Loose Leaf Notes

I thought she came over to play a game of Scrabble but maybe she came to show off what her new Voyager phone could do. She downloaded Loose Leaf Notes and checked my comments, took a picture of me (see below) with the phone, texted it to Facebook and read me the comments it got as we played!

What am I supposed to do with these letters?

Isn’t this an ingenious way to get a peek at Mara’s letters?

Can you believe that after Mara beat me, we played Speed Scrabble with her daughter Kyla Rose and Kyla won?

Posted by Colleen at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

There are 100 letters in a SCRABBLE game. We counted from the list on the Cafe del Sol community Scrabble game board. But our count didn't match what was in the letter bag, 99. “As long as it’s not the Q, the U, or Z. I think I could live without one N,” I told Rosemary. She hoped the missing letter was an O.

So we played with 99. She got a SCRABBLE BINGO, worth an extra 50 points. I did pretty well considering that I had all vowels for several turns in a row. Rosemary agreed to let me trade them in, a Mara rule and one that Rosemary uses at her house. But it felt too much like cheating, or like what my husband would call “taking a Mulligan,” so I refused the offer. “I like the challenge of making something out of nothing,” I said with slightly clenched teeth.

While in the café we ran into an unnamed friend, aka Zebulon Swift. Zebulon was counting too, engaged in a perfectly legal act of civil disobedience, counting a case full dollar bills and stamping them with messages like: This dollar could help build a new school.

Unlike destroying dollar bills, writing or stamping on them is not illegal, he told us. He would have liked to burn one in a symbolic act of performance art, he continued to explain: One dollar bill that will not go to war. But he learned that was illegal so stamping them was the next best way to make a statement. “Freedom of the press. It’s a good way to talk to a lot of people,” I told him.

My friend likes to blur the lines between fiction and real life because it’s not always one way or the other, he said. He plays music around town as Zebulon Swift, a character in the book he’s written. I’m not sure if which character was stamping the dollars, but I hope to find out. We agreed I would attend one of his schedule musical gigs, learn more about what he’s doing, and write more about him in the future.

Of course Rosemary won the game. Then her curiosity and Virgo nature got the better of her. Wanting to know what letter we played without and didn’t even miss, she laid the letters out in groups and began counting and comparing.

G Whiz. It was a G.

Post note: Hear Zebulon (I don't know what zodiac sign he is) sing HERE. Click and scroll HERE for more Scrabble game antics.

Posted by Colleen at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)

1. Future Scrabble player plots his strategy

2. Bites off more than he can chew

3. Uses board for surfing

4. Digs for good letters

5. Pleads innocent when his grandmother protests his putting them in his mouth

Post Note: See the action video clip HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

I usually like to play Scrabble between 12 and 2:00 p.m. By noon I’m awake enough and after 2:00 I start getting tired. But this Scrabble game was scheduled for 10:30 because Rosemary had an appointment to get her haircut at 12:30. “So you can take advantage of my sleepy state and Rosemary’s long hair,” I wrote to Mara in my email confirming I’d be there.

Mara wanted to know how Rosemary’s hair could hinder her game. “Maybe it would get in her eyes,” I guessed. Rosemary suggested that she’d feel better about herself after the haircut and that self-confidence would boost her game. Biblically speaking, Mara reminded us both about Sampson, whose long hair gave him strength, which made me think of the Red Sox who finally won another World Series after most of the players grew their hair.

The high protein peanut gallery at the table next to ours included Tom Ryan, a local satirist who authors the Floyd Enquirer, and Doug Thompson, political commentator and founder of Capital Hill Blue and Blue Ridge Muse. Both are red meat writers who from time to time stir up controversy. Tom had his notebook spread out on the table, so I took mine out too, just to level the playing field, in the event that something other than Scrabble got played.

New Improved Super, Speed, and Regular Scrabble were all represented. After Rosemary complimented Doug on his haircut, the word “blog” was played and photographed, and Emma (seated with short hair) proved she could prevail, Mara showed me and Café owner Sally (standing) how to play “Speed Scrabble.” Then it was time for Super Scrabble. Emma and Mara were playing it as I was getting ready to go. I noticed that the board was much bigger; there were two Z’s, and a number of quadruple word score boxes.

I can verify that the leather jacket biker rumors about Doug are true. Here he is revving up his Harley engine and waving to Rosemary who is off to get her hair cut off. And HERE is the result of some of Tom’s latest notes. Close up of Doug and his Harley HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

She brought mango salsa and chips. I made my specialty: rye crisp crackers with melted cheese, pesto, and red peppers. Just picked raspberries and blueberries got passed around. It was the first time ten year old Kyla played with us. She’s in the family business, after all, and also writes haiku. Coloring in a coloring book in-between turns, she held up her part of the bargain. Especially when she dropped an X on the board and wrote OX and FOX in one play.

It was an unusual game from the start, with me putting down the first word: LOOFA. After Mara played “Qat” – one of the few “Q words” that doesn’t need a U – I said, “Q’s are getting to be like Amazon females. Who needs males or Q’s? We can reproduce without them now.”

Joe was in the kitchen making his lunch when Mara noted how he bent his knees and salted his plate of food with style. She wondered if stooping while salting makes food taste better. “He always has to stoop down for me (being over a foot shorter than him) but I don’t know how it applies to salting.

My favorite word of the game was Althea, played by me on a triple word score. Turns out it’s not just a woman’s name and a Grateful Dead song, but also any flower in the mallow family.

By the end of the game the only words we could play were guttural sounds: YAR (pirate talk) … UH … ER … It was down to the wire. Mara worked it hard and went out first, beating me by just four points.

I weighted Mara and Kyla down with cucumbers (they grow overnight) before they left, and, because they had made the Scrabble house call, I handpicked them some dill to go with the cucumbers. Kyla likes summer squash and rye crisp crackers dipped in green jasmine iced tea.

Post note: The blog title comes from Mara’s complaint after reading THIS post, where I mentioned we played Scrabble but either talked about stuff too personal or nothing blog worthy happened, so nothing got recorded or posted. She protested and pleaded (see photo), “But, I want to be blogworthy!” So this time I scribbled and snapped.

Posted by Colleen at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

1. Press Play

2. Record

3. Pause

4. Fast Forward

5. Rewind

I was recently shocked to notice that my last Scrabble blog entry was from way back in March when Chelsea, Virginia, and I won the Literacy Volunteer Scrabble Tournament HERE. I have actually played two games with Mara since then, but we talked about stuff that was either too personal or not blog worthy, so nothing got recorded. It was fun to get together with the Scrabble Bag Ladies of Café Del Sol this past Tuesday to play. We started outside on the new Winter Sun deck but got chased into the cafe by the summer sun. You can watch some past Café Del Sol Scrabble outtakes HERE, while I'm at the dentist getting bridgework done.

Posted by Colleen at 8:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

The following was published in The Floyd Press on March 27, 2008.

Those monthly Scrabble games I’ve been playing with friends at the Café Del Sol have paid off. I was one of three players from our informal group representing Floyd in a Scrabble Tournament to benefit the Literacy Volunteers of Roanoke this past Thursday. With a score of 458, Virginia Nathan, a literacy volunteer; Chelsea Adams, a Radford University writing teacher; and I played as a team and earned a first place prize for one of the two games played.

More than one-hundred players filled Fitzpatrick Hall in the Jefferson Center for the 3rd annual competition, hosted by the Literacy Volunteers of Roanoke Valley and the Roanoke Library Foundation. The games were played in two teams of three with two rounds lasting forty minutes each, just enough time to use all the letter tiles if we adhered to the three minute time limit for each play. For a $30 entry fee, the fundraising event included two games, a light supper, and desserts. A member of the Literacy Volunteers made introductions and announced the game rules from the podium stage. Shanna Flowers (pictured to the right above), a Roanoke Times columnist, was our gracious master of ceremonies.

The pre-game atmosphere was festive, but once the games commenced the pressure was on and everything but the task at hand faded into the background. Immersed in our team huddles, we were playing against the whole room for the best score. At our Floyd café games an occasional play might take as long as ten minutes. In this case we had only three minutes, but, working as a team, we had three brains between us. Virginia, the calmest of our group, sat in the middle, adjusting the tiles while listening to input from Chelsea and me. Chelsea kept score and I drew the letters from the drawstring bag, which I had to do quickly. During the first game my hands shook as I placed the seven tile letters on our rack and tried not to drop them. By the second game, we were all more confident in our abilities and teamwork.

In between games, we socialized with other word lovers. There was a strong showing of employees from the Roanoke Times, one of the tournament sponsors. All of the six players on the teams we competed with were from the Times. George Kegley, a retired business editor for the Roanoke Times, was the evening’s official Scrabble judge.

Some teams boosted their team spirit by wearing matching clothes. One group of three women stood out, with feathered boas around their necks and large floppy hats with letter cards attached to them on their heads. T-shirts with words and Scrabble logos were worn by some players and volunteers.

Dictionary look-ups were allowed but cost an additional $3 donation. Every table was equipped with a Scrabble board, a timer, and three colored flags. With a wave of a yellow flag a volunteer would appear to assist with a dictionary look-up. A red flag brought the Scrabble judge to determine if a “challenged” word was acceptable or not. A green flag could be waved if players needed rules clarified.

I learned from my teammates that JENNIES are female mules. It was a word that could have scored us a Scrabble Bingo worth 50 bonus points if we had found a place on the board to play it. LATHER, JAILED, QAT, ZEES, TOKEN, and RODEOS were some of the words our team put down. We were able to make as many as three words in one play when we played a word that attached to existing ones on the board, expanding on them.

Our prize for the best score of the second round was a $50 gift certificate from Barnes and Noble for each of us. Prizes for the lowest team score of each game were copies of the Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary. A prize for the most interesting word, HALOGEN, was a round of golf for four at Westlake Golf and Country Club in Smith Mountain Lake. The best team name also won a golf package. Some of the team names this year were Victorious Secrets, Word Warriors, The Tilettes, and "Surely, This Name Will Win the Name Contest.” The award went to the Chixtionaries.

At the close of the evening, Virginia, Chelsea, and I (aka Two C’s and a V) struck up a conversation with a fellow player about the 2008 National Scrabble Association’s Tournament, which is being held this summer in Orlando. I don’t know if any of us will ever make it to National Tournament, but I’m pretty sure we’ll all be back in Roanoke next year for the Literacy Volunteer’s 4th annual tournament. In the meantime, maybe we’ll purchase some books about Scrabble with our Barnes and Noble’s gift certificates that will help us improve our game.

