When we meet up with friends, they eventually ask about the Mama. They've come to expect a doozy of a response about the tiny, not-so-frail 90ish gardener.  For example, one time I replied:  We were gone 90 minutes to do errands. Only 90 minutes. Do you know what she did while we were away? She whacked off the tops of the banana plants. With her machete. Ba-dum-bump. Tishhhhhh. And then there was the time I got to tell our friends this story. We were gone most of the day. We came home to find that the Mama had pruned the apple tree next to the small shed. "Did you use the ladder?" I asked. "Only my small one," she said. "You'll have to prune the top. I couldn't reach the branches." I looked at the tree. I couldn't figure how she got the middle branches without climbing the taller ladder. "How did you get those middle branches?" "Oh," said the Mama. "I stood on the roof of the shed." Ba-dum-bump. Tis

The theme is still the inability to get started. That is, the brain of my mine.   Plutter... Pletter... Splutttttt... .The sounds that the brain of my mine has been making. So, on Saturday, I tried to jump start the brain of mine by snatching up the camera and going outside. Some of the Mama's roses are in bloom. Take that cold weather, they seem to say. And, yes, the roses, the snapping of photos, the doing of something creative seems to have sparked something in the brain of my mine. Of course, dear readers, I must share with you the Mama's roses. © 2013 Su-sieee! Mac . All rights reserved.

  The words unfold themselves in my head. The hands though won't jot them down on paper or key them onto a blank document. That's not an excuse. I have no excuse. The Daddy accepted no excuses from me when I was a kid. If I did something stupid, then I did something stupid. I suffered the consequences. I learned quite early what the consequences were so I did my best not to do stupid things—or, at least, not to get caught. For a man with a gentle voice, the  Daddy gave very stern scoldings. So stern that it brought on the tears. And, should I cry, the Daddy said, "No crying." The longer the crying, the harsher the scolding. The Daddy used his belt for the dumbest decision-making acts I did. One or two quick slaps on my legs. The sting of the leather brought on the tears, too. "No crying," the Daddy said. Sucking up the tears just gave me the hiccups. I only recall two instances when I got the Daddy's belt. Both times I was no where to be fo

It takes being disconnected to the Internet to get me to finally write a post. Go figure. Yesterday evening—around 5:03 p.m. to be approximate—the Husband came into the bedroom where Molly T.K. Cat and I were taking a snooze. Well, Molly napped while I clicked the TV remote in search of a show that would invite sleep for a few minutes.  (Lack of sleep was finally making me feel yucky, for lack of ability to think of precise words.) "The modem is dead," announced the Husband. I was promptly alert and in a state of panic. How was I going to finish my last two assignments? How was I going to send them to the editor? How was I going to . . . you get the picture. The Husband and I went instantly into troubleshooting mode. The husband went back to his computer to play a tetris game (which allows him to think he says), and I went searching for a phone book. I called the computer shop where we bought the last modem. Unfortunately, the shop just closed. Bummer. When something as vit

My strategy used to be: Wait until all the leaves have fallen off the trees and then gather them up. Sure, it would be one murder of a day, raking and bagging literally tons of leaves....I say literally because obviously tons of leaves do not fall from less than a dozen trees. Maybe, thousands of leaves, but then I would just say that and not "literally thousands of leaves" because there are thousands of leaves on the ground. Yes, I think people overuse the word literally. Okay, back to leaf-gathering strategies. The Mama's strategy: Pick up leaves every morning. Depending on the season, it may take her less than 30 minutes to several hours before she is satisfied that her garden is neat. The Mama dislikes the sight of leaves on the ground. She actually grumbles and shudders when she passes people's yards that are full of leaves. "If that was mine," she always says. "I wouldn't stand it." The husband or I usually respond, "Look away