Women Who Eat Chocolate

I'm normally very sappy and sentimental when it comes to the New Year . There is something about an old year dying and new one giving birth that makes me almost wistful for what could have been - or maybe what SHOULD have been. Nitpicking on what what I should have accomplished does nothing, really, but serve to make me have regrets. This year I have none . I left a job that I held for close to four years and started a new, scary venture that had me sitting at my kitchen table crafting and creating posts and tidbits for clients. I love what I'm doing and the scariness has washed away along with the routine and normalcy. That's just it. We MUST put scary things on our agenda because if we don't, we stay the same forever and ever. My husband runs a successful paint/texture business and is living out his dream of making things new. I am safe in the stretch of his arms if I need him,  yet we have a system worked out that gives each of us responsibilities - not just ...

Thanksgiving morning is gentle and warm like a baby's breath against your cheek. Snow is falling ever so softly and I'm snuggled up with coffee contemplating the day. Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is on and show tunes fill the living room with their merry voices. Snores are still being heard from upstairs where it has been so vacant the past three months. It's now filled, if just for a brief time, with footsteps and laughter and the creaking of the floor. My heart is full and expectant with looked-forward to things. I am also weary and heartsick for things that have happened in our country this week. I am even more weary and heartsick because of responses I have heard from people who are called to love, not pronounce that they are so tired of the 'race' card being played. If you're tired of hearing it imagine living it. Because you're tired of it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Tuck your white privilege back into your pants before it start...

I'm sitting here staring at an empty yogurt container, hair uncombed, and crumbs on the counter. My belly is full of coffee and I'm contemplating a second pot. Laundry is spinning and I have a long series of docs that I need to be working on but don't have all the info as of yet. It can wait another day. Right now I'm contemplating Christmas lights and how I might have them up the first of December. From my Facebook feed it seems I am a month behind . Christmas-all-the-things is upon us . Joy to the world and all that jazz. I love Christmas. Yet, I find myself unwaveringly indifferent this year to the early Christmas hoopla. I feel almost Grinch-ish in nature and am struggling to identify why. My nativity and all its intricate figures await my steady hand to arrange it with care, and my collection of Santas and snowmen eagerly await their appearance. I think fondly on past Christmases when lights didn't go up until the middle of December . I can hear yo...

**Minor spoiler alert** I felt like I was in a cathedral, vast and dream-like, sitting on the edge of my seat. Hurtling through not just space and time, but another galaxy on the cusp of a raging black hole. My breath grew shallow as the actor was swallowed up and entered a place no one can explain with any real certainty. My popcorn was hot and the drink went down cold. The movies, my friends, are alive and well. Along with horror movies, I await the best and brightest of film in the space genre. Give it to me any way you can - Armageddon, Event Horizon, Contact, Alien - I will take it and tuck it under my arm with wonder. I wish I could say I'm a Star Wars geek, but I am not. I like some science fiction but am mostly a straight rocket-ship-into-the-stars type girl. Throw in a few aliens or even better a 'life force' or 'beings' we're unsure of and I'm a goner.  When I first saw the previews for Interstellar I nudged George and said, "We wi...

I read voraciously as a child. I read books picked out at Little Professor Bookstore, and I read magazines plus newspapers. When commercials for wacky products would come on in the middle of Scooby Doo, I would repeat the addresses at the end to see how many times I could read it before it cut back to the program. My bookshelves groaned with title after title, even at a very young age. Dad built each of us floor to ceiling shelves and mine was packed tighter than tight. Needless to say, I am a reader/book hoarder.  I've been pondering what it is women like to read. We all love a good fictional novel, replete with settings that make us yearn to travel and see love in new ways. This kind of book is good for the soul because it stirs within you a restless need to see the world. We all need to see the world, or just get out of our little corner of it more often. Many of us will never visit another country, but that doesn't mean we can't travel there with the words as our gu...

Taking a bit of stock in my day to day this windy Monday. November is here, October breezing in and out with all her bits of color and mayhem. I enjoyed October with abandon this year because I decided I would. Normally I would have been whooshing here and there to soccer games, but no, I was firmly planted in my seat at the kitchen table typing away. I hung up Jack O Lantern faces, set around glittery skulls, and made a dummy to sit on the porch for the season. I brought him in this morning, what with his torn pants and bony face, as his season is done. I carved pumpkins and lit them every evening and watched burn merrily. I pitched my squashed and frozen Jacko into the garden this morning and prepare for the next thing. I love this stage of my life.  The house is quiet. I'm doing ME.  The words I need to fill up the spaces are coming fast and furious and I embrace them and hug them close. I have to do me because no one else will and I don't want her to disappear...

This is the last column that will appear from me in the BH. Onward and upward! In my younger years I was a crafty gal. I made loads of clothespin Santas, pins made from vintage buttons, and sculpted weathered snowmen with twig arms from modeling clay. Tiny antique spools made into Christmas ornaments and angels with tiny tin wings that fit snugly onto a tree branch - I sold all these and many more at local shops on consignment and made a tidy sum of spending money. That ‘craftiness’ is still inside of me, but it doesn’t seem to want to come out anymore. It seems like a chore to haul supplies out and paint well-worn pieces back into submission or to create and make simple ordinary things glisten. What’s become of me? My home is a mélange of eclectic pieces and carefully selected ‘things’ I’ve gleaned over the years. I no longer buy whatever catches my eye because now, I want it to have a home – not just a place to sit and gather dust. I have many vintage frames that I wou...

