A very experienced writer friend told me to set deadlines. And that is something I often leave out when I am writing. I do the work, but let it sit, sometimes for weeks, or worse. I think I could come back to it later and make it better. It could always be better. Who would have thought that I would turn out to be a perfectionist? I am so casual and easygoing about most things, never focusing on making things…
“Oh my! No time to pour my heart out. It overflows already as I go through the leftover possessions, photos, files, clothes, and everything in every drawer of my large house. I am leaving. It is wrenching, but worth it. A new life beckons even though I will be living in my mother’s house and not my own. Even though I have no paying job at the moment. Still, I am elated with the innumerable opportunities available to me!” I…
Sometimes we suddenly know what to do next. Solutions just come down to us as a message from outside ourselves. Some might say it is divine, others simply point to inspiration from our own inner selves. It really does not matter. The point is to follow when the directions are given. Lately this happened to me as I swam peacefully doing “lengths” all alone one morning. I have been torn lately by my desire to be in my house in…
All of it?s branches reach out.? Stretching skyward, slender or stout, shortened, truncated by man, or extending far from the center, those branches leafed out in June, shade the ground. Within green cooled air, lightly sighing leaf sounds compete with the twitter of? birds who fight for space on the bird feeders placed under the canopy. That tree has anchored the place since 200 years before the birth of my mother. It has a name. The Dumblane Oak. It is…
My Mother is 98 years old. She is beautiful and cheerful. But things are changing for her as she becomes more frail and less able to participate in the activities that kept her young. For instance she loved to play golf, and she starred at croquet, but her balance is not what it once was and she hates walking as a sport. Dancing was her very favorite. But now her partners are all gone and she, herself fears that loss…
I love this time of year. It is so changeable and exciting. One minute we are freezing and the next we are too hot. But that keeps us on our toes. If things were always even or steady we would become complacent and lazy. At least my type of person would. There are those who learned years ago to plan their time and organize their lives. Those people do not seem to suffer from the same problems that creep around…
If only doctors gave this video to their patients to watch. If only… Think of the money that could be saved. Think of the lives that can be saved. Watch this and let me know what you think.
I used one of the new hybrid publishers to have my book published. Wheatmark was very easy to work with, not expensive, and they were quick. It was wonderful not to have to wait a year or more to be published. This was a big factor because it took me three years to finish my book. Having never written a full book before it took me a while to organize all the information I gleaned from interviewing women all over…
Today is a bit poignant and even sad though my memory of that day 50 years ago is mostly of ecstatic happiness. I was 19 years old. So was my young husband. He would not want me to write about him, so I will stick to speaking of myself since we are now divorced for 7 years. 50 years ago today we married in a huge wedding ceremony at Metropolitan Memorial Methodist Church in Washington DC. A large church, the…
Easter is traditionally a time for our family to gather together and enjoy each other. Those wish to go to church do so early. The others find a spiritual quality in the closeness of our family. While the children and teenagers mostly just enjoy the food and the Easter candy and hunting for eggs among to the bushes and flowers in the yard. This year the weather forecast worried me so much that I did not put up the necessary…
I loved this article. http://recycledpromos.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/we-didnt-have-the-green-thing-in-my-day/#comment-11 Too bad it is anonymous. The author writes of a time during which I grew up. She points out that life itself was “green” at that time. When a thunder storm was coming (we knew because we heard the thunder in the distance, not because of weather alerts on TV) I was sent inside to help shut all the windows. The windows were all wide open because we did not have air conditioning. We cooled…
A home birth is the best place for a calm birth. In one?s own home that sense of being in a foreign place is simply not a problem.? After all, this is ?home?.? In a hospital there are different smells, different sounds, and a large number of strangers all intent on their own agenda, not putting the pregnant woman first.? There are noises and loudspeakers and pinging machines and germs in the air and on every single surface. Those in…
Interruption of service When the Internet is down everything comes to a halt. At first it is immensely frustrating, but finally when one realizes that there is absolutely nothing to do about it, peace descends. There is wonderful peace in silence.? That sound of silence that happens when the electricity stops it?s background hum.? All of a sudden, birds are chirping, crickets making their distinctive cricket music and the breeze seems to be part of the orchestra because it whips…
The number of people who are killed each year due to FDA approved drugs is in debate. ?Some say 100,000. Some say many more than that. ?These are not mistakes, wrong medicine or overdoses. ?These are simply bad reactions to drugs prescribed by physicians. People are speaking out about this yet nothing is done. ?Gwen Olsen wrote a book called Confessions of ?Drug Pusher?http://amzn.to/elcmKa which documents this terrible problem. Yet people are still taking drugs because their doctor tells them…
The Daily Progress, the newspaper for Charlottesville VA, ?shows a front page headline that reads “Flu covers all of Va.” ?Something about that seemed strange to me, because I have heard no one complaining about the flu. ?On reading the article it became clear that there is not much flu in Virginia, but they wanted to be sure people realized that they could still have a flu shot. According to health officials “flu-like illness is at low levels across the…
