Wrap around porch

It's a rainy Tuesday. I'm in bed eating chicken soup and watching Fireproof on my laptop. It's a calm and peaceful scene until you interject the reality of my otherwise "lazy" Tuesday. I have a) the stomach flu b) late onset Montezuma or c) food poisoning. I have lost 3 lbs since 10 am when my trainer text me to see if I was still coming in to workout. There was NO way, squats and crunches would have propelled my intestines with a velocity that would impress NASA scientists. This is really no way to spend a day off.


Made you smile. :)

The upside: laying in bed has afforded me the chance to seriously daydream. I'm currently daydreaming about living in the Midwest or the South - somewhere on a horse ranch or a plantation. I spent all day looking up ranch real estate and properties with big barns. I am currently distracted by the idea of living in the grand daddy of all states - Texas. I don't know why exactly, but Texas seems like it would be an experience and a place that I could get into. I can't pinpoint exactly when I got all these romanticized dreams about living on estate, but I suspect they run pretty deep.

I had a flashback to when I was 11 or 12. I read Gone With the Wind in a few days (the hardcover edition); which if you've seen those novels, just their size alone is epic before you ever crack the pages of the cover. "Great balls of fire. Don't bother me anymore and don't call me sugar." ~ Scarlett O'Hara

I loved the Anne of Green Gables series growing up; I couldn't get enough of those movies. I still get hypnotized by them when I catch a glimpse now and again.

I'm a sucker for Nicholas Sparks novels and all of those are set in the South. I am in love with the scenes that I managed to paint my mind from his last one The Lucky One. If for nothing but the music alone, I could live in the South. Country, rhythm, and blues sing to the soul of me.
"All I can say is that there's a sweetness here, a Southern sweetness, that makes sweet music. . . . If I had to tell somebody who had never been to the South, who had never heard of soul music, what it was, I'd just have to tell him that it's music from the heart, from the pulse, from the innermost feeling. That's my soul; that's how I sing. And that's the South." -- Al Green


I could live in Hope Floats. Granted Justin Mattise (AKA Harry Connick Jr.) is one fine piece of cowboy to stare at on the horizon, but it's the scenery and the landscape of that movie that is just as romantic as the story. Speaking of, don't get me started on them boys with the Southern accents. I won't lie. You see, I'm a sucker for a good accent.



I think I've always been a little bit country at heart, but now it's really starting to manifest itself. The hustle and bustle of having an adult job with adult responsibilites weighs heavily lately and living in the city with neighbors breathing down your neck has never once appealed to me. I never used to understand the urge for people to move their families from the city to the country, but I get it now. I totally get it.

I am a strong believer in keeping some things sacred. We are all so "wired" and "plugged in" to myspace and facebook and all the other online portals, that everyone knows your thoughts and dreams and desires at all times of the day and night. It's nice to have some of your dreams still tucked back away and safe in the conrners of your mind. Blogging about my life is both theraputic and intimidating at the same time. Who says that I always want everyone to know what I'm thinking or what direction I want to take my life in? I mean there's some benefit to putting all out there for the world to see, but at the same time there's that reservation about letting the world in to criticize, or question, or even steal your dreams and ideas.


I could see me here. Not just imagine myself here, but see me here. This is my dream home. Not what most of the people who know me would have imagined. In my mind, this is in a clearing on property that also houses a stable and a barn, a tree lined driveway, and a lot of land to roam on. I can see a lot of other scenes here too, but those are the ones that I get to keep in my mind.


I have a new background on my laptop. It's my dream house. I've never actually found a picture of anything that I can say was my "dream" anything. Really... I found it during another one of my late night insomnia searches on "wrap around porches". You see this is all a little bit strange for me to admit because I've never been the girl who dreamed about picket fences, her wedding dress, or what she wants to name her children. Not to say that those thoughts don't cross my mind, but I've never staked anything on them. I've been busy in the way of being single, independent, industrious, and travelled. Has the thought of settling down struck accord somewhere inside me? I guess it's high time that I dust off some of those dreams that float around in my head and wash away the cobwebs. It's one thing to believe in keeping things sacred and a whole other thing to breath some life into your dreams by making them known and speaking of them outloud. I think it's time to start writing a new chapter in my life. After all, there were 63 chapters in Scarlett O'Hara's story. 63.

I better get to writing.