People are drawn to the Faery world because they love nature, right?  And I do.  I always have.  Sort of.  I remember walking my paper route as a kid and cutting through peoples' yards.  I can remember all my favorite little secluded garden spots. places that just seemed to have a feel of being magical or enchanted.  Places with flowers (I like the deep blue and purple ones). Birdbaths.  Moss and vines growing on the sides of houses and barns.

So why the hell do I always seem to be stuck inside the house?  Why did I neglect my vegetable garden for two years in a row and let it become overgrown with weeds?  Why do I practically run from my car to the house when I get home from work?  And why oh why do I make some excuse when my soon to be 3-year-old daughter wants her daddy to take her outside and push her in the swing?

Oh a few obvious reasons come to mind.  Heat.  Humidity.  My allegries.  Mosquitos.  But those things will all be gone in the fall, and I'll probably still be lying on this couch with my nose stuck in a book or my laptop.

Why would someone like me be drawn to Faerie when here lately I seem to want to avoid nature at all costs?  Why do these four walls seem to be so essential to me?  I love the breeze in my face, the smell of a fresh rain, a slow walk down a forest trail.  Why do I practically have to pry myself out of my chair to go and enjoy them?  Am I hiding from something?  Is there something I'm afraid to face?

That's what my Mammaw always used to say.  We've all heard the cliche, "It'll look better in the morning," or been told to "sleep on it," but I like the way she said it.  "It'll look better in daylight."  There's just something about light, isn't there?  Morning light especially.  Something that happens at the twilight transition to dawn.  It works on our hearts somehow.

Last night I was up until 1:30 working on two speeches I had to give at 8:00 this morning.  I had been given three weeks to work on them, and I had waited until the last minute.  Hadn't looked up any sources or anything.  I was frustrated, mad at myself for procrastinating the way I always do.  I was remembering all my days off when I had gone ahead and taken my daughter to daycare so I could "work on my stuff for class," only to waste the day surfing the web and watching movies.  Unforgivable.  And now, here I was, paying for it.

At 1:30 I had finally gotten one of them more or less finished, but I had run into a brick wall with the second.  Couldn't find any good information, just completely lost.  I decided I would just go to bed.  I would just have to make the second speech later and take the lost points for being late.

My daughter had fallen asleep next to my wife in our bed.  I set my alarm and slid in next to her.  She snuggled up to me in her sleep and put her little head on my shoulder.  Feeling surrounded by their love, I fell asleep.

For some reason, my eyes popped open 5 minutes before my alarm would have gone off.  I marched back to my computer, found some good sources right away, and finished my second speech in half an hour.  I went to class and gave them, and got a B on the first and an A on the second.

A few weeks earlier I had read my daughter the story of The Shoemaker and the Elves (http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/shoemaker/index.html).  I was astounded at how my experience of last night fit the story so perfectly.  Like the shoemaker, I truly believe that I had Help.  But the new lesson I took away from that myth was the same one Mammaw taught me long ago.  Whatever the problem, daylight will somehow make it look better.

A few minutes ago my wife just learned that her great aunt just died from altzheimer's. 

We're going to bed to wait for daylight.

I've heard lots of stories since I came home to Faeryland, from folks with little "visitors" in their homes that like to play harmless little pranks.  Sure enough, some goblins decided to invite themselves to my house.  Every so often I'd be missing something I knew I'd just had the day before, and after about a two-day search, I'd finnally stumble upon the thing in the very place I knew I had left it to start with.  It was only mildly irritating until they decided to take my daughter's perscription medication.  I had to be quite stern with them, but they gave it back almost immediately (sure enough, right where my wife had looked not 30 seconds before).

Well, one day at work, I was searching for my nice steel line guage I use to check the allignment on printing jobs I'm cutting.  Now mind you, I misplace this quite often with no help, and therefore just assumed I had done so on this occasion as well.  So, my coworker Erika and I are searching the bindery high and lo, when she suddenly exclaims, "Ha!  Here it is, hanging right on the nail where it goes!  Did you just put it there, because I just looked there a second ago!"

"Nope," I knowingly reply, "I can't explain how it got there."  Which was not a lie, because if I *did* explain how it got there, she'd think I was nuts.

Has anyone else had any of the Folk follow them to work?