The Beginning of the Adventures of Miss Inflexible Homebody

Chapter One:
In Which Our Intrepid Heroine Finds Herself With Surprisingly Itchy Feet

There once was a girl called Inflexible Homebody. She was kind of obsessed with paper, wrote multitudes of stories, liked organising things, and her desk drawers had a habit of getting filled up with Stuff. Mostly paper stuff.

She liked adventures, but particularly the sort that she read about in books, which was a good way of keeping them organised. She could, quite possibly, spend all her days enjoying such adventures. And she would have, if she had not had brothers and sisters who liked adventures of the kind found out of doors, in trees, relating to wild cows, and climbing windmills.

Inflexible Homebody's penchant for the world of words and quiet afternoons inside continued into her teen years. She might well have become a hermit if it weren't for her father's gypsying ways. As it turned out, she got to travel a lot and lived in many unique parts of Australia, which was pretty cool.

The time came when Miss Homebody was actually more of a woman than a girl. She kept following her gypsy father, and the real-life adventures consumed a lot of time. It seemed that there was always someone in some state she had once lived, who was turning twenty-one or getting married or having a baby. And so Miss Homebody ran hither and thither and quite liked it, especially if she knew it all well in advance and could be organised beforehand.

However, home is home and she loved it. On the rare weekends when she could actually be there, she thought nothing would be more wonderful that tidying out her desk drawers (which still filled quite mystically with Stuff), eating lunch late, and reading a book whilst curling on the couch.

When her family suggested having a holiday, she would say, "Life is a holiday. Why don't we stay home once in a while and just do the stuff we never get to do normally?" She was thinking of things like tidying out her desk drawers and reading a book whilst curling on a couch. Her family rarely agreed with those thoughts, however.

In fact, they poked fun at her inflexibility. The worst of it was that Miss Homebody realised their teasings was all true. But there seemed little she could do about it. After all, who can help their personality?

But then, when Miss Homebody was getting nearer being really grown up and further from being a teenager, something began to change. In the books that she read on those rare Saturday afternoons on the couch, she started to notice how wonderful all the Places in books were. Places north and south and Places where people had strange accents and homes carved out of rock and ate food they'd taken from the blue seas and the green mountains.

Curiously enough, Miss Homebody began to feel drawn towards the idea of seeing these far-off Places someday. At first, she wondered if she were quite sane. Miss Homebody, with itchy feet? It was impossible!

But no, the feelings remained, and when friends and family began to travel to these far-off Places, Miss Homebody sat drinking in their tales and dreaming of seeing these Places for herself. It was wonderful -- and very very curious.

So now Miss Homebody finds herself with a new thirst she never imagined she'd feel -- a desire to see wonderful Places, someday. She doesn't know if she ever will see those Places, and if she does, the time is probably far, far away. There would have to be miracles before it all happened.

Chapter Two remains to be written. But for now, it is enough (and simply remarkable) that Miss Inflexible Homebody has itchy feet and dreams of Places.

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conversations:

Bethany -- Thank you! Wasn't the portrait of Dad the cutest?

Suzanne -- ha ha! Thank you! Inspiration from little bros is the best :).

Simplythis -- what a fun idea! I want to paint a wall right now, thanks to you.

Caitlin -- Oh you noticed its disappearance :). I had thought maybe no one really wanted a moment-by-moment account of my days so I whisked it away. But I'll put the micro-blog back just for you!