Waves Pound Haiku

Fingers hurt from work ~ thousand waves pound my muscles ~ rowing almost there.

It's Friday
I balance three employment activities
You do two things in this gig economy.
292 thousand new jobs added

Looking forward with joy to finishing
the construction work on the house and
downsizing.
Never never never use mastic to glue to drywall
Words of warning
We hung this beautiful blue cork board on son's wall
A mountain where he hung congratulations certificates,
blue ribbons, and photographs of teams and friends.
When he left for college the awards came down.

Misty ocean calls ~ lighthouse horn reminds from far ~ of the happy house.

2 haikus, thoughts and a video to make you smile
Caroline Gerardo
2016

Empty Nest

Grief in the plan.

Children's solo guardian: expect change.

But doesn't fit, jeans sizes small. 

Throw out expensive pair or work on body?

Dropped off my son to college four weeks ago.

I didn't cry.

Kept brave.

Days slip stolen by menopause and hackers.

Found lotto tickets never checked.

Liquor store guy says, "old- if you won they won't pay."

Book of Isaiah 65?

Don't offer food and wine to the gods...
bribery spoils luck

Fortunate to adore my children.

Guiltless give them everything.

Pack up worry ~ it weeds no garden.

Revisions on the next book finished.

Begin the next story.

Please Stop by, 

share abundance of zebra striped tomatoes.

I'll give you a bag. 

Pick the herbs you need.
Sage, basil and thyme in gemstone colors.

Just don't call me an empty nester.

Caroline Gerardo
poem October 2015

Nest in the woods

Sending your children off to fly on their own

The rail road path ahead in life

I have a photo of my two on this whale when they were toddlers. Here they are now 2015 in Santa Cruz California

Hike to the waterfall north of Big Sur

On the way  home from dropping off at college hike
Caroline Gerardo Empty Nest Poem
copyright 2015

Chores On The List

Life is busy.

My daughter is away. She can be a

cyclone with her ADHD. 

Dust keeps piling. 

Chores remain. 

I was up this morning at five. 

Early summer fog disappeared. 

Sunlight starts around 5:47 AM.

"Stick to the list." I tell myself.

Time robs in bits and pieces.

I'm halfway through the revision on paper.

I read aloud at the kitchen table in the early hours,

and again at night after my work.

Doubting every adjective...

A break in the garden to water steals

an hour, just a second to pull some weeds.

The washing machine waits for me to figure out

how to repair the dogs (the little clips that spin the

big drum). Intuitively I know how to fix it. The center

agitator is pulled off. It waits for me to allocate a couple

hours to the fix. Perhaps hand washing and visits to

a Laundromat are more foolish than penning it into a schedule.

Wish I had the excess cash I once had to hire a guy.

On the weekend I rented the commercial carpet steaming machine.

"You have four hours to return it perfectly clean." The kid said.

"No problem I have only three hours to get 3400 feet of white

carpet sanitized."

He looked at me funny. A teenager at Home Depot . Probably

never lugged a fifty pound machine upstairs, certainly never

worried about getting things done efficiently, maybe never

fussed over word choice and never thought about a sentence

while the smell of bleach and carpet shampoo wafts about.

The dogs are going to stay outside more this summer. 

"You can be so happy napping in the gazebo." I told our Golden

Retriever. Her eyes understood. Her feelings bruised.

"I'm one of the children. You can keep the other dog terror in

the gazebo." I swear she was speaking in my dream last night.

This morning my son said, "Leave a list for me Mom."

I nearly cried.

I am so blessed.

  

Porthole in the Lighthouse

Saint Nicholas patron saint of Sailors. His head fell off.

Notice the wire structure...

http://www.amazon.com/The-Lucky-Boy-Caroline-Gerardo-ebook/dp/B0064FOCZO 

Keep Working

Peddling along a plan

stop, notice patterns

waves work in sets

bees organize hexagons

sleep deep on your left

be it

use the electrons

in trajectory direction

keep working

the next wave

is on the way.

You Can Do Anything

Photograph of my son Carson flying a plane.

October 2011 Carson is fifteen years old

You can do anything.

You can make anything.

Give children the gift of dreaming.

Boost their creative ideas.

Encourage making mistakes within boundaries.

Show them the value of daily hard work without preaching.

You can do anything.

Copyright Caroline Gerardo



ROW80 Writing Second Draft Stay The Course

sweet peas in my yard

Productive Week

It is Mother’s Day and family has been the focus of my life path. In the past months, I have squeezed the limits of my time into allowing myself five hours every day (more on weekends) just for writing the novel. This causes some conflict with my extending family who live nearby. They like to pop in and visit. They telephone more often knowing I am pulling into a solitary cacoon. I maintain the love and support for my two children. I have never missed one of son’s baseball and football games this season. I make healthy meals and am hiking or running with them both several days a week. In order to work full time and write full time – things have to give me the solitude I need to finish.

This week I made a new story board. It is white board that is four feet by three feet. I mapped all the chapters. I added some images that motivate the characters. This helped me see clearly the journey that Seth must make through the narrative. It also made me decide to change the ending.

The story is somewhat chronological, with a few shifts in time. I used that in my last novel and struggled with using date in italics and point of view changes. Last time on the second draft, I changed the whole novel from first person to second with a few shifts. It was tedious editing and boring labor as focusing on a sweet gum leaf while Lamaze breathing out a baby. This time point of view is no problem. I am excited diving into the second draft and enjoying things Seth my lead character loves, slingshots, bergamot, insects, tinkering with inventions, and then all his evil bad stuff: bum fights, drugs, violence.

I wrote about 19211 words for the week. I word count is going to decrease now as I fight over synonyms and cut extraneous junk. If you are reading this, I need help on the title. I am now calling it Lucky. This is a novel title already of a totally different story. What do you think?

On my other lists of duties:

We hiked in Laguna canyon three days. The sage, the pearly everlasting and poppies have painted the hillsides.

Tomato plants are still alive, as are the dogs and Soup the turtle who is busy mowing the rose petals as I write.

I had fun meeting friends on twitter. The best is reading what they are doing.

The bank job has picked up a pace . I thank Heaven for the income.

The children’s grades are good. I have neglected my Mom, siblings and nephews. I told my nephews that Auntie Caroline cannot make them dinner twice a week until the second draft is completed. They frowned and the younger one volunteered to edit for me. I am cutting a big patch of my sweet peas to put in bowls for the other Moms in my life. Happy Mother’s Day to all.

Keep Practicing

 Everything in Life takes hard work to reap any reward. I love this painting in New York. The image reminds me of the hours I spend reworking a sentence. The metronome just keeps ticking. I started working on my novel on a computer that does not have internet access. It does not make it any easier. The writing remains solitary. It gnaws at me to reach the finish line.
 I have a clock in my heart that is filled with stories, but not enough time.
Painting is Matisse, The Piano Lesson. The little boy is actually Matisse's son Pierre. The close up image I photographed at MOMA.