- Celeste
- May 23, 2017
There are a few of the recordings that I brought back from India that still arrest my attention and pull me back into the moment in which I recorded them. Here they are for your enjoyment.
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- Celeste
- May 11, 2017
I dreamt this three nights ago. I like some points of the plot.
Mom and Dad got put in charge of an Abbey for both nuns- and monks-in-training, but it was truly for training assassins undercover. The kids trapped in this life are mostly all-in. They are great friends with each other, keep the secret, and fully embrace their destiny.
Mom and Dad, of course, do not want to be training assassins, but their boss is powerful and evil so they instead love the kids and instill truth at the same time as teaching them the skills necessary for satisfactory progress. The boss is quite pleased when one boy (quite a main character in the "family") fulfills his destiny and expertly assassinates some power as he is walking, black-cloaked, in a late-fall wood.
All this is backstory. Our main character comes on the scene when she is submitted to this Abbey, and we are introduced to the ways of the place through her eyes.
She is a little waywardly at first, but the mother soon brings her into the strict training and love of the place by, at one time, making her count to 5631, and, for fun, taking an official picture for police.
She is best of friends with all involved and well-incorporated when suddenly a rebellious girl named Glonny strangles and drowns a little boy she was angry with right among them, and escapes never to be found again, showing her (and their all) superior and refined excellency at their art.
The family was heartbroken, and immediately changed her name to Gay to protect her and themselves. Things are tense for a while, and then three women coming in to house-keep are caught stealing, and the police are called. In the investigation everything is blown wide open and all the secrets laid bare.
In an effort to save the lives of the children they had grown to love, the parents ordered the whole Abbey shut down, and turned all the kids out to fend for themselves, which they well knew was no problem for the clumsiest of them. I'll bet the country was never in more danger than when 23 trained (and small) assassins were turned loose upon it, with only the instructions to survive.
Our hero started by robbing the nearest house of a handful of trail mix. The mistress of the house came in to wash lettuce but she climbed out a bathroom window, feeling very accomplished. As she snuck around the back of the house, the real assassin, whom she'd been especial chums with at the Abbey, crawled out of the same house munching a couple of leeks he'd found.
They chatted quietly for a few minutes, and were convulsed when, as a police car showed up, the house began sprouting with thieves, and many of their friends ran off into the bushes surrounding.
"If each of us only took one thing, we'd still have cleaned her out in five minutes," our hero whispered as they prepared to leave. They walked straight into the arms of a policeman.
They'd been taught how to ace this as well, and by the end of our hero's conjolings, the officer felt both her especial friend and extremely bad for suspecting this innocent person of crime. She was feeling elated, when he just asked her to pull up her picture. She snapped one of herself right there, and their search engines found, thankfully, only one match. "Why "5631?" he asked, peering at it and showing it to her. "Oh," she laughed, "that was when I had been naughty as a child, and my mom made me count to five thousand six hundred and thirty one, and for fun she sent my picture in." "Okay," he replied, "I apologize for suspecting you, and if you're ever in trouble, you can just call on me." He gave her his information, and she continued down the road, while he turned to the other culprits.
She made good progress, and met up with another friend, so they walked together a piece, but by nightfall she was terrified. She had potentially made bad enemies with two dangerous assassins, and they moreover knew her well.
When she at last found a tent where lots of them were camped out for the night, she was thrilled to find those she had slighted and apologized, "I am sorry. In that moment I thought only of myself. I hope you will not be angry with me?" ...and I woke up.
Our hero was me, of course. I wrote it thinking of reminding myself for when it came time to write the movie.
Thoughts upon waking:
-I remember how scared they all were of the Abbey being found out. They were taught to sing like larks, and the only iphones allowed on the premises belonged to the mother and father.
-Can you imagine a little innocent-looking nun, singing away? What's she got under that cloak?
-The other two caught did have photos on record (and the one had killed a guy), so I've no idea how they got away.
-The assassination in the wood was done with a sword, in a strange mix of technology - considering the photo recognition.
-Too bad Glonny was the only one who was named in this piece.
- Celeste
- Apr 5, 2017
The story of Sonnet's debut into our family from my perspective, as I wrote in my Diary.
Sept. 2nd, 2016
...I think Mom is pregnant, so we might have one of our own, who knows?
Sept. 19th, 2016
(I had already written about the entire previous weekend)
This morning we got back to normal life. Dad held what he called a caucus meeting in the living room after breakfast, where we all wrote down our dream for the family and handed it in. Then Dad read the ideas aloud, not promising we'd be able to do them. The last one was 'have another baby'. This one, he said, they could grant.
Oh man! Can you believe I held the news in for that long? We're having another baby! There will be seven kids in a family whose very identity had been six kids for - forever. It's been seven and a half hours, and I don't think the news has sunk in yet. Avril just came dashing in and exclaimed that she'd be the middle kid. I can't believe I'm writing this. This is my first reaction to the announcement that will soon be hard to imagine life without.
Little Josh (as we've taken to calling him/her) will be a whole new personality in our family. Or - think of it this way - Josh is the lucky baby that gets to be born into the Lawrenson family and have Mercer and Celeste and Heath and Avril and Phoebe and Takis as its big siblings.
