Attempted revival (or a first step, at least)

I have been somewhat neglectful of my blog lately. I’d like to excuse it because I know that blog readership, generally speaking, has taken a nose dive. I tell myself I shouldn’t feel bad because I’m not really letting anyone down. But I feel better somehow when I keep this current. It motivates me to actually put proverbial pen to paper, to keep looking for stories. Because once I actually write it down, it makes room for more stories, which keeps me from complacency and routine in a city that thrives off both. To quote Anna Nalick's hit that doubles as my occasional theme song, “two a.m. and I’m still awake writing this song / if I get it all down on paper it’s no longer inside of me / threatening the life it belongs to…”

I’m sitting on my bed, which is somewhat more disheveled than usual, listening to the pop station and the somewhat belabored hum of our window AC unit. I’m thinking about everything and nothing – about how behind I am on my crocheting projects, and reflecting with delight on the first fireflies of the year, which I saw tonight. I’m wondering how the health reform debate is going to unfold and how much I’ll get to sleep over the next two months. I glance at the bills on my dresser and feel at once gratitude for having the means to pay them. And then my mind returns to my ambiguously large to do-list involving baby showers and multiple wedding gifts, constituent letters and mail reports, refining my jalapeno hummus and sangria recipes, and when am I going to start writing that great American novel presenting the potential harm of a single-payer healthcare system, anyway?

But tonight I continue returning to the little things – roses, specifically – and keep turning over in my mind where I want to go with a blog post about that most favored member of the flower family. I’m not sure yet, but I wanted you to know it is coming, and that I plan, dear reader, to refresh this page more regularly in the coming weeks and months - as God's grace, a summer schedule, and my heretofore unnamed Muse may allow.