Women Who Eat Chocolate

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...