Must be time to turn the page? If you're new to my blog then welcome! If you're an old friend then welcome back. I've had this blog for over seven years. Seven years . I wasn't even forty when I started this deal. I almost had to re check that fact because I couldn't quite believe I've been blogging that long. My aim here at Women Who Eat Chocolate is not to ply you with pretty words. I'm real and am getting more adept and letting it all hang out. Since my column was eliminated from The Bargain Hunter, I want to continue giving you my writings - and on the plus side since they aren't for a company, and just for me, you'll get more of the real me.  Sounds scary. If you like hard-hitting truth then you've come to the right place. Because I'm a woman in her forties who stopped caring what people thought about her right around the 40ish mark. Whoa, let's talk a bit about how freeing that is. In the words of my blogger-in-training/nie...

What can be said about October and its ‘infamous’ (according to some) holiday? Halloween and all the good and bad connotations that come along with it – do you talk about it and if you enjoy it? Or do you zipper your mouth in certain company and hope they don’t find out it’s a guilty pleasure? Ah Missy, your mouth – if anything – can never be zippered . All shall know that Halloween and all that goes with it is one of your favorite times of the year. For this, I shall never feel guilty. There’s something to be relished in this wind-whipped season, with leaves the color of burnished gold and a chill wind that doesn’t yet hold the sting of winter. There was an innocent time that I remember, before alleged back-masking and all the fears of the day tried to take away what was a time of fun and creepy pleasure. Before everyone made you feel guilty for enjoying several weeks of pranks and wild, dark rides through Panther Hollow. It was a time when we Trick or Treated on the stree...

I’ve noticed a strange and frightening trend in myself – I’m learning to stretch the food I have in my pantry. No one panic. Gone are the days when if I had one stick of butter left I would run uptown before I ran out. Do you know I’ve made one stick last for five days? Butter. Me. Five days. This is something that would have been unheard of when the kids were home because the pantry was always stocked. Since cleaning out the kitchen I’ve learned that buying what we like, enough of it, and not freaking out when said item is gone – makes you become a bit more inventive in the kitchen. It’s become a game of sorts, eating what you have. Also, it saves you a lot of money. I recently wrote about cooking and the excitement I felt at trying new things and cooking in different ways. Using what I have available is also very new to me – and no, that doesn’t make me a bad person. Before, if I didn’t have two jugs of milk in the fridge it felt very empty. Now I’ve learned to tamp down that...

I have seen movies and I have loved them. My repertoire goes back into the vast recesses of the seventies, or at least as far back as I can remember. My list of movies that have affected change in my life is a long one. The list of movies that I simply love is even longer. Not many days go by that I’m not watching one - or have one on the Netflix queue ready to go. I wouldn’t make it very long without them, and if that makes me petty then so be it. There are more addictions than people in this world and movies don’t top the addiction list at a very high number. Books and movies are my only vices, well, along with live-tweeting the Oscars. Guilty. I remember back to when I was small and we only received six channels or so from the awkward antennae on the top of our house. Yes, I did once get stuck on the climbable antennae tower. Our Zenith Color TV (notice the word color) stood proudly in the family room and when the TV would lose reception, we would get on the floor and tur...

Do you feel worthy? Slipping back through the curtain of years I take a look at myself with a harsh lens. I was not very confident and cared way too much about what others thought of me. I wish I could go back thirty years and give myself a slap in the face. Harsh truth. When faced with a myriad of ways I could’ve reacted to adversity, most of the time I let tears take over and went home to bury myself in a book. Granted, books are a good thing, but taking the time to be strong and face conflict is even better. Listening to music in my own world was healing, but not even Shaun Cassidy can solve all problems. I slid through those years feeling sorry for myself and especially letting those feelings of “not good enough” take over. Most of these feelings were covered up with a good heavy mask that I took off when I entered my room, which was my haven. Even now, thinking of that girl and the genuine ability and spunk she had makes me weep for what she could have been then. We ask o...

Insatiable, yes, that’s the word. I have been infused with the insatiable need to purge my house—every corner, every closet, everything. If you know me, you know that I have become more streamlined over the years. I no longer yearn for heavily decorated knickknacks lining every shelf in a whimsical fashion. I want spare. I want clean. I want minimal. When I was newly married, I was out buying all sorts of things from thrift stores that we needed. Garage sales, clearance racks—if it was on sale and we needed it my house enveloped it. I think envelop is the right word because when I go through things now, I don’t remember buying half the stuff I find. I’ve purged a lot over the years at our garage sales and by selling online, so my home is nothing like it was then. But, something has taken over me and it wants to clean it, all of it. I’m thinking it has something to do with the empty house. For nearly 24 years there were children running amok in the home so we always were careful what w...

I've been silent. I've been pensive. I've been letting the dark shadows curb my writing. Silent demons, stop your scratching at my neck. I'm tired of you and the way you make me feel. It's a salient process, this thing called writing. My focus, when I left my desk job to set up a nook here at home, was to find time to start the novel inside me. For so long I've let those demons tell me I can't write it. "You will never finish it." "You can't even start it." "Just do it tomorrow." Adjusting to the warm niche of home, along with the added benefits of coffee and food on hand, has taken some time to get used to. I have found love for home, kept inside, that now flows out of me. I am doing what I'm meant to. I'm sharing a passion and spreading it around, though thin in spots, that is ever progressing and changing with each day. Losing inspiration sucks . I feel as if I've lost a spark and can't find...

I wrote a blog and couldn't publish it. My thoughts are too raw, too charged and full of gristle. Someday soon I might, but today isn't that day.