"Oh, Marilla. How much you miss!"

If anyone knows this line, then you're a kindred spirit (as Anne Shirley would say.) But this line from Anne of Green Gables keeps playing in mind every time I see my little blog sitting in my favorites bar completely untouched.  In the book/movie, Anne asks Marilla if she'd ever imagine life differently from what it is and when Marilla says no, Anne whose life is one big imaginative escape, can hardly believe it.

So I speak the line to myself -- Oh, readers (of this little family blog), how much you've missed, and how much I will miss if I don't start putting picture to screen and pen to paper.

You may remember I had the dilemma of defining Love in the Library - is it a place for quips, fine writing, deep questions and solutions, memoir-like storytelling --- the answer, no.  Because those things - they take time.  I will have to settle for pics and straight info just so I can overcome my fear that I will never, ever start writing again.  I'm frustrated that journaling has taken a back seat to everything else, but I kind of knew it would.  I knew when this started, that spending hours at Panera pounding out some Ward family moment would be short-lived.  I don't have the commitment - but I'm so glad for those who do because they inspire me.

With some guilt and some inspiration from other blogs I've read lately, I'm going to play a little catch up.  Short but sweet snippets, that's all, until I get my Anne-like imagination and typing fingers back.  Thanks for hanging on and checking in now and then.

What a symbolic picture to start my flashback series -- me climbing a mountain.  Okay, it's just a rock wall, but still - March, April and May have been a steep climb of kid activity, sickness, parent visits, friends with real problems that far outweigh ours, work and lots of discussions that went like this: "How in the world are we going to do this?!" and things like, "Are we ever going to eat at home?" and more things like, "When April is over, THEN I'll relax which was followed by, when May is over, THEN it'll all be good."  It's definitely been a climbing-barefooted-uphill-over-nobby-rocks kind of Spring.

But we've hung on -- and little by little, as time allows, I'm going to write it down.