Author: Brenda Reimer

I was only 11 when I found the spot for my dream home. I was out checking cows and/or crops with my dad when I spotted this perfect spot for a house on one of our quarters of land.

I had that thought, and then did nothing about it for more than 20 years. Eventually a good friend gave me a kick in the butt – by gifting me a giant binder with a shrinky dink tag that said ‘Brenda’s House Thoughts.’

It was unbelievably the kick I needed. I had a binder. NOW I COULD DO THIS.

It’s been nearly 12 years since I started planning, and nearly 11 years since I moved into the house. The work didn’t end then. Developing an acreage from scratch is not for the faint of heart. Ideally one has money, time, tools, large equipment, and willing helpers.

Thankfully I had most of those things. If I didn’t have them, eventually I found a way to get them.

As I went through the building process I made sure to take photos and video to document the process. So this is just step one of a multi-part story that I plan to work on in my spare time over the next several weeks and months.

I made a video to talk about how I found the house of my dreams. This is only Part 1 of what will likely be a very long drawn out story. *I tend to be a little wordy, bless my heart*

Story telling is as old as humanity. There’s always been a story to tell. There is nothing more enthralling than watching/reading/hearing a good story.

For some of us, storytelling comes naturally. For others… it might be a bit harder. That’s where the story spine could come in handy!

Developed by Kenn Adams, the story spine breaks stories into a step by step bare bones structure that provides a roadmap for a storyteller.

When preparing to tell a story, it’s totally fine to start with something like ‘Once upon a time… there was a girl that liked to weed the garden.’

By following the storyline through the beginning, to an ‘Event’ where something happens, through the middle of the story to the climax and end. Once you have your main story points, you can start to develop your characters further, introduce new characters, and describe the world of your character.

View the story spine below!

Reference: Back to the story spine by Kenn Adams. https://www.aerogrammestudio.com/2013/06/05/back-to-the-story-spine/

I was struggling with something to tweet about and mother nature decided to grace us with a mid-afternoon storm. Realized about halfway through that I wasn’t doing the twitter thread properly, but fixed it eventually.

This storm was not sure what it wanted to do… thunder. Rain. Not rain. Windy. Not windy. Eventually the heaveans opened, and… now I don’t have to water my plants. I told the story with photo and video as it happened, something I’ve not done much of. You can view my thread below!

Hmmm. Well the deck is hardly wet but the thunder is still booming… is this a storm or not? #exsm3989 #abstorm

— Brenda Reimer (@brynnes) July 10, 2021

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Way back in 1986 my family joined the ‘digital’ age of the time – we got our first VCR. This was a big deal – and we got one of the fancy machines with a wireless remote (one of my friends had a VCR with a wired remote way before we did).

Along with the VCR came a year’s worth of movie rentals – one per week. We immediately dove into family friendly movies – including Disney’s original The Parent Trap.

The movie begins with a young girl from Boston arriving at summer camp and eventually meeting her doppelganger. The two girls immediately form an intense dislike for each other, with a variety of pranks played on the other until they are forced into the same cabin. Eventually they start to get along – and discover they are twins!

Sharon lives with their mother in Boston, and Susan with the father in California. Their parents divorced shortly after they were born and decided to each raise one of the twins so they’d never have to see each other again. Each girl misses the parent they’ve never known, so they decide to switch.

This means cutting hair for one twin, and learning a Boston accent for the other, plus much more! Their ultimate goal? To get their parents back together. There is an element of fish out of water for each girl as they spend time with their ‘new’ parent.

Turns out, the father is about to marry a younger woman that is fixing to be a terrible stepmother. More shenanigans ensue, but the end of the movie sees the parents reunited and the twins living as twins, finally.

There are many reasons this story shouldn’t work – what parent would separate twins? Would the courts even allow this – back in 1961 or today?

That said, I think the story works because we’ve all probably imagined what it would be like to find out you have a long lost twin. It’s also common for children from broken families also wish their parents will reunite. There are enough elements of truth in the story that I am drawn in to the story each time I see it. I’m not the only one – in 1998 Disney remade the classic with Lindsay Lohan starring as both twins (as Hayley Mills did in 1961).