The act of creating – no matter the medium or result – takes time and space. Creativity is a process that demands letting the mind wander around a bit – you need to start-up and down various paths, noodle about here and there. Wool gathering or day dreaming – whatever you want to call it. You need quiet time to be creative.

While loving every single second of my visit with kids and grandkids, I will say from the outset it is not an environment conducive to creativity. I have always considered spending time with my grown children and their families akin to travelling in a foreign land. Each generation just naturally lives in a somewhat different world. The culture our grown children maneuver with ease is often not that of their parents though they may have moved no further than up the street.

So, I tread lightly, do a lot of observing and tagging along and I try to immerse myself in this new culture. My mind does definitely wander around at times as I explore and sink in but I call it more of an endlessly spinning monkey mind that latches onto the most bizarre things.

I was in on a shopping trip to the State the other day. We drove past a somewhat seedy building with a sign that read, “lash bar.” My mind began spinning like a hamster in a wheel. Was it a place where you get your lashes done while having a drink?  Or maybe some type of S&M spot where you get lashed, hopefully still with the possibility of a drink? Perhaps it was a place that sold whips? Or – this is really out there – but could the first or last letters of the words have been missing – maybe the sign was meant to read – flash bar or slash barn. But neither of these options brought me any closer to understanding what might go on in such a place.

Then I became overly concerned about why they only sell cinnamon-fire jolly rancher candy in the States, but for some strange reason you can’t take Kindereggs from Canada across the border into the USA. I can’t imagine why Canadian citizens can’t have cinnamon-fire candy or the people of the USA can’t have Kindereggs.

Today, I tagged along to an indoor play place for kids – you know the type of place with tons of toys and play structures with long slides. I couldn’t keep my eyes or my mind from the sign on the wall that proclaimed, “ask about our grop rates” – hmmm – oddly disturbing.

Tonight I went to a local church bingo where a new bingo caller was making her debut. OMG – I guarantee one thing – you will not find a tougher crowd to please than a group of bingo players. The new caller’s voice was too sharp, she was too loud, she wasn’t loud enough, her timing was off, she didn’t wait long enough between when she placed the bingo ball up on the monitor and when she actually said the number – and on and on it went through the entire evening. The hisses and moans at every error the poor woman made led me to conclude that people who play bingo on a regular basis are hard-core candidates for a diagnosis of OCD or maybe just plain mean. I wondered if eggs or overly ripe tomatoes might get thrown. Then to my wonderment the crowd gave the woman a round of applause at the end of the night. No doubt a tribute to the fact that she was still standing by that time and not hiding in the corner with a bag over her head!

As you can probably deduce, none of this monkey mind wandering has helped me come up with a blog idea – or has it? Better qualify that – not the blog posting I thought I wanted to write. The next time I’m planning a trip into this very enjoyable and fascinating culture that is my grown children’s world, I am going to come prepared. I will do my creative wool-gathering ahead of time – come up with a few good ideas and brainstorm mini outlines for them.  Then I can just write in the little pockets of time that come available and not worry about coming up with the blog post I thought I wanted to write.