In case you haven't heard, I'm moving . . . AGAIN.  It seems like most of my life has been a long series of wanderlust (or as I like to call her, wanderslut).  This time around, it really is for personal reasons and by that, I mean, it's not just for my own personal love of adventure and new scenery.  Family matters have called me to Greenville, South Carolina and I'm excited for the chance to live in the Deep South again.

What I'm not excited about is packing all of my stuff and doing some declutter.  Anyone who knows me well has heard me lament at the amount of junk I own.  Marie Kondo in her book "The Life Changing Joy of Tidying Up" promotes the idea that you should only keep what brings you joy.  But what if, while simultaneously complaining about the clutter, everything you touch brings you joy?

So I'm going through the house evaluating every item and I have discarded a few things - a chipped mug, a sweater with missing buttons and a book I recently finished.  I'm also going through old notebooks - yes, the ever-present pile of my incessant ramblings and attempts at songs, novels, short stories, and essays that never got off the ground.  While I've always been a fan of keeping these things around for "some day," I realize that all of this paper is just taking up room in my life.  I'm ready to make some new room so I can attract new opportunities and to that end (gasp) I've been throwing away some pages out of my notebooks. In the process, however, I'm finding some pretty amusing stuff    and I thought it would be fun to include it here on my blog.  

It would be nice to know exactly when some of these notebook entries were made, but I often fail to date things - or I put the month and date, but I don't put the year.  So in the next few weeks as I go through some of these notebooks, get ready - we're going on a journey through my mind, starting with this funny dream I had about Paul McCartney a few years ago.....

     The world keeps spinning on this beautiful mid-January morning.  The events of our lives are foreshadowed, no buried, by the oppressive below zero cold.  I have found my pink notebook,* but one more day in this one so I can have a big, open space to write.**

    I dreamed before I woke up the first time that Paul McCartney played at my parents' church as part of the Mass.  We were all standing at the end and singing Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da like it was a religious hymn.  I gradually made my way up to the front row so that when he played a set after church I had a great seat.  He did this very showy thing where he had a piano he could hold in his arm and play at the same time and also slide down on the floor with, kind of the way bass players do.  And at the end of the whole thing I told him how amazing he was and that he was my favorite and how we had seen him in Los Angeles at Dodgers Stadium.  I didn't want an autograph, but then I saw all of these little kids with pieces of paper and I thought I'd better get one for Richard.  

   So I had to borrow a little white slip of scrap paper.  I left the church a little disappointed because my mom and sister were long gone and I didn't have a ride home.  I had that sort of letdown you have when you meet someone famous and they don't "connect" the way you had hoped they might and I was second-guessing everything.  Also, I was annoyed at how everyone in town was so unenthusiastic and I was walking down the steps and looked at the paper with his signature on it.  There was a chemistry diagram with electrons, neutrons and rings and a teacher's note that said: "Keep it simple."  Below that, Paul McCartney had written "I never keep it simple" and signed his name.  After that, I woke up and had a hard time falling back into the amazingly deep sleep I had last night

*I'm always losing my notebooks and then finding them again - another reason why the dates are hard to figure out

**I had just started this notebook and I love the opportunity of blank pages