I’ve been hit in the gut – not with the flu – but with loss. My father died unexpectedly Monday evening. I feel deflated…and defeated. Ironically, the most upbeat day in the 6 weeks he’s been in the hospital since his car accident was also his last. Everyone was excited that he was making such [...]
“If only one line in a poem has energy, then cut the rest out and leave only that one line. That one line is the poem.” William Carlos Williams to Allen Ginsberg Poetry is like wine. We start out drinking Ripple, then move on to Mateus, and then graduate to something much better, I hope. [...]
AKA: My “Liar Liar” contest backfired! I recently posted 4 things about myself, one of which was a lie, and asked readers to guess which one. Most everyone picked “I went to Woodstock” as the lie. And they were right, but not right for the right reasons. They thought I wasn’t old enough to have [...]
I had so much fun with last month’s game of “can you pick out the lie?” that I thought I’d try it again. Listed below are 4 things about me, one of which is a lie. Can you guess which it is? Take your best shot. I’ll post the winner in an upcoming entry. 1. [...]
My brother Jimmy died in the summer of 2001, and my brother Danny followed him just a month later. Jim’s birthday, November 22, sometimes fell on Thanksgiving Day, and so Thanksgiving and the days leading up to it remind me and my family of Jim. Below is an excerpt from “The Jim and Dan Stories,” [...]
1. I recently ate a fly. I heard it go down into my mug of tea like a Kamikaze pilot. But 5 minutes later, I forgot about it and took a big gulp and got a surprise. I spit it out whole, and it flew away. 2. I’m forever grateful that I took typing in [...]
Even a pen has a lifespan, I think to myself just as mine has run out of ink in the middle of writing a sentence. The pen doesn’t come back the following season like the leaves on the poplar tree outside my bedroom window will come back in the spring… ~ From “The Jim and [...]
Saturday night: A wedding reception was taking place in the back of The Winter Sun building, the same building that houses The Café Del Sol, where our Spoken Word Open Mic’ was to be held. There was a belly dancing performance across the street at the Black Water Loft, and The Jacksonville Center nearby was [...]
AKA: This is what can happen when I take Sundays off from blogging. I woke up first, with a headache and the spinning realization that my vertigo had returned. My husband, becoming aware of my stirring, soon opened his eyes and smiled at me. We exchanged morning greetings and checked-in with each other. His report: [...]
A frequent Scrabble partner and member of my Writer’s Workshop who I was barred from naming on my blog, passed away Thursday morning. Although he suffered from numerous health complications, his death still came as a shock. His name was written on my calendar, expected to come to dinner on Sunday. His write-up about our [...]
Death is like sex. It’s something everyone does, but you hardly ever see it, and no one talks much about it–not publicly any ways. Death, like sex, is raw. It demands that you give it its due. ~Colleen, “The Jim and Dan Stories.” My poet friend, Mara, who I share a grief bond with and [...]
1. When I found out that my dad was in the hospital after being in a recent car accident, I brought my suitcase down from the attic and left it in my bedroom unpacked. 2. After a week, I packed the suitcase and flew to Boston to see him. His condition (a broken neck vertebra [...]
It is not only the living who are killed in war. ~ Isaac Asimov Leaving the Café Del Sol, after our Scrabble game on Sunday, my friend Mara and I discovered that we were unexpectedly stuck in town, but we also had front row seats to our local Veterans Day Parade. Unlike most parades with [...]
AKA: Hey, how’d that scrabble board get there?! I heard there was no such thing as a free lunch, but it’s not true. I just won one at the Café Del Sol and I don’t even remember signing up for anything. When I asked the owner, Sally, how this happened, she told me that someone [...]
This is the compliment I received first thing Sunday Morning: “You look like Mary Poppins. Your cheeks are rosy. Don’t tell Joe (your husband) I said that.” It came from one of the individuals with a developmental disability that I sometimes provide weekend respite foster-care for, and it translates to mean: “You’re a fun caregiver [...]
I got the idea of featuring my 10 favorite posts from Paul at “Writing from the Hip.” I’ve been blogging at Loose Leaf for 9 months now, and I decided to choose favorites from my first 6 months of entries, March – August. I didn’t have many readers in my first few months of blogging, [...]
How come you can get 3 months off work for maternity leave and only about 3 days for bereavement? ~ My husband, Joe. When I wrote the “Jim and Dan Stories,” about losing two brothers a month apart, I was really putting myself and my family “out there.” And so much has come back to [...]
1. While posting a blog entry at the Hull Public Library from one of their two side-by-side computers, the woman sitting next to me talked out loud to her computer the whole time I was there. 2. On the plane home from Boston to Virginia, I sat next to a guy who coughed the whole [...]
