Category Self-esteem

Transitions

No, the above picture isn’t me. But it seems to be a characterization of a woman of a certain age…although, I’m not certain what her age is. I had a big birthday a little while ago. I turned overnight from a middle-ager into a senior citizen. How can that be? I don’t feel any different. […]

The Jitters, Or, The Nightmares Cometh

It happens every now and again. Sometimes I have a bad day at work. Or a mistake I made that I can’t let go. Something’s looming on the horizon and I obsess about it. Or my brain simply won’t shut up, no matter what I do or try not to dwell upon. It’s a case […]

It’s Complicated

Son came to us when he was eight years old. We adopted him from foster care. A feral youth, he knew nothing of personal hygiene, was illiterate, spoke inarticulately, had rotten teeth and suffered from severe ADHD. He’d been horribly neglected. The school he’d been attending wrote him off and considered him unteachable. Despite this, […]

Wrestling With Words and Other Writing Conundrums

It all seemed so wonderful, this writers conference. None of us had been out amongst fellow writers and friends for what seemed like forever. Our last conference was cancelled (I’m sure I don’t have to tell you why). Omicron wasn’t even anything beyond a letter in the Greek alphabet. We were all vaxxed, masked and […]

Change

I took the above picture this morning as I went on my morning walk. Only a few weeks ago, the mountains were decorated in orange, red and rust hues. Now, they’re just brown and bare. The lake still has its usual population of waterfowl, including geese, ducks and swans (they always class up any body […]

Success

Because I’ll take any excuse to whip up some pancakes and sausages, I invited two of my friends over for brunch. I know, that’s pretty said, but then again, you can’t beat pumpkin pancakes with link breakfast sausage on a chilly October morning. That, and I hadn’t seen Chelsea and Connie in ages. Well before […]

The Foreigner

We sat around the dining room table, chewing on the remains of scones and a fruit platter. The Zoom version of our writers group ended and a discussion of its topic lingered a short while after. But of course, as conversations goes, it turned to the inevitable, at least in this group. Husbands. Isn’t it […]

WIP

WIP, in case you didn’t know, is an acronym for work in progress. Most often, it refers to the manuscript a writer is working on at any given time. It can be either a full manuscript in edits, a hashed-out draft, a few scrawls on a napkin or a thought percolating from a nest of […]

Confidence Game

I don’t know the first thing about chess. Well, okay. I know what pawns do, and pretty much what kings and queens do. Apart from that, a game with me would last about an eighth of a second. Still, this chess set created from sculptural table and chairs had me thinking. Oh, sure, I’d love […]

Driving Away

Photo by Enric Cruz Lu00f3pez on Pexels.com It’d been a fantasy of my son’s to own a vintage Mustang. I had one, and to be quite honest, it was terrible. A real piece of junk. Sure, it looked fabulous. A silver convertible, black leather interior, 289 V8 engine. Its signature roar announced to the world […]