Facebook is my friend...

Okay, I know I've crossed the midline of life now, but I am enjoying Facebook immensely. I have found old friends and reconnected with people I haven't seen or spoken to in a while. It's great. And Donna, guess who friended me today? Angie, from the old Creativepowerhouse! Yea!

All writers should have a Facebook page, a website, and a blog. I'm convinced. And this was not a paid endorsement.

: )

Megan Elizabeth, frazzled and worn-to-a-crisp but hey, people like things crispy sometimes... There's Lay's potato chips, Chicken in a Biskit crackers, Orville Redenbacher popcorn, sweet tarts, jawbreakers, grape nuts cereal... Endless possibilities of fragile female crispyness!

Links for a Charlotte Mason Education

For the sake of storage, I am placing links here that I have found useful and that today are helping me shape my children's education into something of an exotic, unforgettable journey which is exactly what I believe education should be...

Grammar

http://wonder.riverwillow.com.au/books/meiklejohn/meiklejohn_contents.htm

A Narrative explanation of what life was like in a PNEU school, written by a former student, Christine Verspaandonk:

http://wonder.riverwillow.com.au/home_education/PNEU_Education.htm

Read and enjoy...

Poised and ready...

Today, I created a writing schedule for myself, worked out the second chapter of The Fairy Harp, wrote several poems to get the creative juices flowing, and went to church. Probably the most helpful thing I did was go to church. It was a new church -- new to me, anyway. City Church in Charlotte. We loved it. The people were friendly, kind, and understood when two of my children fell asleep during the service! We will definitely visit again, and hopefully I am now inspired enough to leave this blog and write, write, write!!!

Megan Elizabeth, the magnificent (procrastinator)

A fresh poem for my husband who is away

Lily of the Valley

Tangled among sharp nettles, amid barley prickles and darkened, dry grass lay a long-forgotten lily -- soft, brilliant, pure, touched with dew, thirsty with hope, and stained with sorrow.

He shoved his sleeve above his elbow, thrust his bare hand through the mire of thorns, grasped the lily gently between hardened, calloused fingers, and tugged at its satin-soft petals until it was free.

Long forlorn and quite forgotten, the lily was torn and tinged with brown.
Laid in a crystal vase filled with sweetened water, she was drenched with anticipation, filled with nourishment, tinted creamy pale by the sun streaming through his windowpane.

Soon blossoms cascaded down her branches. Tears welled up in his eyes. Immersed in pure joy, innocent love, and touched with fresh clarity, a song was born of her distant sorrow. It traveled for miles, floating across the sea, over mountains, hills, and valleys until, gathering speed and power from the light above, the song reached the moistened clouds, the shimmering stars, the milky host of Heaven above.

He heard it and was enraptured. Adding angelic voices and thundering echoes of heavenly instruments, all sorrow was swept from the song, leaving only delight.

The lily burst forth into searing beauty. Pure, white, soft, delicate, fragile, her moment had come. Bursting with fragrance, dampened with dew, she leaped from the soil and landed in His arms, to rest forever in peaceful surrender.

She nestled snugly upon his breast and felt the comforting pounding of His strong heart, beating only for her as for the thousands who came before.

And she was forever changed.

Are you all still there?

I didn't fall off the planet, contrary to popular belief and hideous rumor. That would require a break in the law of gravity, and gravity is one of those laws that we tend to break the least -- only astronauts, Houdini, and David Copperfield seem to have mastered that trick.

No, I have been working, scrounging for more work, and finishing the house. And yet, I have not finished The Fairy Harp! I have a solid first chapter, though. And several pages of gook after that to spruce up. It's tragic how little fiction I actually write these days. But oh well! Someone has to write all that direct mail we build our landfills on, right?

Tell me, people, what have you been writing? Doing? Praying for? Closing your eyes and wishing on a star about? Do tell!

Yours -- when all else fails and nobody passes, when nobody wins and everybody loses,

Megan Elizabeth

P.S. I miss Dan Fogelberg. So you will just have to tolerate reading more of his lyrics on my blog...

How many eyes will you sack in sorrow
Seeking to borrow some sight of your own
How many lies will you have to suffer
Until you discover there's nobody home
How many roads will you have to wander
How many dead end streets
How many dreams will you finally squander
Dodging your own defeats.
You're wishing on the moon tonight
There's not a lucky star in sight
Just wishing on the moon tonight.
[ Find more Lyrics at www.mp3lyrics.org/GZW ]
How many doors will you have to open
Desperately hoping each one's the last
How many more will you close behind you
Bitter and blind to the shadows you cast
How many fools will you have to follow
How many wayward winds
How many sins will you have to swallow
Until the truth sinks in
(That you've been)
Wishing on the moon tonight
There's not a lucky star in sight
Just wishing on the moon tonight

The Fairy Harp

You all know I've been working on this novel for forever. And I found out there is actually fairy harp music out there. A woman named Elizabeth Jane Baldry has a webpage on it. She performs all over Europe and has a cd or two. It's evidently hauntingly beautiful. Now, isn't it about time I finish the dern thing? We could put a cd in with it...

