Renaissance

               My last post on this random blog was written almost 18 months ago.  I wonder if eighteen months is a long time or a short time.  I cannot quite come to terms with the idea that length is always meaningful.  If somebody had told me that in 18…

Home Repairs, Heart Broken

Come February 2021 and, as I may have stated in another entry, nature took a stab at making me suffer. A severe winter storm named Uri obliterated Texas’s power grid, taking down electricity and water pipes with it. I had just acquired a new house and was faced with the need to redo the whole…

Pandemic Redux

They say people don’t change. Today, in this lukewarm spring day where my life is currently taking place, I can honestly attest to that belief not being quite true. One day, just as smoothly or as loudly as they once jumped into your lifeboat, people leave. Lines disconnect, lives take different turns, or people simply…

Self-Editing for Writers

It has been a while since I last posted anything.  I’ve been up and down in quarantine, but still COVID-free (or so she likes to think).  Outside, autumn has settled and we are all good as we need to be, here, now in Houston.  I am writing this post against the backdrop of a semi-lit…

Blank Space

It is a Taylor Swift song that touches on the increasingly interesting conundrum of narcissistic relationships. There is a high to the rocky road with a passive-aggressive narcissist, and then there is the low. The high is perfect, making every move you have ever made and will make under their spell so very worth it.…

Memories of Pain

Yesterday I went out for a walk around Memorial Park after months of avoiding people, following the advice of our infection disease experts and epidemiologists worldwide since this whole nightmare started in the US, somewhere around mid-March. I put my Ipods on and set out to walk while listening to Who’s Pulling your Strings? on…

On the Road

My Jack Kerouac adventure was supposed to begin today. However, life is a moving target and, every now and then, it throws a pandemic at you so you are forced — or persuaded — to change plans. The plan was a journey across America, South to Pacific Northwest with fun stops in Amarillo, Albuquerque, Fort…

Pandemic HEB

I don’t consider myself to be the kind of person who is exactly popular. I don’t like books, movies, or even activities that others love. For example, I hate camping and, although I will still give it a shot, I don’t think it’ll ever grow into it. I have far too many traumatic memories of…

Eternal Lockdown

These are troubled times, and we all know it. Whether we have been directly impacted by COVID-19 through a relative, a friend or ourselves, or we have just been otherwise indirectly impacted by government inaction or life itself, this is the hand you are dealt. Welcome to 2020, the year of a pandemic that nobody…