Post Notes: More information about the Literacy Volunteers of Roanoke can be found at www.lvarv.org/. Literacy Volunteers of the New River Valley’s webpage is www.lvnrv.org. The first photo is of, left to right, Colleen, Chelsea, Virginia, and Shanna Flowers. Read "Bag Ladies Ready for Tournament" HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

AKA: Play One for St. Patrick

It was Mara (center) who typed out our mission, described in thirteen parts and titled “Procedure for Scrabble Poem.” Part 1: Play a game of Scrabble with Colleen, Rosemary, and Kathleen on St. Patrick’s Day at the Café Del Sol. Wear Green. Joke about whether you are Irish or Scotch-Irish. Drink green tea. Convince the baristas to play Celtic Music. After that we were instructed to keep a list of the words played and to later write a poem using them. Rosemary kept score, while Mara kept track of the words we played, writing them down with a pink ink pen.

When Kathleen arrived, we questioned her choice of green, a pale mint, but she redeemed herself when she proudly pointed out the family heirloom pinned to her vest. It was an antique political button that said “Donal J. O’Callaghan, Mayor of Cork” with a black and white photo of the mayor himself.

We like to talk about words. Kathleen offered an explanation on the roots of the word rigamarole. It derived from “ragman’s roll,” and referred to the chant the ragman would shout out as he drove his horse and buggy through town looking for rags to collect, she told us. I was speculating on how the word “boondoggle” came about. A boon that’s been dogged? While looking for “doogle” in the Scrabble dictionary, I found “dogdom,” which caused an uproar of laughter when I read the meaning out loud: the world of dogs.

It was a strange game of compromises and strangled words tightly grouped in the middle of the board. I was ahead when I turned to Kathleen and said, “Even if I win this game, I’m not proud of it.” Rosemary told a story of recently driving the wrong way on the highway for an hour before noticing she was going in the wrong direction. “I wasn’t feeling anxiety, which gave me anxiety,” she said. We got so busy talking that ten minutes passed before we realized that no on knew whose turn it was next. “At least we didn’t go on for an hour like Rosemary before noticing it,” I said. And for some reason everything seems funnier when we’re playing Scrabble, like those random letters I picked out of the bag that said DI SEX. It was hilarious at the time.

I call this one “phase two in which Doris gets her oats,” which translates to this: Game two in which Rosemary wins.

Post notes: The Procedure Scrabble Poems have begun to pour in. Some have been left on my answering machine. Update: Mara's, Rosemary's and mine can be read in the comment section of this post!

Posted by Colleen at 9:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

“I’m like a bridge lady who plays Scrabble,” I said to my friend Art, who asked me how I was doing as he was sitting down for lunch at a table next to ours.

We were at the Café Del Sol and three of us were playing. Virginia and I were getting in some practice for the third annual Scrabble for Literacy Tournament we signed up for later in the month. Rosemary, who had a little valuable free time that she was happy to spend on our game, thought I had said, “I’m like a bag lady who plays Scrabble.”

“Well, all of us are like bag ladies,” I said holding on to the Scrabble bag of letters and shaking it for effect, “Scrabble bag ladies.”

And what a game it was! I scored a Scrabble Bingo (when you use all seven letters in one play and score a bonus 50 points above the points that the word scores) with the word AVENGED on my first play. It was the first play of the game, which could have psyched the others down, but rather had the effect of making them play better. Virginia’s Bingo word was GRAINERY and Rosemary’s was QUARTERS. I got the X, Virginia got the Z, and Rosemary got the Q. The letters were well distributed; everyone played well, but only one of us won, Rosemary, coming in from behind at the last minute.

Post notes: More information about the Third Annual Scrabble for Literacy Tournament is HERE. For more Scrabble antics click HERE and scroll down.

Posted by Colleen at 9:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Your thoughts and words are powerful … they think we're disposable … well both my thumbs opposable …are spelled out on a double word and triple letter score … ~ Kimya Dawson

Warming up for a game with my poet friend, Mara, I put the Scrabble box by the woodstove after it sat in the back seat of the car overnight. “I hope you’re dressed warm,” I said to her, holding the phone in one hand and pushing a log in the woodstove with the other. She assured me she had long johns on and that she would bring a paper from The Harvest Moon because my article on musician Bernie Coveney was in it and I hadn’t seen it yet.

Before we started the game, she downloaded Microsoft publisher on my computer so I could make my own chapbooks of poetry. I read her my poem about Jesus in answer to the one she read at the last Spoken Word night. My Jesus paints graffiti. Hers is an Aries. We drank tea with jasmine and listened to the music of Kimya Dawson, who features prominently on the movie soundtrack Juno.

Mara buys valentine conversation hearts like she was playing the lottery, looking for that winner that says, “Write Me.” One like it was given to her by another poet at the start of their friendship. They started writing each other after that, and Mara’s been trying to find another “Write Me” valentine heart ever since.

“At four boxes for $1, I can afford the habit,” she told me. We dumped them out in a bowl. Neither of us would eat them; we just like to read them. Later I learned that the theme for this year’s hearts is weather, with messages like Could Nine, Chill Out, In a Fog, and Melt Me. “Write Me” came from the 2003 line.

I fed her homemade soup, crackers with melted Swiss cheese. She brought me my first valentine. I think it was Sponge Bob Square Pants, but he was shaped like a heart. The message on it said “You’re the Spongiest.” She put it on the table before heading home. I was upstairs on the computer at the time, playing with a conversation heart generator. “I can’t spell WRITE ME, “I called down to her. “Too many letters … will BITE ME do?

Our game? Considering that I got the Q, X, J, and a 50 point Bingo and only won by 16 points, I think she played the better game.

Posted by Colleen at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

To the tune of “Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire,” I ask Mara, “Why did you get your haircut?”

“I won a haircut.”

“In a poetry slam?”

“No, I said I WANT a haircut. I won dogs tags in a poetry slam.”

Mara’s daughter Kyla, sitting at the next table fixing her doll’s hair, asks, “Mom, did you take your turn?” But I hear ‘did you take a Xanax?’

“Why is Xanax spelled with an X and not a Z like Xerox, which should also be spelled with a Z?” I ask. Mara denies ever taking Xanax.

By this time “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” was playing on the Café Del Sol stereo from the fake Christmas song CD that Katy Reany made for Mara. The words are changed to “We Wish You Didn’t Live with Us,” but I hear “We Wish You a Merry Whip Ass.”

It wasn’t just the lyrics of old favorite Christmas songs that were skewered. The game took a strange turn when I innocently played NASH without a G and it was only noticed a few turns later, too late to take it back. We decided that everyone could play one free fake word with the stipulation that we had to provide a convincing fake meaning for it.

So NASH, played next to JO which is an Australian boyfriend, became an English boyfriend. (I was thinking of Joni Mitchell’s one time boyfriend, Graham Nash.) NOOKY with a Y was played and RAINOIT was later changed to CRAINOIT to reach the triple letter score.

A wire of silver stars from the container of Christmas cookies Mara brought got made into a tiara and was passed around for wearing on the head.

Max asks his sister, Emma, something like “When is a door not a door?” and she answers, “When it’s a jar.”

“Hey, what’s that word that comes before Caboodle?” someone else (I confess) wants to know. Mara recites her poem "I Will Be Devastated When They Quit Making Star Wars Stamps" while holding up a sheet of them that Max and his family gifted her with. She uses a Darth Vader stamp to pay her mortgage bill she says. Luke Skywalker and Yoda are for letters to people she likes.

Post Notes: I specifically lined Mara’s pose up in the second photo so that she would look like a red antennaed Martian. See a short video clip of some more Bizzaro Scrabble antics HERE. Click and scroll down HERE for more Scrabble photos.

Posted by Colleen at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)

It was a mega game and a record turnout with six players, two boards, two dictionaries, lunch plates, tea cups, score pads and one decked out cappuccino spread out on the two tables put together to make one long one. We drew straws to see which of two teams we would play on. As the games began, mental struggling and concentration mixed with bursts of laughter and visitors coming by to chat. I kept looking across the long table at Rosemary who kept reaching into a large brown paper bag. For most of the game I thought she was eating popcorn and was hoping the bag would make its way down to my end of the table. Turned out their three person team was picking Scrabble letters from the makeshift bag. I played for a turn or two with 8 letters by mistake, and for awhile thought I had a blank until I discovered the letter A was on the other side.

Post note: This was last week's game. Another game is scheduled for today but may be canceled because of the snowy wet weather. Click HERE and scroll down for more Scrabble antics at the Cafe del Sol.

Posted by Colleen at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

AKA: Day at the Café

1. Read her lips

2. Game boys

3. It’s not rocket science or arm wrestling

4. And the winner is …

Post notes: All the above photos were taken at the Café Del Sol last week where Mara and I played Scrabble. To read more about how we dabble in scrabble, go HERE and scroll down.

Posted by Colleen at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

While I was swimming laps, Mara was taking her turn on the little Travel Scrabble game balanced on her lap. I came back dripping, grabbed for a towel with one hand and picked up a snapped shut tile of miniature letters with the other. Then I sat down on the lounge chair and laughed.

“I don’t even remember these letters. I must have picked them just before I jumped in.”

“Those are my letters!” Mara shouted.

A few minutes later, she asked, “Is sneed a word?”

“Only if we’re allowing Dr. Suess words,” I answered.

Kayla, Mara’s daughter, called me back over to the pool to take a video of her jumping off the diving board HERE. She didn’t make much of a splash. I considered doing a retake, but I had a game to finish.

Post Notes: This scene happened last week. More recently, I went to the pool on the last day it was open for the season, which was also the day before school started. The parking lot was like Walmart, which was unusual for our small town. I had to wait for a van to pull out, freeing up a place to park. You can scroll down HERE for more Scrabble adventures.

Posted by Colleen at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

This is the summer Scrabble game when Mara and I filled up on wild wineberries and blackberries before we played. We passed Catalpa, Mimosa, Rose of Sharon, Butterfly bush, and all the flowers in Jayn’s garden on our way to the Zephyr pond, where we pulled out the wicker couch with the pink floral pattern from the sauna house for sitting on.

