Have you seen, though, the video of the Ukrainian woman?
The one who confronts a Russian solder?
She tells him to put flower seeds,
Sunflower seeds, to be specific,
In his pockets so when he dies
On Ukrainian soil
Some good will be left
Behind. And,
So his comrades will know
Where he fell.
Peace, people. Please.
Yesterday. Oh man.
Words meant something.
I heard heroin,
I heard I’m here for you.
He didn’t know her,
But paid for her food
As she wrestled with
Demons.
Sat and offered something…
Hope? Maybe.
Comfort? Surely.
All I could offer
Were tears,
And those I cried
At home.
Peace, people.
Look what letters popped up on one of my Words With Friends games this morning.
Is the universe trying to send me a message? Should I swap letters and skip a turn? Damn him, Putin’s even taken the fun out of my favorite game.
Peace!!! People.
We’re having a new roof put on here at Doright Manor, and apparently there is no way to simply bibbidi bobbidi boo the process and skip all of the headache-inducing hammering.
Oh, for a fairy godmother.
Peace and quiet, people.
For Christmas my beautiful and thoughtful and exceedingly brilliant daughter presented me with the coolest gift.
Ashley purchased the miniature replica of Mayhem from a seller on Etsy, and I think it’s about the coolest thing ever. People are so darned clever and my daughter seems to know where to find the cleverest.
Peace, people!
Last night I stayed up late (okay, past nine p.m.), having played trivia at a local wings place with Meetup group friends. Six of us showed up and we appeared to have a good mix of seasoned women my age and a couple of younger women.
Right off the bat, though, we had a problem. No other teams showed up to play. What to do? Simple—we split into three teams. So, it wasn’t ideal for chatting, but we made it work.
I was one of the lucky ones because I had a younger teammate. She knew the 90’s music and artists while I knew stuff like, “At which US president’s inauguration did Maya Angelou read a poem?” and “In the Napoleon Dynamite movie which character married LaFawnduh?” You know, weighty stuff.
We won first place and performed a victory dance. Well, I did a victory dance while my teammate ducked her head in embarrassment, but still…I wonder if that’s why she left ahead of the rest of us?
With just three teams, we finished the game early and then had time to chat for a bit. I had the farthest to drive so I brought my winnings (a $10 coupon for food at the grill) back to Doright Manor and celebrated by taking two Tylenol and going to bed. Ah! Living the good life.
Peace, people.
I’m in need of a friend. And not just any old friend—I need the kind who will let me know when there’s a hair sprouting from my neck before it reaches epic proportions. Yeah, I went about town thinking I looked kind of cute today, only to come home to discover a two-inch (at least) hair front and center about three inches below my chin where it had grown to maturity in the shadow of my lower jaw.
Argh!
Peace, people!
Dear Readers,
I pride myself on having a decent grasp of the ins and outs of American English. Words are my friends. Family mythology has me reciting the Declaration of Independence before I could walk. (In actuality, it was the Pledge of Allegiance, still an accomplishment for a ten-month-old, but my maternal grandmother insisted it was the Declaration of Independence. She thought I was much more precocious than I was).
So why, at the advanced age of 65 did I not know that the phrase “shoe-in” is, instead, “shoo-in?”
The grammar program on my computer flagged the term “shoe-in” and I ignored the warning. But the red mark on the screen bugged me until I finally googled the phrase.
I’ll be darned.
Be honest, now—haven’t you always thought it was “shoe-in?” Surely I’m not the only one.
Peace, people!
When my first novel, Mayhem at the Happy Valley Motor Inn and Resort received its first truly negative review on Amazon I must admit my feelings were hurt. Prior to that scathing piece of commentary most of the reviews had been stellar. I’d been in a bubble of positivity and it burst. Ouch.
After more than a year since its publication, the book has continued to receive mostly four and five star reviews. They make me smile, especially when they are from folks I don’t know personally. I’ve hopefully learned to read the constructive types of negative reviews as a way to make my writing better.
But the book received a doozy of a negative review a few days ago. Here, I’ll share it with you. That either makes me brave or stupid. Talk amongst yourselves.
Okay, lady (or gentleman) reviewer, tell us what you really think. 😳
If you’ve read Mayhem you might think, “Did this reviewer actually read the book?” I wondered that myself. I won’t refute everything she/he commented on, but nowhere in the book did I bash fishermen, and I never said lesbians get a bad deal in life (do they? My lesbian friends don’t seem to), and if the book in some way intimated that all men are bad, I certainly couldn’t see it. I kind of like men, a lot, and my characters do, too. Dr. Hunky, anyone?
I guess beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, or in this case, the ugliness is in the imagination of the reviewer.
Now I think I’ll go read the negative reviews on Diana Gabaldon’s latest book. Yes, even her work gets blasted. I must be in good company.
Peace, people.
After the death of my mother-in-law, Saint Helen, we found boxes and boxes of photographs. I believe we could’ve papered the interior of her home with old photos and still had enough remaining to fill a dozen albums.
Many of the photos were ones I’d seen before: baby pictures of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, along with photos from her retirement party and the trip she took to Alaska. But Saint Helen had saved some from the time she and I visited her eldest daughter, Lyn, in Jamaica, that I didn’t know existed.
I’ll share one with you because it features all three of us, Lyn, Saint Helen, and me. We’d gone on an adventure that day to a natural water park, the name of which escapes me now, but I clearly remember the day. The perfect weather and invitingly warm waters had the three of us giggling like little kids as we slid down the slippery rocks and plunged into a pool, only to climb again for another trip down. None of us were youngsters, but we all felt young that day.
They both are gone now, having passed within a day of each other from COVID just a few weeks ago.
Lyn died first, and I can clearly picture her beckoning her mother on from the other side. You know none of us could ever resist Lyn when she invited us on an adventure. I’d like to think they’re carefree again like we were on that beautiful Jamaica day.
Peace, people.
Praying for Eyebrowz 