Real Life Reflections

At a recent writers' conference that I attended, the presenter gave each writer two random pieces of paper. One had an emotion listed on it. The other had a place and the weather. Our task was to create a story using those prompts. My prompts were: anger, the Rockefeller Center and a bright, sunny day. Michelle slammed the taxi's door and stepped out into the flood of early-morning pedestrians, each of them oblivious to the others. They walked with hands tucked inside coat pockets and heads bent against the biting wind that blew through the tunnel of tall buildings. Michelle squinted as she looked up the seventy-plus stories in front of her. The sun in the cloudless sky belied the freezing temperatures below. Taking a deep breath, she stormed into the building. Impatiently, she waited for the elevator. Impatiently, she road it to the fifty-first floor. How could he? I've given my life's blood to this company! I've given my life's blood to him! It wasn't enou...

For some reason, I've had a heck of time coming up with a blog topic this week. I started one on dog lovers vs cat lovers, but it went the way of the delete button. I jotted down a number of ideas, but they all fell flat until I heard my husband ask our son if his iphone had bluetooth. Bluetooth? Isn't that a tooth that either needs root canal or to be pulled? Iphone ? Somebody didn't pass high school English. Maybe you meant my phone or perhaps your phone? It's not as if I hadn't heard these words before, but they struck me this time around. Have you ever listened to some of the words we use everyday? We say things (like bluetooth ) that sound utterly ridiculous, yet we toss them around as if they make perfect sense. What about google ? We use it as both a verb and a noun. " Google it and see what you get" or "Did you check Google ?" What kind of word is google ? Judging by the sound of the word, the feel of it as you speak it, I'd say ...

I have a daughter. She got married a few months ago (7 months to the day), and her color of choice for the flowers and decor was purple. It was beautiful and elegant, yet simple - a reflection of the bride herself. In general, when you ask people what their favorite color is, they give you a one-word answer; and that's the end of it. They don't have a story to go with it. They simply like the color for reasons they may or may not know. Ami's favorite color has long been purple. Why? Who knows. She just likes it. I'm not sure if there's a cause and effect here, but her love affair with the color purple began in the spring of 1986. I was pregnant with her little brother at the time. She had turned two in December. I'm not sure how much her little mind understood about the growing bulge in my mid-section, but at the time, she was the center of her daddy's and my universe, so all was well. Ami accompanied me to my monthly doctor visits, invited by the doctor, to...

I've been on vacation the past couple of weeks, and although my computer came with me, we didn't spend a lot of time together. My original plan was to finish my book, but Siffi (my gremlin) had other plans. I obviously failed to follow my own advice when dealing with a gremlin and obeyed her without fail. As if she'd put me in a trance, I was completely under her power. I can't say that this was a totally negative experience. I think perhaps that a little of the mogwai in her subconscious was at work or maybe it's that God can bring good out of everything. I may not have spent much time writing, but I did learn a lot about choosing a wedding dress, what not to wear, living as little people in a big world, and parenting eighteen children all thanks to TLC. I traveled through time all over the world with The History Channel and hung out in Smallville quite a bit. I also read two books ( Point of Origin , Patricia Cornwell and Broken For You , Stephanie Kallus). Of cou...