it.
I’m following all the traditions that I usually do each Monday to set me up for the task—hot coffee at the ready, good music, comfortable clothes, and all the notes I’ve written myself in the last seven days.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s all about the notes.

In the past six weeks I’ve written about outing the “elephant” (suicide), how joy is medicine, how books take me places, my black cape, a roller-coaster ride, and my desperate need for tweezers and for advocates who will listen and not give advice.

The way you get sideswiped is by going back.
When you get sideswiped and stay there too long, you forget to do some very important things, like have fun or pluck facial hair.
Seven weeks and counting.