Preparing for Spontaneity

Imagine a romantic scene…you and your love laying on a blanket on the floor. The lights are low, and you’re bathed in the warm glow of the crackling flames. The fire glints off your wine glass, illuminating your beloved’s face and you gaze into each other’s eyes. The firewood rack beside the fireplace holds a big enough supply of wood for the whole night…leaving you with enough light and warmth to free you for other things.

 

Or perhaps that firewood rack sits outdors, next to a campfire, and you’re holding your hands out to keep warm. You sit on a log, toast marshmallows and talk to your new love interest. That could go on for hours, until you’ve eaten all the marshmallows and shared some other kinds of sweetness as well.

 

Or maybe your vision is more practical. The last two years have seen more ice storms in the United States than we’ve seen in a long time. What would you do if your power went out but the cold wouldn’t let up? Would you have enough wood for your fireplace? Where would you keep it? Would you have a firewood rack big enough or strong enough to hold an emergency supply of firewood? If you do, an ice storm or some other natural event that takes out the power can be an adventure…but if you don’t, it could be a tragedy.

 

Romance, fun, and adventure make for life’s best memories when they’re done, but they also take some thought before they happen. Advanced planning can make the difference between a good experience and a bad one. What would you have to plan to make the beautiful memories envisioned above?

 

You’d have to buy marshmallows (and Hershey bars and graham crackers if you’re a s’mores kind of person), or a bottle of wine. You’d have to have enough wood to sustain a fire for the duration of a conversation or a power outage—and either of those can last days. And of course, you have to have some place to put all that wood—the raw matierial of your good memories—so you’d better invest in a firewood rack, too. And it’s not a bad idea to go all the way and invest in a weather-proof firewood rack, because you can’t exactly keep several weeks’ worth of wood inside your living room.

 

It’s funny sometimes to think that these moments, these memories, can be planned for. The movies show us romantic moments that happen completely spontaneously—but how realistic is that? Perhaps that campfire kiss was spontaneous…but someone had to plan for the fire, right? Firewood doens’t just magically appear in a firewood rack with matches handily sitting on top of it—someone had to put it there ahead of time.

 

Good planning and thinking ahead are the things that make spontanaiety, romance, fun and adventure possible. If you plan the set-up—buy the marshmallows, wine, and stock the firewood rack with logs—you are free to indulge in conversing, kissing, cuddling, or who knows what. Once the setting is in place, who know what could happen?

 

 

 

 

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