Motivate me, people!

Megan

I won a poetry contest!!! Well, Donna won. But I got second place!!!

I love Jody Mace. Her website is fun. Her kids are funny. She's just overall great. And I am not being paid for this advertisement!

________________________________________

Poetry contest results are in!!

Read all the entries here: http://www.jodymace.com/news/?p=165 Since the topic was “the internet” I chose as a judge my 13-year-old daughter who loves the internet more than me, her dad, and her little brother all combined.

She chose four favorites.

4th place: Donna Koppelman for her haiku:

Blogging has become
The Wailing Wall of our time
Problems on display.

3rd place: Angela for the haiku:

Far across the world
Someone else feels this way, too.
I am not alone.

2nd place: Megan Hoyt
Angela is not alone.

People staring,
stalking, swearing,
everywhere she goes.
Through the long night,
into the morning,
stalking,
talking,
silently creeping,
toward sweet, serene Angela.

Eyes droop,
head falls,
keyboard pillow leaves jkl
on Angela’s forehead.

Pistols cocked,
ready for action.

Angela sleeps,
spammer leaps!

She wakes,
disorder!
mailbox is full,
no one is there.
Robotic spammers
leave a trail
of techo-babble
in their wake.

Sudden silence!

Poised for action,
Angela strikes.
Delete all.
Peace.
Random.
Fragile.
Delicate.

Angela is finally alone.

And the winner of the grand prize…..
Donna Earnhardt for the free verse poem entitled “Virus”

I slink from site to site
sipping in and out
of blogs, journals and email
leaving a trail that is
seen only by SuperGeeks
with their x-ray vision and quarantine tactics
they catch me
and try to contain me
but I won’t be restrained
my clones continue to travel
the infomation highway
looking for unsecure rest-stops
and insecure travelers
who open emails from strangers
download “postcards” from long lost friends
and
visit sites they think no-one knows they visit
but I know
and I
wait,
hungry and crouched
ready to pounce
and devour
the weakest link

Donna Earnhardt and Megan Hoyt: I know where to find you! Donna Koppelman and Angela, can you please email me your mailing address? (to jody at jodymace.com)

Looking for a breakthrough here, ladies and gentlemen!

It's always darkest before the dawn, right? Well, things have been looking pretty dim in the home remodeling department lately. We seem to have made an enemy or two along the way without meaning to. And bills are piling up sky high!

You know, when it gets right down to it, the only thing that bothers me about that is that I now can't send money to our friends who are serving in Lebanon and Uzbekistan. Or to our old church in Virginia Beach. I wanted to prosper financially so we could support them more. What can we do?

I don't know the answer, but I'd sure be open to suggestions. Any new markets I can tap into? Thanks, Donna, for the tip on greeting cards. Anyone else? Jody? Jean? Have I been lookin' for love in all the wrong places? What are the right places?

And even more than that, I'm increasingly worrying about how I can spend more time with my daughters who after next year will be in college and on their own. All these and other questions, I'm sure, will be answered in due time. (When is due time, anyway?)

Meanwhile...

Still clinging to the hope that saves men's souls...

Megan Elizabeth

Bloggin'

I haven't had a whole lot of time lately to devote to blogging. As a writer, this is a problem for me. I want to blog a little here and there, when I have a spare moment, but I'm a perfectionist. I desperately dislike it when I don't write well, choose the wrong word, or something worse -- use it's instead of its or their instead of there. (Sacrilege for a former proofreader!)

The truth is, I am swamped at the moment. I'll try to put something together soon, but in the meantime, don't read my idiotic sentiment below about candy unless you sincerely want to waste three minutes of your life for no good reason at all...

Now to tackle all the things that are making me crazy!

Yours -- amid the dust and rubble, hay and stubble,

Megan Elizabeth

The Hard Bits...

There are three main types of candy. Crunchy hard candy, chewy caramel candy, and soft, melt-in-your-mouth smooth candy. They're all sweet, but they hit you in different ways.

Life is sort of like that. A good, decent life filled with ups and downs, highs and lows, and lots of doldrum days in between. The hard bits you have to suck on for a while whether you want to or not. If you don't -- if you just haul off and bite into one -- you could break a tooth. It won't release all its goodness in a few seconds either. Sure, the sweetness swirls around in your mouth for a nice, long time, but you run the risk of getting tired of the flavor. And that big, hard chunk keeps you from talking or doing much of anything else.

Chewy caramels are a tough sell for me. Some like them, but I honestly can't tell you why. They gum up the insides of your teeth, you can't talk, and you make these awful faces while you're trying to get the stickiest bits out of the crevices. Yeah, it's sweet. But you get tired of all the hard work. Where's the payoff?

Now, my favorite kind of candy is chocolate truffles. They're strong, rich, smooth, creamy, and oh, so sweet. They're small and expensive, but well worth it. You don't have to work hard to crack them open or get the stickiness out of your teeth. Just sail through that sweeter than sweet, strong, rich flavor. Oh, baby. No worries. No hardships.

But it's over way too soon.

Yours, through early morning cravings and late night binges,

Megan Elizabeth