Subscribe via Email
-
Recent Posts
- Avoidance May 1, 2024
- More or Less April 30, 2024
- Plenty April 29, 2024
- Simplicity April 28, 2024
- Curiosity About What Is and Is Not April 27, 2024
Archives
Search on this Site
Categories
Blogroll
- 86,400 Seconds
- A Song Not Scored for Breathing (Cheryl/Hope)
- Actual Unretouched Photo
- Afroculinaria
- Brittle Road
- Chuck Sigars
- CMI Assn. Mgt. Blog
- Cutting Through the Crap
- Elle Jauffret
- HSV Area Restaurants
- Lizardek's Obiter Dictum
- Me and You and Ellie
- Neflix Genre Categories
- Out of the Lotus
- Perils of Caffeine in the Evening
- The New Dharma Bums
- The Singing Wench
- Unretouched Photo
- Words/Love
- writing as jo(e)
- Your Fireant
AR Writer Blogs/ Websites/Resources
- Writer Beware blog
- Considerable Opinions, Millie Gore Lancaster
- Wordcraft, Elizabeth Foster
- Southern Story Lady, Madelyn Young
- John Achor's site
- Nancy Smith Gibson's site
- It Just So Happens, Nancy Gibson Smith blog
- Six Bridges Book Festival
- White County Creative Writers
- Ozark Poets and Writers Collective
- Arkansas Review
- Ozarks Writers League
- Killer Nashville Writers' Conference
Category Archives: Uncategorized
We Are the World
Two days ago, mi novia bought a new cat tree house—an artificial, carpet-covered structure designed for a cat to play, exercise, relax, and sleep on—for my study. It replaces a small painter’s ladder Phaedra (the cat) often uses to peer … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
5 Comments
Admiration
Fog makes the tops of pine trees in my line of sight look like smudges. Gazing intently at the more distinct outlines of trunks and branches, I allow the scene to become a painting in progress, in my head. The … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
The Return of All that Matters
This is one of those days when I curse myself for allowing my software knowledge and abilities to wither from infrequent use. There was a time, not so very long ago, that I could quickly and easily burnish my understanding … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
3 Comments
Nothing of Particular Import
The first month of this year slipped away, almost unnoticed. Time, as always, has a way of distracting us from the reality that it gives us only a limited, but unknown, store of itself. If, at every moment, we were … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
2 Comments
Signs of Daylight
It doesn’t take much. A glimpse of a photograph. A memory springing on me, seemingly out of nowhere. The way the quiet morning wraps around me as I sit at my desk. Whatever provokes it, it brings on a sudden … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
2 Comments
Mind Wandering and Thought Skipping
Almost every day, I play Wordle, Words with Friends, and the New York Times‘ daily min-crossword. I have no interest, at the moment, in attempting to work the larger, more complex, much more difficult crosswords from the Times—that beast is … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Amo a casi todos…
Perhaps my viewpoint is colored by romantic notions of the way things once were. Or, maybe my perspective is influenced by a combination of respect and guilt. Guilt that the privileged among us are allowing a way of life for … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
It’s Easy if You Try…
Finns are at the polls as I write this, casting their ballots to replace President Sauli Niinistö, who will finish his second six-year term in March and who is not eligible for reelection. Finland is one of several Scandinavian countries … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
1 Comment
Committed
I was confident I had bounced back—almost completely. But that was before I decided to take a “nap” after dinner, sometime before 6. I woke briefly at around 10 and periodically during the night, but aside from those moments, I … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
2 Comments
Verbose and Grateful
I came across a Lebanese Arabic word yesterday that felt almost as though it had been coined just for me. Soubhiyé. One definition I encountered—a definition that feels luxurious and comfortable and beautiful—was this: “the whisper of dawn, when the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
1 Comment
An Acceptable Stabbing
Another grey day, but the temperature promises to remain reasonably comfortable, with a high of roughly 60°F. Yesterday, while I was sleeping (when was I not?), a new supply of propane was delivered, so we can again use our gas … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
2 Comments
Insufficient
Another grey, coolish day. I would like to slip back into bed and sleep for the next umpteen hours. Whether it was the very rare prime rib dinner I prepared last night or Monday’s injection I received at the cancer center, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Think Some More
Injections that protect against infection but that cause bone pain. Pills that calm bone pain. More injections that address blood deficiencies that probably were caused by chemicals intended to kill cancer cells. It’s not overwhelming, by any means, but the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Through the Trees
Yesterday, a friend braved the cold and ice to visit us for the afternoon. During our conversations, she told us about hearing of a practice, taken near the beginning of each year, of selecting a single word to help guide … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Transformations in Body and Spirit
Competitive mind-manipulation is the process to which I am subjecting myself this morning. On one face of the process, I am shocking myself more thoroughly awake by drinking an intense demitasse of expresso. The other face attempts to sooth me … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
3 Comments
A Career of Reflective Thought
Twenty-five hours after completing yesterday’s blog post, I started this one. Oh, I’ve interrupted myself a few times, but here it is. The cat’s been fed, I’ve weighed myself, taken a mouthful of medications, washed some dishes, measured my blood … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Oncological Musings
I was reminded yesterday that black ice can challenge even big, heavy, four-wheel-drive vehicles. The truck in which I was riding lost traction (at very slow speed) and slid off the road onto a slope that led to an ice-filled … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
A Brief Thought or Two
Bizarre, unpleasant dreams filled part of my night, attempting to ruin what could have been some relaxing moments of sleep. That odd space between wakefulness and sleep can be brutal; on one hand, one is aware that a dream is, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
A Welcome Experience
Yesterday was a sleep day. I slept, or tried to sleep, for most of the day. The ache that has been hounding me, off and on, for weeks decided to take up semi-permanent residence in my head. Sleeping was the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Brittle Tensions
The sky is blue, the air is “brisk” (5°F, feels like -9°F), and my head is pounding. My broken blog has been fixed…to some extent…but the individual posts are not viewable. The “fixes” cost me several hundred dollars, which I … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Engagement and Chill
A friend who—rather unexpectedly—visited me in the hospital last week happened to be at church yesterday morning. We conversed briefly but did not have the chance to spend much time visiting before the service began. Because by the time the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Temporarily Feeble
An absence from my blog feels odd to me, as if I have been incarcerated for several days as punishment for an inexcusable infringement of rules I had not realized I had so badly broken. Returning to write, even a … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Scary Thought
Just minutes after confirming an appointment with a chiropractor’s office this morning (to have some work done on tight muscles in my neck and shoulders that I think may be responsible for my headaches), my oncologist’s office called to reschedule … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
2 Comments
Again Tomorrow
As if cancer isn’t enough, some sort of virus (or whatever) has either returned or has come out of hibernation. The symptoms: headache, chills, fever, fatigue…and perhaps a few others that do not come immediately to mind. I have been … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
2 Comments
Random Acts of Throwing Words onto the Screen
I was up early enough to spill my early morning thoughts onto the screen. Thanks to feeling unwell, though (and an obnoxiously loud, yowling cat), I was slow to follow my routine. The predictable headache is now accompanied by an … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment