This year I am doing something radical – I am taking a plethora of vacation days. In addition to the surprisingly high number of days I carried over from last year that needed to be used before July 1 or I would lost them (heaven forbid!), I made plans to take regular time off over the […]
Month: July 2011
The Summer That Wasn’t
“Hurry! Let’s go!” I greet Gerry as I’m rushing around the kitchen getting a dish of chicken breasts ready to put in the oven. “The sun is shining! Go up and get changed and let’s head outside!” I say as I maneuver around him to get to the oven. I had been […]
Guest Post – Tracy Seeley
I am happy to welcome Tracy Seeley, author of her memoir My Ruby Slippers: The Road Back to Kansas. By the time Tracy was nine, she had lived in seven towns and thirteen different houses. Thirty years later she was living in San Francisco when a diagnosis of cancer and a betrayl of a lover shook […]
My Garden
I just came in from the garden where I snipped some lettuce for dinner. When I decided to plant my little garden this year I couldn’t have imagined how satisfying it would be to step out into a light misty rain and snip some fresh greens for my husband and I to enjoy together. I’ve become […]
My Writing Life – The Rules
Here, according to author and teacher Natalie Goldberg, are the rules of writing practice: 1. Keep your hand moving. 2. Don’t cross out. 3. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. 4. Lose control. 5. Don’t think. Don’t get logical. 6. You are free to write the worst junk in America. 7. Go for the jugular. I’ve been […]
Salty or Sweet?
Some of us are sweet people; some of us are salty people. No, I’m not referring to personality, I’m referring to palate preference. Me, I’m a salty person. Give me a bag of potato chips over a piece of cake almost any day. (I had to insert the “almost” because there are some days when […]
My Writing Life – Your Writing Life
I facilitate a local writing group. We meet once a month on a Saturday morning and share the pieces that we’ve worked on since we last met, time permitting we have a period of timed writing, and I share a writing prompt for the group to work on over the next month. Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry, […]
The Good Life
I saw a billboard recently with a caption that said The Good Life scrawled beneath an image of a couple sitting in lounge chairs on the beach next to a turquoise water. The good life. I have been in just such an environment more than once and it was, indeed, a slice of the good […]
Fourth of July – Hoye Style
The flags are up on our freshly painted house. One for Canada Day which we celebrated on July 1 in Calgary and one for Independence Day which we are celebrating today at home. It is a beautiful hot and sunny day here in the Pacific Northwest – just the way we like them! We’re just […]