Author Life Musings - My Inspirational Carpet and Its Matching Teaspoon

I was gifted this new carpet recently, and I think it’s adorable! I am a child at heart, and I am not ashamed to admit that I have a map of the 100 Acre Wood on my floor now. Especially since it is BEYOND soft! I mean, seriously. It’s so soft.

Why did this map inspire a session of author life musings? This map of one of my favorite childhood books has come to inspire me. I know, a rug inspired me? If it could talk, I’m certain it would inspire me to vacuum. But, in my author’s imagination, it inspired me to re-engage with some map-making.

In the best of worlds, my carpet would create an inspirational map for my book and display it in Ironman-style 3D imaging. Then I could manipulate it, zoom in, and finally nail my character’s travel times on the first try (didn’t expect calculating travel time to take up this much of my author life, but, alas, it is so). In real life, though, it’s much less glamorous. Alexa didn’t even start playing mood music like an epic movie scene of map-making awesomeness (what’s with that?!).

What ended up happening was that I got some paper and a pencil and sketched this very childlike depiction of what appears to be a Praying Mantis face…but is actually an epic fantasy map (it's a draft, don’t judge). Since I don’t live in a movie, I had to ask Alexa to play something. My music of choice: the soundtrack to The Emperor’s New Groove (bet you didn’t see that coming). It's surprisingly inspirational (well, most of it).

Oh, and as for the teaspoon mentioned in the title. I literally have a Winnie the Pooh teaspoon set that I use when cooking, and because of that, my carpet often reminds me that I need to make dinner (I forget this way more than I should), which recently made me wonder what kind of food my characters should cook on their travels. I have half a mind to make one of them a foodie and have them bring way too many cooking supplies. Thoughts?