Practically: Josh is due April 1st - just after conference - so this was an accident, although M & D were planning on another one. They told us today because we were seeing people yesterday and this way we would have almost a week to settle down and keep mum. We'll tell after M & D get back from their trip to BC the first week of October. Oh! That's another thing! How fun to imagine people's reactions! Ooo! And we'll be the talk of the month: "Well the Lawrensons are having another one - can you imagine? Oh, yeah, the kids are all ecstatic."
We were - when the news was comprehended I burst into tears and gave Mom a long hug, while everyone let their surprise at my reaction let them off the hook for their own. Mercer had known, having suspected before, and then being asked to film the meeting. Phoebe was the strangest, though; for the first five minutes or so she thought they were joking, and then when the reality hit her she screamed and giggled while wildly and uncontrollably wriggling and flinging her limbs about in ecstasy. Then we all began to imagine and let ourselves not just fantasize "what if!" but really look forward to everything about it, from tomorrow morning to fifteen years from now.
I shall not let a day go by without thanking God for Josh and praying for its and Mom's safety. Already Josh has given us joy and laughter and great thankfulness.
March 3rd, 2017
Believe it or not, I hardly ever feel excited about Josh - he is a normal fact of life and moreover after the conference, so not worth dwelling on right now. :)
March 22nd, 2017
...Today still could be Josh's birthday. Mom woke up with contractions in the night, saying everyone should be on standby, and as of now, 8:55 in the evening, that's where everyone still nervously is. Actually, Dad just showered and they are now going in, to call us and give us the verdict.
Everyone at the conference said, "Oh, you must be so excited!" and they, indeed, looked about ready to pop out of their shoes with the same. But I in my brutal honesty said no, we weren't and that the conference had really eclipsed all else.
But I'm sure when I hold a little squirming bundle doomed to be my sibling for their whole life I will at last feel a twinge of that worthy sentiment.
March ___th, 2017
This is the day we imagined with great interest when Mom and Dad first told us about Josh - and the last in which the baby will be Josh. No, he is not born yet, but all six of us - that'll be no more, too - are waiting feverishly in the family room of the Birth Centre.
Mom and Dad came home from the midwife appointment yesterday with all the natural ingredients for inducing Mom, and the only reason they waited until today to do it is because it had gotten too late by the time they had found everything.
But this morning Mom mixed up an Inducement Cocktail, and she and Dad left for the Birth Centre at 10:30. Us kids remained at home to be called in as soon as stuff began to happen, but when we had cleaned the house and scribbled up a welcome poster, which only lacked the name, and they had not called, we realized we had not planned on being at home for long, and began to grow restless.
Mercer and Avril and I worked on our computers, speaking to one another occasionally to share ideas or spellings or jokes seen on facebook, while Phoebe and Takis waged epic war with their nerf guns, and Heath glided about the house or yard in his jedi cloak. At 12:20 Dad called, and though the five people not on the phone held their breath in suppressed ecstasy, the only message was that Mom had just taken the "starter fluid", and we should eat lunch.
After that was eaten the afternoon began, and to distract ourselves we watched some Liberty Film and I read aloud for a time - Little Women. The phone rang next at 3:20, and this time it was what we had been waiting for. The first words out of Takis's mouth when he heard we had been summoned were, "But when are we going to read The Jungle Book? I wanted to find out what happened to Mowgli!" Liking the sound of the name, he repeated it a few more times while we scurried about in a frenzy of excitement, ceasing to be so short with each other as we had been all day. At last we got ourselves into the van with everyone, some entertainment for the wait, the muffins from breakfast, and the video camera.
Judging from the noise level at breakfast I thought all would be mayhem as we drove in, but instead everyone settled into the desperate calm writers love to endow their characters with at the most exciting moments. Now we are just waiting once again.
Apr. 4th, 2017
We waited, our time only broken by Dad coming to update us once, until all of a sudden he appeared and said only, "OK. Come!"
From this we assumed - but there was no time. We lept up, bewildered, and followed him to the room where Mom was. We surrounded the bed, on which was a distressed Mom and an ever-stimulated gray, ugly, wrinkely lump of a baby - she was holding it as she lay. Five midwives barely acknowledged us, busy with essential tasks, and we couldn't think anything but the refrain, "Boy or Girl? Boy or Girl? Boy or..." but we didn't dare say anything distracting. At last Mom said croakily, "Is she okay?" and that question, at least, was answered, leaving our brains free until they began wondering about the name. But that we could sit on, and while we waited for things to calm down a little, the midwives told Mom to feel the cord and see if it was still pulsing. Then I forget how soon it was, but at one point I asked timidly, "What's its name?" and Mom told us, in a shaky voice, "Her name is Sonnet. Sonnet, and her middle name is ____." It sounded so fanciful I was concerned at first, but the midwives cooed over it as beautiful, and all of us have come to love it and how it fits her.
Avril left the room soon after that, and even Heath turned a bit gray, but all present peered interestedly over one anothers' shoulders for a walk-through of the placenta.
As soon as they could, really, the midwives left us to ourselves with the baby and Mom, and just talked and looked at her and took pictures, and when the thought of all the people who didn't know yet and what they would say became unbearable we began calling from the phone in the room.
We came home a little before Mom and Dad did, very excitedly in the dark, and quickly wrote her name on the poster and put it up. Everyone got to hold her before bed, and I think it will take until she's ten years old before anyone gets their fill of her.
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