Mara thought she picked a piece of chocolate off her shirt from a brownie she was eating, but discovered when she put it in her mouth that it was really a piece of mud from when she was swimming with her daughter Kyla in the pond. It got quiet when Kyla went down to Jayn’s pottery studio. The breeze stirred. It slid under the trimmed edges of my blue silk blouse, and rustled the leafy green all around us.

Little plastic letters clicked into place on our Scrabble travel board. Words like fruity and fishy got played. The fish were biting. We could hear them splashing in and out of the water. Kayla came back and announced she made a pot. Mara admitted that Zacation wasn’t a real word. It was Zacaton she was thinking of. Some kind of Mexican grass.

Posted by Colleen at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

“The word ‘cicada,’ for example, stops me in my tracks. Sorry, I simply cannot continue.” ~ Billy Collins on choosing poems for a poetry anthology.

Colleen: If I put a blank on a double letter score and a blank is worth nothing, how many points is that?

Mara: Nothing

Colleen: But is it twice as much as nothing?

When Mara and I play Scrabble there’s a lot of laughter and flipping of notebooks as we write down lines we can’t believe we just said. You’d think we were pair of comics instead of poets.

Mara’s nine year old daughter and her friend are arguing. They can’t decide whether to jump on the trampoline, play with my doll house, play pool, or Yahtzee. Mara, who is trying to figure out what to do with an all-vowel rack of letters, stops to listen to them work it out. She looks serious but doesn’t stay that way for long.

“It’s meant to be funny,” she says before reading me the latest poem she’s been working on. It reminded me of something Billy Collins might have written and did make me laugh, especially when she spoke the words “cheap black umbrellas.”

“I just like the word umbrella, the way Billy Collins doesn’t like the word cicada,” I explained when she asked me why I laughed at that particular line.

I make Mara bubble and squeak and a venison burger for lunch. She brings me a pinch bowl that she made while visiting her aunt who’s a potter. There’s a matching small cup that says RED (for my last name) with a triple spiral like the one that’s framed in my bathroom and the one tattooed on her back.

“When I was a girl it was my chore to hang the family laundry. While doing it I would pretend that the only clothes I had left were the ones I was hanging because the rest were burned when the house caught on fire. What if the words on the board were the only ones we had left to communicate with?” I suggest.

After we decide that all filler words, words that aren’t nouns or verbs, could be used freely, we try it out.

I’m glad I’m not injured … Are you Coy? .. Are you coy daily?

“Hey, there’s a new word in the Scrabble dictionary: Zacation!” Mara announces.

“Does it mean you have to go to New Zealand or some place Dr. Seuss wrote about?” I answer.

After that and for the rest of the game, every time Mara says (shouts) the word “zacation,” she giggles.

Do you think there’s such a thing as Scrabble endorphins?” I ask her. “You know like a Scrabble high? I’m serious.”

But just like if we had smoked something while we played; everything seemed much funnier in the moment than it does to me today. I guess you just had to be there.

Posted by Colleen at 2:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

“I was born in 1927; how old does that make me?” she asked.

“Wait, I need a pencil. I can’t do it in my head.”

“Neither can I,” she said with a laugh.

“You’re going to be 80!” I announced after abandoning the pencil and counting on my fingers. We both acted shocked.

The next time I visited my friend Ruth, I made sure to bring a cold Newcastle beer, knowing how much she likes beer and that I would be out of town for her birthday.

“This is my first birthday present,” she said, putting it in the fridge.

Although she lives on a farm with others nearby, she doesn’t get out much these days. And since her dear friend and roommate passed away last year, she really appreciates visits.

She’s been losing her short term memory, so we play Scrabble.

“I love a game that makes you think,” she says.

On the same day I brought her the beer and after we had settled down to playing, a goat the size of a small pony charged into the kitchen. I could see it coming from the window and all about jumped up on my chair. While I was acting helpless, Ruth shot into action, doing what I later called her “horse trick.”

With her 4 foot and some odd inches frame, she pushed the critter out of the house. Then she tied him to a fence post in the yard, scolding him as she wound the knot. In her younger days she ran a horse camp for kids. Some of the photographs on her walls are of students she taught to ride who still keep in touch.

Sharing a chicken pesto sandwich as we played, the game lasted over an hour. After sitting so long and straining our minds to find words, we were ready to let go and move. Dancing for Ruth is a meditation. From the first time I met her in 1987, I have wanted to be her dance disciple. Sometimes at community gatherings I would land myself next to her on the dance floor. But now it was just me and Ruth, bare feet slipping and sliding on the wood floor, transcendent music filling up the bright little farm house.

Her movements were calm, sweeping and focused, while I, on the other hand, worked up a sweat. After a half and hour of straight dancing we both felt lighter and like our minds had been swept clean. Scrabble and dancing are two of my favorite activities. Doing them with Ruth is an added bonus.

With a big hug goodbye I headed for my car. “I’ll be out of town for a couple of weeks. See you when I get back,” I shouted as she stood in her doorway and waved.

“Have a good trip!” she shouted back.

Posted by Colleen at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

When I first arrived at my birthday Scrabble game at the Café Del Sol, Mara was outside on the sidewalk talking on her cellphone to her boyfriend Arden.

“Say Happy Birthday to Colleen,” she said to Arden and then stuck the phone near my ear.

“If you put a G in front of your name, it would be GARDEN,” I found myself saying into the phone. Arden agreed to go by the name “Garden” just for the day, for my birthday.

“I feel so powerful!” I shouted out as I swung the café door open.

Inside, birthday gifts were spread out on the coffee table in between the Scrabble board, the dictionary, and cups of tea. They included a large heart shaped potato, a book on writing creative non-fiction, and an unsigned birthday card that I was told should continue to be passed on unsigned to the next person to have a birthday. There was a pink plastic musical candle that played “Happy Birthday.” I stuck it in my chicken salad sandwich and leaned in to listen.

“Is this how you get people to set their hair on fire?” I asked Mara.

“Blow it out,” she kept saying. I kept pretending I was trying to, complaining that it was a joke candle and wouldn’t go out.

“Blow harder,” she insisted. I was so busy feigning my efforts that I forgot to make a wish when it finally, accidentally went out.

We eventually got around to playing Scrabble, but because we got started playing counter-clockwise, we were continually confused about whose turn it was. When it wasn’t her turn, Mara, who organizes spoken word performances for Floyd Fest, made plans out-loud for the poet’s line up. She asked us questions and wrote things down in her notebook.

Kathleen had just gotten back in town and discovered that her broke-down lawnmower still wasn’t fixed and her tractor needed work. As she was lamenting about her machinery problems, I was replacing the words “lawnmower and “tractor” with “blog” in my mind and understanding exactly how she felt, having just gone through some technical difficulties of my own.

Earlier in the week when I ran into fellow blogger Doug at the Café, he told me that Virginia Living magazine had an article out about Floyd. Since I’ve lived in Floyd for the past twenty-one years there have been a number of stories written about Floyd. In every case the author has felt compelled to write about “hippies.”

“Did they use the word “hippie,” I asked Doug, hoping they had come up with an alternate more creative way to refer to Floyd’s colorful alter-natives?

“In the first sentence,” he joked.
Doug wasn’t kidding. The magazine was on the coffee table. It was a well written and informative article, but not only did “hippies” appear in the first sentence, they were described as gorgeous and floating, which caused us to erupt in giggles when I read it out loud and to take on “gorgeous floating hippies” as the buzz phrase of the day.

At one point, everyone in the café, even those I didn’t know, turned and sang Happy Birthday to me. My friend Melody, a booking agent for the Winter Sun, and a positively gorgeous floating hippie, poked her head in from the Winter Sun Hall door and finished the song with …. And many more... For a minute I wondered if the whole performance had been staged.

Posted by Colleen at 8:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You. ~ Dr Seuss

"Look, there’s a house turning the corner,” Kathleen announced. We all leaned towards the café window, some of us stood up to get a better look as a truck hauling a mobile-home made a wide turn from Rt. 8 onto 221 at Floyd’s one traffic light. At one point it looked like the white and black shuttered home was sitting smack dab in the middle of the street.

We were there to play Scrabble. It was Mara’s birthday. She wrote us all tankas and read a sestina in which the word cereal figured prominently. We collectively decided that “cereal” was not as poetic as the word “cherrios." Mara took notes, and so did I because I always do. I wrote down “Is that a double peace sign or a quote?” referring to a four fingered gesture that someone made.

I crooked my neck and tried to read Mara’s pants. They were light blue dungaree and covered with handwritten marker scrawl, reminding me of the collection of bumper stickers she has spread out all over her silver Forrester. Kathleen spelled out rhymes on her Scrabble tile while Rosemary schemed for the high score of the day. There was soup and tuna salad and steamy hot tea. Kathleen, a former Bostonian like me, knew what a bulkie roll was (a Boston version of a Kaiser roll).

We tried to get Sally, the café owner, to play but she was working the lunch hour. She did agree to be our designated Scrabble life-line and visited our table now and then to offer Scrabble consultation. We bantered with some of the Floyd Figures Art Group artists who were having lunch at a table nearby.

Somebody mentioned Kalamazoo. I think they were planning a trip there. “It sounds like a place in a Doctor Seuss book,” Mara said. “Or a musical instrument,” I added. We allowed Mara to play one free phony word, PERVE, because it was her birthday. The sun streamed in the large paneled window, Rosemary kept score to a Dar William’s soundtrack coming through the café speakers.

Rosemary gifted Mara with a miniature wooden dragon whose head wiggled and bobbed. Another dragon she had only shook his head back and forth, so he was replaced. “Naysayer,” Rosemary explained. This one repeatedly nodded in the affirmative, so we set him at the edge of the board for moral support.

There were no birthday cards, but when the game was over, Mara stood on a chair and asked everyone to sign her pants. Some people wrote slogans, others expressed birthday wishes. Curious café customers got pulled into the live art performance. “Take our picture,” Mara suggested to blogger David St. Lawrence who was sitting with his laptop at a nearby table. David deferred at first, noticing that I also had a camera in my hand, but Mara insisted, confessing that she wanted to be on David’s blog.

Post Notes: That's Sally in the first pant-signing photo and Kim from next door at the Winter Sun in the second. You can scroll down HERE for a photo of all of us at last year's Birthday Scrabble game. All Scrabble posts can be found HERE. Special thanks to David who, after the Scrabble Party broke up, gave me some blogging tech help. Jeanne from Out and Back has the interview questions I asked her posted today.

Posted by Colleen at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

There’s no rest for the wallflower Scrabble players at the Café Del Sol during lunchtime. Kathleen and I set up the board at a kitty-cornered table tucked behind a large fir plant. We hadn’t even picked our seven letters or found out who would go first when visitors began to come over to greet us; Dance Free Brit, guitar playing Bernie, a wave across the café to Ellen, Hello to Steve.

The crowd was a colorful one and the line at the counter kept getting bigger. Gretchen looked pretty in pink. David snapped a photo of me with his phone just as I was placing my tiles on a triple word score for my high score of the game. The din mixed with chatter, the music piped in, something in the kitchen fell and broke.

Kathleen’s soup got cold as she shuffled her letters. Her eyes darted back and forth from her rack to the board and back again. It was worth the trouble when she found a place to spell QUINCE. At one point I got up to roam around; to look at a picture of Stephanie’s little boy from the batch of photos she was downloading on her laptop, to find out how Talisin’s scrap booking class was going, to ask Jamie if he would teach me how to make posters as nice as the ones he makes for Winter Sun events.

JOIST, SALOON, WHARF, RILLET, and DRUID: Some interesting words, and some big scorers, but no bingos were played. The sun streamed in and the letters radiated out from the center, covering all four corners of the board.

Post Note: Scroll down HERE for more Scrabbling adventures.

Posted by Colleen at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

SOME DAYS FEEL LIKE THAT.

OTHERS FEEL LIKE THIS.

Photos: 1. Clean up after a game at my house with Mara yesterday. 2. Rosemary was counting out the letters that go with the Cafe Del Sol game last week. They often get dropped on the floor when kids play with them. For more Scrabble photos and adventures, go HERE.

What's your day like?

Posted by Colleen at 8:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

It seems I go out these days just for an excuse to show off my new purple knit scarf, or to eat cookies. There were two Scrabble games going at once and half a dozen varieties of freshly baked cookies to eat at my friend Juniper’s house this past Saturday night. “I’m not even going to put my cookies out. They’re all the leftover Christmas cookies that I’m sick of, and they look stupid next to yours,” I told Mara, master poet baker and one of my regular Scrabble partners.

“Colleen has a cookie complex,” she announced loud enough for everyone to hear. By then I had moved on to the guacamole and the tomatoes stacked with fresh mozzarella and topped with basil and balsamic vinegar that Juniper’s daughter Autumn had made, because I’m just not the type to eat dessert first.

We complained about our Scrabble letter picks while Donna joked about mixing her background in social work and her love of pottery together by opening a shop called “The Crackpot.” Ginnie was giving Mara some informal career counseling to the sound of Jack Johnson playing on the stereo. Mara said something (unrepeatable here) to Juniper’s son Seth, having to do with our hard core dedication to playing Scrabble, which made me imagine all of us on motorcycles wearing black leather jackets with Scrabble letters printed on the back.

I couldn’t help but notice that there were rocks lying on top of wrapping paper under the white lighted tree. “Is it a step up from coal?” Donna asked after I pointed them out. Juniper wasn’t home from working at her Seeds of Light bead shop yet, and so Autumn explained. “The only thing mom wanted for Christmas was a load of gravel for the drive-way,” she began. Juniper’s boyfriend had given her a gift certificate for gravel, along with a sampling, and a Tonka truck with a battery powered dumper that Juniper later told us she had fun playing with on Christmas morning.

There was also something wrapped for me under the tree, but it wasn’t a Christmas present. Back in May Juniper was on her way to the airport when she called me on her cell phone to wish me a Happy Birthday. She was en route to San Francisco to visit her son. “I’ll bring you a present from the City of Love, something RED!” she promised.

It was a smiling red Buddha with a round outstretched belly. “He must have eaten more than his share of Mara’s cookies,” I said.

Photos: 1. Mara's cookies. 2. Scrabble at Juniper's. 3. Colleen wearing the purple scarf that Joe gave her for Christmas. Joe wearing the wool scarf that Colleen gave him.

Posted by Colleen at 5:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)

Mara and I go to the Scrabble board the way others go to a bar. Scrabble takes our minds of our problems, but it also gives us the opportunity to talk about them. With letters clinking in the bag, we pour out our feelings as we play.

"I’ll tell you a joke," she said, seeing that I needed to be cheered up, “How many Zen monks does it take to change a light bulb?” I shook my head waiting for the punch line.

“A plumb tree in a garden.”

Bob (the bearded lady) came over to our table to say hello, but Mara and I all but ignored him.

“That didn’t cheer me up. It created more stress. I don’t get it,” I bluntly responded to her joke.

“You’re not supposed to; that’s the point. It’s Zen, Colleen,” she explained. (She told me another, in whispered tones, that did make me laugh, but I can’t print it here.)

“Hi Bob!” I called out, five minutes after he greeted us. He was across the room on the computer now, smiling as he waved. “I’m having a delayed reaction,” I explained to him, laughing.

“Well, that’s a good sign,” I turned back to Mara and said. “I think my sense of humor is starting to come back.” She was looking up a word in the Official Scrabble Dictionary when a scribbled note fell out. It was written in blue crayon on a ripped piece of napkin, addressed specifically to “Mara and Colleen.” “Delane and Amy say Hi,” it read. I smiled remembering that Delane, “Life in Mayberry” blogger from Mount Airy, told me he and his wife had recently been up to visit Floyd and that they checked out the Café Del Sol in person, curious after reading about it on my blog.

Jamie hasn’t been blogging lately. He came over to say hello. I complimented him on how great the Winter Sun web page that he’s been managing looks. His mother is a Scrabble player, in the top 100 in Australia, Mara and I learned. Our neck-and-neck scores suddenly seemed insignificant.

Jamie went back to work. While Mara and I played, we talked about the writer’s workshop we both went to the day before, our sensitivities, the definition of “creative non-fiction,” and the difference between a bulkie and a Kaiser roll. A cigarette break was taken; a couple of chicken salad sandwiches were eaten.

"Look, Colleen! This is for you,” Mara announced, pointing to a Roanoke Times spread on the café’s coffee table. It was a feature story on the role of pink in marketing products to women, and Mara knew of my recent interest in all things pink, especially pink blow-up rafts. She turned her feminist nose up at the thought of a bright pink cell phone, but I got a kick out of seeing the Roanoke Times in pink, especially when I picked it up and read this: “The new Samsung E530 pink mobile phone is a girl’s best friend,” a company press release said, “equipped with calorie counter, megapixel camera, shopping list … oh, and it even tells ladies when they’re ovulating.”

Zany had returned. Mara was telling Bernie the Zen joke (see photo above), but he wasn’t laughing either. Chris was telling me about a Roanoke Times commentary on the unreliability of electronic voting. It was written by a mutual friend.

Outside, after our game, and with a Roanoke Times of my own in hand, I gave Mara a big hug and thanked her for cheering me up.

“And it’s hard to feel bad when I win!” I joked to her as I walked across the street.

Posted by Colleen at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)

1. X is a high scoring Scrabble letter. There’s only one in the bag.

2. For a brief time, I had the nickname Xerox. OnThe LoveLink, our family e-mail group, I sign my emails "xocolleen," and the spell checker kept changing it to "xerox."

3. It’s a poet’s job to say… the emperor wears no clothes … and …why can’t we let ourselves be so X-posed?

4. I thought I would feel more excited about the Democratic take-over of the House and the Senate. I am glad for the results, but the truth is that the damage is already done. Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead. Over 2,000 U.S. soldiers are dead. The abuses and torture that happened at Abu Ghraib can’t be undone. I hope the shift in power will lead to holding the Bush administration accountable for invading Iraq under false pretenses and for mismanaging the course of the war.

5. Another member of our Writer’s workshop, Mccabe Coolidge, recently had an essay aired on WVTF radio. There’s nothing X rated about it. It’s mostly about pancakes. Listen HERE.

6. A new Scrabble score record! On Oct. 12, in the basement of a Unitarian church on the town green in Lexington, Mass., a carpenter named Michael Cresta scored 830 points in a game of Scrabble. His opponent, Wayne Yorra, who works at a supermarket deli counter, totaled 490 points. The two men set three records for sanctioned Scrabble in North America: the most points in a game by one player (830), the most total points in a game (1,320), and the most points on a single turn (365, for Cresta's play of QUIXOTRY). ~ Stephen Fatsis, Slate Magazine.

7. I have a friend who is a folksinger. Years ago when she came into the bead shop I was working at, I asked her if she was working on any new songs. She told me she working on a new one titled, “Where has all the foreskin gone?” When I saw her years later and asked if she ever finished it, she didn’t even remember it.

8. I want THIS for Christmas. Link provided by Janet.

9. I don’t want X-ray vision. I just want to be able to read the fine print.

10. Lately, I’ve begun to need my reading glasses to see the faces of people I’m talking to. I know I’m at the point where I need a stronger strength of magnification, but I’m afraid if I do I’ll see how dirty my house really is.

11. Number 100 on my “100 Things About Me” says: I don’t like knick-knacks. I just see them as more things to dust.

12. At Floyd Fandango I ran into an old friend. She’s a former Hari Krishna devotee who makes a living as a puppeteer and currently sells sex toys the way other women sell Tupperware. When I heard she was going to be holding a party in my neighborhood, my interest was piqued, “I want to come!” I said. She rolled her eyes and answered, “Everyone wants to come, Colleen.”

13. “Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause cancer.” Thomas Friedman

Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here.

Posted by Colleen at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (30)

Some people play Scrabble for a living. Not me. Although, I did just play two games in two days. I won one, and I lost one, but not as bad as Mara, who can be seen in the photo above with a big L for LOSER on her forehead.

Mara is forced to play blindfolded. Or, I snapped the camera quickly because I was trying to get the man in the background, who was wearing a shirt that said PAGAN on it, but he turned just as Mara’s girlfriend Leigh went to set the bag down and the camera caught it, seemingly in mid-air.

Woman in purple turns Leigh’s head. Should Mara be jealous?

Note: More SCRABBLE antics HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Now’s a good time to make that guacamole you were talking about,” (which really meant, this may take some time),” I said to my friend Alex, as I hunched over the Scrabble board and tried to concentrate.

When it was her turn to play, I got up and sliced one of the tomatoes that I brought from my garden. Every time I got up from the kitchen nook where we were playing, her cat took my seat, as if it was understood that it was hers after all, and I was only keeping it warm.

Because Alex’s husband works at home and also likes to play Scrabble, it was Alex’s 3rd game of the day. It was only my first, but by the time we finished I was worn out.

“It’s the ultimate irony,” I said to her.

Alex, who has more stamina than me, has cancer and was not expected to live past last Christmas. I’m healthy but have limited energy stores. I have to meter out my activities and rest in between each one.

We try to play a monthly game, but the last time we played was in late May. In June, Alex had a trip to Iceland planned to see the Icelandic ponies with her husband and sister-in-law. July came and went. I, for one, was busy with my son’s wedding and hosting company who were in town for it.

Sometime in August, I called Alex for a game. It took her two weeks to call me back.

“I was in Greece,” she told me.

“You’re kidding?!” Why was I surprised?

It’s becoming a regular part of our games; after we play, her husband sets up a slide show on his computer and I enjoy photos of their journeys around the world.

I was half kidding when I said, after watching the Greece one, “What’s next, Alex?” She proceeded to outline a 4 stop trip up north that ended with a wedding in western Massachusetts.

Like I said, it’s the ultimate irony.

Note: More Scrabble antics can be found HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 4:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

This is a photo of me at a Scrabble game yesterday, talking on the phone with my blogger friend, Naomi of “Here in the Hills.” I’m at the Café Del Sol in Floyd, Virginia, and she was calling from Los Angeles. Here’s the story:

Mara called to cancel our Scrabble game at the Café Del Sol because her daughter Kyla wasn’t feeling well. My date with my husband, Joe, for an afternoon swim in the pool was a wash-out because it was raining.

But all was not lost. I called my friend Virginia who had recently told me she likes to play Scrabble and suggested we play sometime. We pulled off a last minute game between her, her husband Don, and me.

After retrieving the board from the hiding place where Mara put it so that playing children wouldn’t mix up and lose the letters, we settled in to play. It was an enjoyable game, even though Don and Virginia are both better players than I am, and I tend to choke when I play with someone for the first time. I was also drawing bad letters.

Sipping on tea and chatting in between turns, we were near the end of the game – Don and I were neck-in-neck and Virginia was well in the lead – when Max, who works behind the café counter, walked over with the phone. “It’s for you, Colleen,” he said.

In a previous post, here at Loose Leaf, I wrote about my fellow Floyd blogger, Doug, making a joke about the Cafe' Del Sol’s phone number – 745- ACUP – which is displayed on a sign outside their building. “It’s a good phone number for a coffee shop, either that or lingerie shop,” he quipped.

With that entry, Naomi left a comment saying, “I’m going to call you at the Café next time you’re there playing Scrabble.” And she did!

“Naomi!” I blurted out, excitedly. I suspected it was her because I sent her an email before I left my house telling her I was off to play Scrabble.

“I’m here playing Scrabble and getting my butt kicked!” I told her.

“How can that be?” she asked. I guess I had given the impression on my blog that I was a pretty good player.

“I’m playing someone new and she’s whiz!” I answered. By this time I had walked into the Winter Sun Hall in the back of the building to get away from the noise of the crowded café.

After reading each other’s blogs regularly for about a year, I feel as if I know Naomi. She frequently features photos and stories about her life as a stage performer, playwright, singer, and artist. Because of the photos she’s posted, I could picture her in her house, see the exotic cactus plants on her deck, and imagine her cat sitting in her lap as we talked.

“Your voice is exactly how I thought you’d sound,” I told her. Naomi, who recently hosted an online party in celebration of her 75th birthday, has a warm and engaging personality that comes through her writing and was also apparent over the phone.

“The internet is amazing,” she said after sharing the story of a recent connection she just had with an old friend’s daughter, which came about by way of an old photo she had posted on her blog. I told her how my sister’s childhood boyfriend found her via my website, and how I found Terri from Island Writer whose wintering neighbors are from Floyd.

But soon, my mind wandered back to the Scrabble task at hand. I could see through the paneled glassed door leading into the Café that it was my turn. “I’ve got to get back to the game now, Naomi. Thank you so much for calling!”

Talking to Naomi was highlight in a rainy day that made my playing a bad game of Scrabble more bearable.

Posted by Colleen at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

Mara says what she likes best about me
is how easy I am to please
Like when she showed me how to make
Celtic borders in Microsoft Word
I clapped my hands and cheered

And when she said -
while looking up a word
playing scrabble -
The dictionary always distracts me
I giggled and wrote it down

What I like best about Mara
is that she frequently says things
I want to write down

Like yesterday she offered this confession:
I want Sy Safransky (editor of The Sun Magazine)
to love me

Mara loves words
They beg for her attention
and for them we both dig deeper
In and out our hands descend
into the drawstring bag
as if the letters in it were nuggets of gold
and we could be rich if only we could spell
Rumplestilskin!

Some women play bridge
or poker with men
Mara and I play scrabble
to spin the world
stanza by stanza
a newborn creation each time

With a sleight of hand we coax letters
like Major Arcane from tarot
We lay them out to know our future
to surprise ourselves with their power

We talk while we play
about extra-sensory perceptions, colors of crayons,
her triple spiral tattoo, and tea

Her turn then mine
Question then answer
It’s easier to be gay or hetro-sexual
than it is to be bi-sexual
she muses

Because neither group fully claims you
I finish her thought
as the board opens up
with all possibilities on the table

She lets the dictionary distract her
while I excavate 10 points of Q
and try
to curb
my enthusiasm

How are you with paperwork?
she changes the subject

You mean writing poetry, I ask
holding my pen in the air
as if I was studying an atom on its tip
or bidding on a Salvor Dali painting

No, I mean balancing your check book
The atom falls off
Explodes a new word
She’s inventing Goddess names
for a new generation
And I
am writing
this down

I never balance my check book
I never know what Mara will say next

Post Notes: My Scrabble game with Mara got canceled today. This poem is my consolation post. For more Scrabble antics with Mara, my poetry and Scrabble buddy, and others I play with, you can scroll through my Scrabble Category Archive HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Mara accidentally dropped the dictionary in the middle of the Scrabble board 40 minutes into the game. It wasn’t the paperback Scrabble dictionary, but my bigger American Heritage one. Leigh joked that Mara should forfeit a turn for causing such a mess.

“Don’t eat those blueberries on the couch!” I shouted to one of the little girls who came over that morning with Mara and Leigh and was playing in my living room. “They make stains!” I cringed at the thought.

As we painstakingly recreated the Scrabble board, we overheard the girls (Mara’s daughter Kyla, her friend Skyler, and Leigh’s little sister Molly) talking to my husband, Joe. “Girls are smarter,” we heard Skyler say, “cause we do more stuff.”

“And we’re flexible at thinking,” Molly added.

We big girls, gathered around the kitchen table, weren't sure we were hearing right. “Why are girls smarter?” Mara shouted into the living room.

“Because there’s more girls in history,” Kyla weighed in.

Knowing there was a time when some women writers and artists used male pseudonyms to have their art taken seriously, and that women weren’t even allowed to vote until 1920, Mara whispered (so as not to burst Kyla’s bubble), “Well, it’s nice that she thinks that.”

Leigh was giving me a tour of her tattoos when Joe, on the way out the door, bid us farewell. Was he feeling overpowered by feminine energy, I couldn’t help but wonder?

Loudly, I protested as I picked 6 one point vowels and 1 consonant from the maroon drawstring bag through out the entire game . “But in a way,” looking at the bright side, “bad letters let you off the hook, because you’re not attached to them,” I said letting go of the possibility that I could win the game. About this time, Leigh was getting good letters and was feeling the pressure to use them well.

After the little girls got finished play-acting cats, ate snacks, and jumped on the trampoline, they played their own unique version of Scrabble on the porch picnic table. Apparently, their rules allowed from them to play with nine letters and the words they made didn’t have to touch each other. As a second generation of Scrabble players, they were serious about their play. Even so, the big girls did most of the clean up.

The games came to a close, and before they all headed out to Kyla’s Karate Class, Mara could be heard saying to me, “Hey, you’re not allowed to complain about your letters and win the game.

Posted by Colleen at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

It was Kathleen’s birthday. Mara brought cherries to share. We met at the Café Del Sol where there were 3 Scrabble boards to choose from and a few bags of mismatched letters, some of which had been purchased at yard sales for parts.

The last time we played together, it was Mara’s birthday, and we had to un-scramble all the various Scrabble tiles for a complete set of letters. We didn’t expect to have to do it again.

“I don’t think we’re the only ones who play Scrabble here,” I said, admiring Rosemary’s power of concentration as she sorted and counted the letters, looking like a wise woman at a cauldron creating a magic stew. Mara stood over her in an effort to be supportive.

“Maybe we should tape a sign to this bag, “DO NOT TOUCH,” Mara suggested.

“I don’t think the people who are mixing up the letters can read,” Rosemary added. In other words it was probably kids using the games as toys while their mothers were downing their lattes.

“Who wants to keep score?” Mara, who was looking at me, asked after the letters were sorted.

“Wants to?” I said sarcastically, knowing that my powers of concentration and math skills were questionable. “I will if you make me, but you’d be risking your Scrabble life in my hands,” I threatened.

Mara decided to keep score. Kathleen (on the left in the photo) drew an A (appropriate for her birthday status) and went first.

Even though I had overslept that morning and woke up feeling like my head was an overripe melon with seeds sloshing about, I managed to get my brain working enough to be in the lead for the whole first half of the game. But, just after making a particularly high score, I was stopped in my Scrabble tracks.

“My Catholic guilt must be kicking in for that last high score against you all,” I said, “because I just picked all one point vowels.”

“Do you think you can control what you pick?” Kathleen asked.

“I don’t know how it works, but, yes.” I answered while flashing my rack of pathetic letters to Rosemary in an effort to get some sympathy. Rosemary just laughed and called me 4 eyes (I’s).

From that point on, my letter picks only got worse, and I became an underachieving slacker with no plans for the future. I wandered around the café when it wasn’t my turn. “I like that music poster on the wall in the bathroom. “The not too proud to advertise in the bathroom tour,” I said, coming back to the table to take my turn.

“Hey, no saving spots on the board with the cherries!” someone shouted.

Kathleen, who struggled for the first part of the game and initially denied that the special birthday chair we suggested she sit in was lucky (remembering what happened to Mara when she sat in it for her birthday game) was now in the lead.

“After I acknowledged that the chair was unlucky, it lost its power over me,” she announced, and then she proceeded to win the game. Happy Birthday, Kathleen!

Post note: Check out that Za Zin Zany play!

Posted by Colleen at 8:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Joe saw my car parked in front of the Café Del Sol and decided to take a break from his busy counselor workday to come in and say hello. Mara, Leah, and I were gathered around the Scrabble board in the cushy chair corner of the café.

After some friendly antics and Scrabble game theatrics, we all settled down. Mara, Leah, and I each had the intention of winning the game and so we leaned into the board to study it. It was soon after that when Mara gestured towards Joe, who was sitting on the couch behind me, and asked in a hushed voice, “Is Joe meditating or did he fall asleep?”

Joe’s voice rose through the hush like a whale sounding, and with one word, he surprised us by answering, “YES.”

Did that mean he was doing some of both? I guess his answer or the fact that he answered at all, floored Mara (see photo).

Post notes: I skipped the part where Joe stopped responding altogether and I put the purple poet beret on his head. I was thinking it would be “the picture of the day,” but when I went to take it, my camera battery was dead, something Joe had just warned me about the night before. Lucky for him I didn’t listen.

You saw it here first: My commentary originally titled “Worse than Watergate and Monika Lewinsky,” was published in the Roanoke Times today under the newly edited name “Country Agrees: Bush Steps Over the Limit.”

Posted by Colleen at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

My friend Alex called to set up one of our monthly Scrabble games. We were trying to pick a date in between her cancer treatment, medical tests, and a possible surgery.

“It has to be before the 20th because we’re going to Iceland,” she said.

What?! Why? I asked.

“My sister-in-law offered us a free trip. They have Icelandic ponies there that she wants to see,” Alex explained.

I’ve known Alex for the past 15 years, but we only started getting together regularly last fall, drawn by our mutual interest in playing Scrabble. When I think of her, I think of 2 things: her art and her love of horses. She’s a rugged individualist, one who does what she sets her mind to, like going back to school for her fine arts degree while raising her daughter and holding down a full-time job as a mail carrier - or, more recently, surpassing her doctor’s prognosis for how long she has left to live.

Because of her cancer, her doctors didn’t think she’d make it to Christmas last year. Not only did she live to see Christmas, she made the half hour drive to Floyd to play Scrabble with me at the Café Del Sol, and she brought me a Christmas present that she had made. Last month she recommended my book to her woman’s book club and then hosted me to attend one of their meetings.

When we finally agreed on a date and I made the trip out to the Shawsville countryside where she and her husband live, she seemed weaker than I had ever seen her.

“The treatments are cumulative,” she told me.

As we set up the board in the sunny alcove of her kitchen, she took a call from one of her doctors. More tests were being discussed when I heard her say, “I don’t have much time. I’m going out of the country on the next Friday.”

Alex’s state of health didn’t curb her ability to beat me. She’s better than me at Scrabble.

Do you have a down parka? I asked while giving her a hug before leaving.

“We won’t need one,” her husband, who had arrived at the end of our game, injected. Not only is it warm in Iceland now but there is continuous daylight there this time of year, he told me.

Alex’s illness puts life in perspective, as far as planning it goes. I just want her to be well enough to fulfill her plan to see Iceland. I can practically see her there already against the pristine landscape dotted with wild ponies.

Our next Scrabble game is planned for June. Maybe I’ll get lucky.

Posted by Colleen at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)

Even though Mara can beat me at Scrabble about as often as I can beat her, I offered to let her win, seeing as it was her birthday, but she would have no part of it. As it turned out, she could have used some concessions. She was doomed from the start…because of the letter Z.

We were drawing to see who would go first when Mara, frustrated, said to me and our fellow players – Rosemary and Kathleen – “I drew a Z. I saw a Z, but now I don’t see it. It must have fallen back in the bag!”

I got off on the wrong foot too, by playing a fake word on my very first turn. Nobody noticed until it was too late, so I was stuck feeling guilty, like a Scrabble imposter, for most of the game.

I even convinced myself that I knew what my fake word meant. I was thinking of “joe,” (a regular guy) when I played “jim” and told myself it meant something in between a shim and a jimmy. Kathleen was having no part of that.

Meanwhile, it was Mara’s birthday. Her dad, Wayne, came and ate lunch with us. When I climbed around behind the couch and the potted fir tree to snap a picture of him, Kathleen joked that I was trying to see her letters! Sally, the cafe owner who is also a professional singer, came over to sing “Happy Birthday” to Mara. She asked Mara how old she was at the same exact moment that I was reporting my score to Rosemary. “23!” I announced.

“23! Mara repeated…unconvincingly.

As the game was winding down, the winning score was between me and Rosemary. I had mostly only one point vowels left and if I was to win, it would be only by a matter of a few points, so I had to be careful. By the time it was down to only one play left, I was studying the board hard, looking for big point letters that I could parasite off. That’s when I noticed it.

“Hey! Where is the Z?!” I shouted. “There is no Z on this board!!”

Mara had seen a Z. It was the same one that was now under her chair.

Photos: 1. Mara, holding her Scrabble mug, says “Peace.” She and Dove are looking at “Mara’s Birthday Scrabble Game” posted on my blog that day. 2. Covertly looking at Kathleen’s letters via my camera, while trying to catch Wayne. 3. Rosemary, Kathleen, Mara, and me. Mara is not giving you the finger. She’s holding the infamous letter Z to her head.

Posted by Colleen at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

AKA: It’s Mara’s birthday and we have a 4 way Scrabble game planned.

I’m feeling self-conscious because I just got my haircut, and I’m hoping that short bangs won’t affect my Scrabble game. (You know, like short hair affected Sampson’s game and long hair helped the Red Sox win the World Series.)

I fixed up a little photo album of all the pictures I’ve taken of Mara playing Scrabble with me over the years, wrapped it in birthday paper, and then took a few B vitamins because I know they are good for brain function. Do you think Mara will accuse me of doping?

Posted by Colleen at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

It was noon when Mara and I set up our makeshift office and scrabble game station in the corner of the Café Del Sol. The last time we played we did so without a net, which meant that neither of us brought a dictionary. On this day, we not only had a dictionary but our notebooks, pens, books, and eventually our plates of food, were spread out in all directions. Mara’s daughter, Kayla, who sat at the table next to ours, was doing a homes-schooling assignment in a workbook. We kept an empty chair nearby for visitors, some of whom were scheduled to drop by.

Kathleen, a member of the same Writers’ Workshop that both Mara and I belong to, was the first one to sit down with us. She, too busy to play with us on this day, came to discuss our joint efforts in the selling of a recently deceased friend’s books and collectibles in order to fund a chapbook of his photography and poetry.

“Do you want to keep score or should I?” Mara asked me as she and Kathleen were making plans to open an account at the local bank.

“I don’t keep score or drive unless someone forces me too,” I answered while looking for a place to put my tea bag.

By the time Kathleen left, the lunch crowd had arrived, and Sally the owner, who was cheering our game on, had to go and take orders. There was a business meeting going on at a nearby table that I was trying not to eavesdrop on while at the same time trying to figure out what they were talking about. Mara’s dad, who works at the nearby Jacksonville Center, came in, pulled up the extra chair, and gave Mara some insurance advice, while Kayla, with a crayon in hand, had moved on to making a flyer for the Spoken Word Open Mic night that was to be held at the Café over the weekend.

From the big picture window next to where we sat, we could see people on the street walking by and stopping to study the many bumper stickers on Mara’s car parked outside. Our friend Monkia came in and snapped a few pictures of us. Meanwhile, Mara was laughing because that’s what people do when your from the north and they’re from the south and you use the term “bulkie roll" when talking about your lunch (pronounced bukie). The reactions coming from the people reading Mara’s bumper stickers were really getting entertaining, and somehow I kept managing to knock down the knick knacks on the café window sill ledge onto our table.

It was 2:30 when the game wrapped up. Mara read some of her poetry to me while I was cleaning up. I went on to do some errands while she stayed behind. She had one more appointment scheduled that hadn’t shown up yet.

Post Notes: Some of Mara’s bumper stickers include: “Keep Your Laws of My Body,” “No, You Can’t Have My Rights, I’m Still Using Them,” and “Human Kind: Be Both.” Maybe Mara will come by and tell us what happened after I left. Both her and I, along with many others, will be reading at the Cafe's Spoken Word Open Mic Night this Saturday at 7 p.m. My St. Patrick's Day Post is below.

Posted by Colleen at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)

“I call it a SCRABBLE, but Mara calls it a BINGO, so I’ve taken to calling it a SCRABBLE BINGO, just to be clear.” ~ Colleen to Joe

A SCRABBLE BINGO is to a Scrabble player what an eagle is to a golfer, or what two goals in a row made from the other end of the field might be to a soccer player. It’s when you use all 7 of your letters in one turn, for which you score 50 points over those that your word adds up to. It happened to me this past Sunday while playing with my friend Mara in the back of Oddfellas Cantina at the table with the kokopellis painted on it. For the first time in 30 years of playing, I was no longer a SCRABBLE BINGO virgin. In fact, getting my first SCRABBLE BINGO was a little like a first-time spontaneous orgasm.

“I’m so glad it happened with you, Mara, you know, rather than with a stranger.”

I wasn’t the least bit quiet about it. People at other tables craned their necks to see what the commotion was about. Some came over to look.

The word was RECITING. It rambled across the board. The waitress came back to serve our coffee and tea, and by this time Mara and I were standing up and hugging. “Don’t you want to go out for a cigarette now?” I asked her, hoping to get a little breathing room to absorb what had happened, but also just because I wanted to flaunt the innuendo.

“Don’t you?” she returned, laughing out loud as she said it, and then added, “I’d go, but I feel like I would be abandoning you. You know, missing out on all that afterglow.”

Posted by Colleen at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)

AKA:
1. A picture is worth

1000 words…

or is that kisses?

2. This is a game

where we both win.

3. Got one of your own?

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY

XOXO

Posted by Colleen at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

1. While playing scrabble last week with my friend Mara, at one point she confessed, “I want Sy Safransky (editor of the Sun Magazine) to love me." I think I can work that line into a poem.

2. I also played with my friend Alex in the sunny alcove of her kitchen. At times her cat wanted to plop itself right in the middle of the scrabble board. “She likes to be the center of attention,” Alex explained.

3. Alex, an accomplished artist, is undergoing serious cancer treatments and currently only feels good one week out of every three. I feel honored that she would want to play scrabble with me during her good week.

4. I caught some of the “Oprah” episode where she was (rightfully so) taking author James Frey to task for presenting his book as a memoir when, in fact, much of it was fictionalized. While watching, I found myself wishing that someone would take President Bush to task for the mushroom clouds and other distorted images and misrepresentations he used to take the country to war. Shouldn’t we hold presidents at least as accountable as authors?

5. When my blog page was recently off center for a week, I felt off-centered too.

6. Being off-centered wasn’t as bad as being unable to post. That was like being in an at-fault car accident. While cruising in my main index template (actually, it was more like parallel parking), I took my eyes off the road for a second and took out a large section of code. The blog paramedic eventually came and helped me out, but since then I’ve been afraid to go back to the scene. There are several blogs I want to add to my links list, but I have to work up the courage.

7. Walking in town last week with the wind whipping through my coat and stinging my ears, I walked past The Blue Ridge Café and the sign on the door said, “Shirt and shoes required.” Duh.

8. I found two new regional blogs. Well, one found me. DL, at the Blue Ridge Gazette, writes to “celebrate, educate, and raise awareness” of all that The Blue Ridge Mountain region and its people have to offer. Through a link on his site I found another Floyd blogger, The Blue Ridge Writer. Two more sites for my blog link waiting list.

9. I was really disgusted by the recent news that Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest oil company, recently claimed the largest corporate profit in U.S. history, while we’re all paying higher gas prices and many people can barely afford to heat their homes.

10. In and out… our hands descend…into the drawstring bag…as if the letters in it were nuggets of gold…and we could be rich if only we could spell…Rumplestilskin… I definitely feel a Scrabble poem coming on.

11. Sitting down to work on a poem draft is a lot like sitting down with a crossword puzzle. It’s fun and frustrating at the same time and something I can easily spend way too much time on. It can even sound like I’m doing a crossword puzzle. While writing, I often call out questions to my husband…like, “What’s another word for “spill.” He suggests, “leak,” and I shout back, “No. I can’t use leak. I already used it.”

12. One of my favorite quotes on writing poetry is this one by Marianne Moore: "In a poem the word should be as pleasing to the ear as the meaning is to the mind.”

13. A quote by Brian Cappelletto, former World Scrabble Champion, helps me put the game in perspective and to feel okay when I lose: "The game has luck, no doubt about it. It is up to the individual player to figure out how best to minimize the bad and maximize the good. Failing that, one can always blame their shortcomings on having a fuller, more interesting life than those who have done well in this game."

Post note: Visit Nicole at the The Girl Next Door for the rules of the 13 Thursday game.

Posted by Colleen at 8:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (26)

My friend Mara reminds me that when we both worked at the bead shop in Blacksburg, I taped poems to the cash register… It’s all I can do… not to… say “Buckle my shoe”… after “one, two” …when I’m counting out the money…

She writes a poem for me... We play scrabble…because we are both…poets who like to dance…because we like crayons…out of the package…because dyscalculia…stutters our numbers…

When we play Scrabble, she brings homemade pizza with feta and olives, and I add the pesto, made from my garden and then frozen into blocks in an ice cube tray.

She reads more of the poem that she wrote for me… We play scrabble...because there’s snow buckling your trampoline…because there’s a triple spiral on your bathroom wall…because you outed me on your weblog…

The last time we played, she had a brand new sketch pad and a box of crayola crayons. She wrote the poem while she was waiting for me to take my turn and smoking a cigarette on my front porch.

At the Spoken Word Open Mic this past Saturday night, she referred to me to others as “Floyd’s Poet Laureate” because she knows it irritates me and makes me blush. “You know I can’t write poetry like you and when it comes to performance you blow me away,” I answered.

I plunge my hand in the Scrabble bag to see who will go first. “Do you think you can will good letters? Use your psychic abilities to pick the best ones?” I ask her as I pull out an E.

“Oh, heck yeah. You blow on the bag for good luck…like this,” she demonstrates as she also pulls out an E and lays it on the table to match mine.

Photo: Mara challenges me to a game while drinking from the Scrabble mug she gave me for Christmas. Compare the small cup of take-out coffee to her right (not to be confused with the roll of paper towels) with the big jug of coffee (white with red top) that she brought to my house last time we played, and then ask yourself, ‘is it any wonder she won the game in which she clearly had a “coffee advantage” but lost this one to the home team?’

Posted by Colleen at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

Mara came over to break in the new Deluxe Lazy Susan Scrabble game that I got for Christmas from my son Dylan. She brought me a gift. It was something of Elliot’s (our mutual friend that passed away in November) that she had set aside for me when she and some other friends were closing down Elliot’s house.

“I knew this was for you and that you would love it,” she said as she handed me…another kaleidoscope! And she was right. I squealed with excitement when I looked through the scope, but my mood soon turned serious when I remembered the time Elliot and I were playing Scrabble and he showed me the very same kaleidoscope.

Kyla, Mara’s young daughter, was with her, carrying a new video game station that I forget the name of and that we could not figure out how to hook up to my TV. The big outside trampoline didn’t work out either because it was covered with ice and snow. She finally settled down with paper and crayons, although what she really wanted to do was to play Scrabble with us.

Mara used the crayons too, to draw colorful doodles into her new artist’s sketch pad whenever it was my turn. I was losing, and so I didn’t have the luxury to doodle or jot down notes in my notebook, like I usually do. With all vowels and one consonant (all 1 pointers) for most of the game, I barely had time to sip the green tea getting cold in my cup. Mara had a huge jug of coffee (white container with red rim in the first photo above) A player’s advantage, I wondered?

By the end of the game, I was asking Kyla, who was sporting the same haircut as her mom, for some help. But I still lost.

Post Note: My recent blog entry about my son Josh's clay excavation was linked to on the front page of the online Roanoke Times this week. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to view it.

Posted by Colleen at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

AKA: Things overheard while playing Scrabble...

Is topsy a word without turvey?

Is hob a word without nob?

Can the word oodles be singular?

Is pest an alternative plural for pet when you have too many of them?

Coyote is coy. His name tells us so.

I know listen and silent are the same word with the letters switched around, but semen and menses?

It makes sense that the word “evil” is “live” backwards.

My favorite letter is V. If a word has a V in it, you can be sure it’s infused with action and vitality.

It’s no mistake that “VERB” begins with the letter V.

Have you noticed that the word “astonished” has “stoned” right in it, and “embarrassed” seems to say “I’m bare assed?”

And lust and slut are so closely related that they’re the same word.

Photo: My Scrabble partner, Mara, using one of her life lines.

Posted by Colleen at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)

My friend Mara and I have a lot in common. We both experienced a traumatic loss of a loved one 4 years ago (and in my case 2 losses), we’re both writers, we’re both from Floyd and have lived alter-native lifestyles,* we both worked at “Seeds of Light” bead shop for many years, we used to make jewelry, and we both love Scrabble.

Mara was very close to Elliot, a friend and member of our Writers’ Circle, of which both Mara and I belong, who died a few weeks ago. And I just lost my dad.

“Could you handle a game of Scrabble?” she asked me over the phone, after telling me how down she’s been feeling lately.

“Yes, it could be the perfect diversion. I think it would help us to stop, but also keep us busy,” I answered, knowing she full-well understood my logic.

“Scrabble is sanity!” she said when we met later at the Café Del Sol for a therapeutic game. She slapped her notebook down on the table, and we laughed when we noticed that it was exactly like mine, also on the table.

Judging by the papers sticking out of Mara’s notebook, I remarked that she looked to be busier than me. “But the truth is, this is only one of about 5 notebooks that I have going at the same time,” I said to her. She nodded knowingly.

It was my first day out-and-about in town since my father died. “I love the way Scrabble gives me a context to be social, and yet, I don’t have to be sociable in a direct way,” I told her.

“Yes,” she agreed, “and if someone comes over to talk to us, it’s okay to ignore them if it’s your turn to play.”

I played the first word REFUTE. “Wouldn’t Elliot have liked that word?” I said. “He hated when I played words that were too common, while I have only ever cared about what they can score,” I added.

Friends and acquaintances drifted over to talk to us. Most asked ‘Who’s winning?’

“Why can’t you ask something like who’s having the most fun?” Mara, who was losing at this point, said to one of our visitors.

We didn’t ignore anyone. We enjoyed interacting with each person who came by our table, joking and taking turns talking to them. At one point, I had a SCRABBLE (which Mara always argues should be called BINGO) on my rack, but couldn’t find a place to play it.

“Why don’t you go outside and smoke a cigarette,” I said to her, while studying the board. “I need some time to think.”

After she went outside to smoke, I elicited some help from our friends, Bernie and Chris, by announcing, “Look!” And then, “I’m having anxiety. I have a SCRABBLE (using all 7 letters for a bonus 50 points), and I’ve never had one before. But I can’t find a place to play it.”

Mara came back. I never got the SCRABBLE. I settled for the word ZERO.

“ZERO. 35 points,” I announced to Mara, who was keeping score.

“No, that’s zero. I’m giving you a zero,” she joked.

While Mara was taking her turn, I went to the computer at the table behind ours to check my blog and found a comment from my blogger friend Leanne, who was aware that I recently lost my father, which said, “I wish for you a nice cup of tea and game of scrabble, to bring you peace, challenge your mind, and ease the pain in your heart.”

I don’t believe it! I am playing Scrabble and drinking tea,” I blurted out and then read the message out loud to Mara.

“I QUIT!” she said.

You can’t quit! Why would you quit?” I asked as I got up from the computer to see what was wrong.

“No, I just played the word QUIT,” she answered with an impish grin.

It was probably the first time that we didn’t finish our game. I was shocked when I looked at the clock and realized that we had been in the Café playing for 3 hours. Mara had a school paper she wanted to read to me before we parted ways. She had to pick up her daughter, and I had a list of errands to do. We hugged goodbye and bolted out the café door, hoping to get home before the predicted bad weather.

*Post Note: Mara (shown in the photo playing her Q) and I have home schooling in common. She was a product of it, and I provided it for my sons when they were young. "Alter-natives," a play on words first coined by my Floydian friend and fellow poet, Will, refers to a community of people living a back-to-the land sort of lifestyles that may include homebirth, homebuilt, homegrown, and living off the grid.

Posted by Colleen at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

Lunchtime at the Café Del Sol…

Bruce to Mara: What are you doing?!
Mara: It’s the Scrabble box, Bruce. See if you can balance it on your head.
Bruce: You guys have way too much time on your hands.
Mara: What?! I’m a full-time student and single parent.
Bruce: Well, too much imagination then.
Colleen: Scrabble is just a premise for our real work. Hold still for a minute, Bruce, while I get this shot. We’re going to blog you!

As Mara and I begin our game at the next table, we hear Bruce lean over to his friend John and say, “Scrabble? Isn’t that the game where you come up with words?”

Posted by Colleen at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

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 must have dropped my business card in a jar. What business, you ask? Words are my business and my blog is my storefront. The card reads “The Blogkeeper is in!”

Post Note: A Spoken Word Open Mic is being held this Saturday, November 19, from 7 to 9 PM at the Café Del Sol in Floyd. On Friday, November 18, Floyd’s Black Water Loft Café is hosting “Poems of Thanksgiving” in which 4 poets are slated to read, including myself.

Posted by Colleen at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

“I lost my deluxe lazy-Susan scrabble board in a divorce,” I said to my two scrabble partners. We were playing in a different location than we usually do, a restaurant that didn’t have a complimentary scrabble game, and so I brought mine from home. I couldn’t remember the last time I used it, but I could guess where I was. Everything in the box was sprinkled with a fine layer of beach sand.

The table was crowded. Not only did each of us have a full meal in front of us, but being that we were all writers, a couple of notebooks were also on the table. I was wearing the turquoise and adventure necklace that my friend Alex, who is battling cancer, recently gifted me with. I wanted to draw on her scrabble abilities and evoke her scrabble spirit in the room.

Alex plays a big game. “Sometimes we get 3 or 4 scrabbles (using all 7 letters for an extra 50 points) in game,” she had told me when I was at her house a couple of weeks ago.

“I play small,” I answered, feeling like a virgin as I went on to admit that I had never had a scrabble. “My strength is in playing high scoring small words that build on existing words. I frequently make 2 and sometimes 3 words in one play.”

Why does it seem that the fiddle player on stage plays more loudly when it’s my turn, I was thinking as I stroked the necklace and squinted my eyes to study the board?

“Whose turn is it anyways?” someone at the table asked.

I didn’t get a scrabble that day, but the score was in my favor, so it’s likely that I’ll be wearing the necklace Alex gave me for future games.

Posted by Colleen at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Alex and I, once members of the same women’s circle, have been talking about playing scrabble together for the past 15 years. Learning that she was battling cancer was a likely factor that urged me to make the 45 minute drive out to her house and turn our intention into a reality.

She lives with her husband in a picturesque rural setting with a horse in the yard and a porch gazebo overlooking a couple of rolling acres. The first thing I noticed when I saw her was that she looked great. Her hair was the same as I remembered it, a wild and curly mane that reminds me of her love of horses.

After a long hug and a little catching up, the subject turned to scrabble, and she proceeded to tell me about a recent game in which she and her husband both scored over 500 points each!

“I think I’m out of my league,” was all I could say.

In the sunny kitchen alcove where we played, I sipped lemon tea while she dipped corn chips in guacamole and the cat stretched out beside the scrabble board.

“I like to take pictures of finished scrabble boards,” I told her. She understood, and after our game, not only did I take pictures of the scrabble board, but she showed me her art studio where got shots of the ink stamp station, the jewelry making station, the sewing station, and her painted and colored pencil art on the walls. Unfortunately, I later discovered that my camera had no film in it, and my digital camera wasn’t working right.

While we were in the studio, she gifted me with a beautiful turquoise and aventurine necklace that she made. I felt uncomfortable accepting such a generous gift.

“Let’s make a trade,” I offered. “I have some of my books in my car.” And so, before we said our goodbyes, I handed her my two books.

“This one is poetry…and…you might not choose to read this one,” I said as I handed her “The Jim and Dan Stories.” She knew it was about my brother’s deaths. “Be careful and use your intuition about what you want to take in right now,” I told her.

Alex read both books “cover to cover!” She emailed me 2 days later to tell me. I was surprised that she even would read a book about family loss considering what she is facing herself. But Alex is not your average person.

She wrote, “I was impressed at your careful note taking during times of stress. You made the story unfold, instead of telling it all from the endpoint, which feels more human and less preachy.”

She plans to suggest “The Jim and Dan Stories” be read and discussed at her book group. “Can I tell them you would come to the discussion?” she asked.

“Of course, I’d love to!” I answered. And then we set up another scrabble game at my place for sometime in November…after she gets back from her next (immunotherapy) treatment.

Photo: I did manage to retrieve one photo from the digital camera of the scene before we started our game. Alex’s cat was the referee.

Note to Readers: I’m closing up shop for the moment and heading to Boston to see my dad who had a car accident on the 17th and is now preparing for neck vertebrae surgery. I’m excited that I’ll be seeing him soon, maybe even before the operation. He can’t talk because he is hooked up to a ventilator, but he is writing on paper. He recently wrote “I love you all,” and complimented one of the doctors for being a “good looking Irishman!” Stay tuned. Posts will likely be erratic.

Posted by Colleen at 6:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

AKA Give Me A Vowel: Since my friend who I frequently play scrabble with won’t let me post the picture I took of him playing, I’ll just have to describe it. It came out great.

We’re playing at the Café de Sol wireless café in downtown Floyd. It’s his turn. He’s burly with a full beard, leaning forward over the checkered scrabble board with his hand resting across his beard, as if someone had instructed him to, “pose like your thinking.” He has a silver ring on his pinky finger. On the white cotton background of his T-shirt there are black silhouettes of people dancing in various wild poses. I can almost hear the drum beat they’re moving to.

Behind him, there’s a computer at a table with a cardboard giraffe mask hanging from the back of it. The top of a man’s head is peeking over the computer. Standing next to him is a woman wearing a zebra printed shirt.

I am not making this up. I love this picture. It’s an exciting composition, and if I were to name it, I would call it “THE SCRABBLE ZOO.”

By the way, have you noticed that the word verification pop-up boxes that bloggers are using to deter spam ask you to type in the most unusual combinations of high scoring letters to prove that you’re not a telemarketing monkey? The most recent ones I got were ORXZUTFA and JJJKWVQP. Stretching my fingers wildly across the keyboard, I’m thinking…these letters make me drool. Have I been blogging more lately just to see what letters I’ll get?

Posted by Colleen at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

She, waiting for him to take his turn: Mind if I post the picture I just took of you on my blog?
He: Yes.
She: I won't use your name.
He: I don’t want my picture on the internet!
She: Okay.
He, while playing the word LANGOR: You spend a lot of time on the internet. I don’t know if it’s good for you.
She: No, I spend a lot of time writing. And I don’t know if that’s good for me.
He, responding to her word NOON: I would think you’d come up with a more exotic word.
She: I don’t care about what the word says. I care about how many points it can score!

She won.

POST NOTE: I just got word that reader's comments are getting bumped for questionable "questionable content." I did a test and sure enough, it bumped me too. I'm going to talk to my "landlord" about this. I hope things will be back to normal soon, and I apologize for any inconvience this may have caused anyone. I hate when that happens!

Posted by Colleen at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Mara contemplating her strategy.

If you were playing The Millionaire on TV and were stuck for an answer, the rules of the game allow you 3 options that give you a better chance at choosing the correct answer. You could eliminate half of the answers, leaving only 3 to guess from; you could ask the audience; or call a friend to consult with.

When Mara and I play Scrabble, we have similar rules. We give ourselves 3 free dictionary look-ups and one chance to consult with Sally, the owner of Café de Sol, where we frequently play, who also likes to play Scrabble. As a last resort, we have considered one question posed to a random stranger, but things have never gotten that bad.

Yesterday, Mara played a fake Q word. It was very impressive and she asked Sally before risking it. Sally gave her the same answer she gave me earlier when I had asked her. “Is this a word?” “It could be,” Sally replied.

I wasn’t about to challenge Mara’s word, seeing that I had a word to play off it, which would not only re-use her 10 point Q but would land on a triple word score.

What you can’t see in the picture is that behind Mara is a wireless computer station, and, when it wasn’t our turn, both Mara and I went to the computer and got online while waiting for the other to play. “See, we might as well be playing online,” Mara, who has been trying to convince me to play online Scrabble with her for a long time, said.

I was busy shuffling letter tiles and muttering to myself, enamored with the word “ELVIS” that was spelled out in front of me. But it was a proper noun and I knew that was against the rules. Eventually, I used the word “EVILS” …and hit the triple word score again!

“Don’t you just love what you can do with letters?” I said to Mara.

Can you guess who won this game?

Posted by Colleen at 9:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Playing Scrabble at the Cafe de Sol

Posted by Colleen at 9:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

On the night of the day that my essay aired on WVTF public radio, I participated in a poetry slam at The London Underground in Blacksburg and won $100!

Initially, I was leery about reading my poetry in such a smoky, chaotic atmosphere where rowdy guys holding onto mugs of beer seemed to be waiting for the dartboards to be available again. But it turned out to be the most receptive crowd I’ve ever read to. It was my scrabble poem (posted below) that cinched my first place win, a $100 gift certificate from The Easy Chair Bookstore, the hosts of the evening’s event. The crowd went wild when I read it. They were primed and more than ready for some innuendo and comic relief.

I also sold a copy of my poetry book, Muses Like Moonlight. Since the scrabble poem wasn’t included in that collection, the woman buying the book asked me to handwrite it out for her. I was happy to oblige and still excited from my win, especially considering that I wasn’t even aware that we were competing for a prize, until I received it.

From a smoky bar in Blacksburg, I hope you can read my writing…I signed on the inside of the back cover, at the end of the scribbled out scrabble poem.

Later in the weekend, I actually did play scrabble with a group from my writers’ workshop. It was a foursome. Three women and one (lucky) man. I came in third. Does this mean my winning streak is over?

Scrabble Lover

I go outside my marriage
for an occasional game of scrabble
because my husband rarely plays
and if he does he gives up early
leaving me unsatisfied

Most of my partners are women
we huddle in restaurant booths
sneak in a quickie at a social event
carry dictionaries in our cars

I refuse to play in cyberspace
across from mechanical screens
no physical contact
with the smooth lettered tiles
no sound of them stirring in their bag

My husband and I see other people
while I play scrabble he plays golf
when I’m on the verge…of a triple word score
he’s looking for partners to make up a foursome
while I pursue a Q to go with my U
he’s putting his ball in a hole

Posted by Colleen at 8:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)