I'm doing something completely different today. I'm linking up with Just Write , a weekly writing prompt hosted by authors Rebecca T. Dickson and Laura Howard. Want to try it yourself, click here . This week's prompt is "What if I just kept driving?" Sheila drove into tomorrow. It was much easier than she thought it would be. Her present was purgatory. Maybe if it was just hell, she would've stayed. Hell was bearable. It had borders. It had form. It had shadows in which she could find relief. But, purgatory. Damn. Purgatory. Such wishy-washiness. Such enabling. Such obscenity of humanity. There she said it. She lit a match to it all. Sheila looked over the desert floor, warming with each second of the rising sun bursting itself into the new day.

Holidays. Here they are. Again. In a few hours, I will get up to make the dressing to stuff the turkey that will roast for several hours so it is ready for our regular mid-afternoon meal. As it roasts, I'll put together a few side dishes—mashed parsnips and potatoes, plain Romano beans, and sauteed red cabbage and persimmons—while the Mama makes the gravy and maybe a pot of rice. I hope she cooks rice. I like the taste of her gravy on rice. I could just eat that.  The annual turkey feast will be for the three of us. No, the four of us. I can't forget Molly The Kitty (T.K.) Cat. She doesn't like turkey though. Spam is more her style. I'm not kidding. I found that out last night.  Holding on to the kitchen counter, Molly stood on her hind legs and gazed intently at me as I sliced the canned delicacy (every now and then, we have a yen for spam with eggs). She'd just eaten her expensive raw food so it wasn't like she was famished. But, she was insistent that

I can't believe it is November. How many times have you heard that lately?  And just like that the Presidential election is over. May President Obama and Congress finally work together for the good of our country. May people stop with the scare tactics and may people stop being scared that our country has gone somewhere that it "must be taken back". Like everywhere else, we've been experiencing strange weather in our neck of the woods. Sometimes 30 to 40 degree difference between day and night. Not complaining. No, not at all. I cannot begin to imagine the bewilderedness of going through such a fright as Sandy on the East Coast. May everything work out well for every one there. Hmmm, I had planned to do a post about the Mama's garden. Another day. But, I shall give you a look at the banana that has bloomed in her small circle of a banana grove. She is amazed that it's growing on a "baby" stalk rather than on one of the mature ones. May this blo

What's the word I'm thinking of? Damn. What's the word? That's my life these days. And, that's not good when you make your livelihood as a writer. The word I'm trying to think of is usually a simple word, too. Forget about asking for an example, because I can't remember any one of my 500 million+ instances at the moment. All I know is that the word I'm trying to think of just dangles ghost-like in my mind. I really dislike the way a word plays hide-and-seek with me. If the Husband happens to be nearby, I'll ask him for help. "What's the word that means  blah blah blah." Most often, thank goodness, he knows the word I'm seeking. Some times, he throws out a bunch of words. None of which fit what I'm wanting to write. Other times, well, let's just say that I just type in blab blab blab and move on to my next thought, choosing to believe that the word will show itself. Eventually, it does. So far. Thank goodness. This troub

One of my favorite birthdays was the year I asked for a pizza, five movie rentals, and to be left alone. And, I got what I asked. Pizza is one of those treat foods for me. The first few years that the husband and I were married, we ate a lot of extra-large pizza from this one particular pizzeria. We loved that they delivered. We gained a lot of weight. What kept us from gaining more than a lot was that we moved to a nearby city outside of the pizzeria's delivery radius. Since living with the Mama, pizza has been a now and then food to enjoy. The pizzas sold around here tend to be heavy. I didn't think I'd ever say it, but yeah, too much salt, too much sauce, too much cheese, and too much grease. And, then there's the cost.  Oh, sure, it's cheap if we just wanted pepperoni and cheese. But, that's not the pizza experience for us. We like a pizza loaded with veggies, with the meat as an extra.  Then, in late spring,  our favorite cafe  built an outdoor o

The Republican candidate for President—whose name shall not be invoked—thinks I'm a victim. Ha! Talk about projecting and being judgmental. No, no, come back. I'm not going to muse about politics today. Bleah. Today, I give you a look into this writer's belfry, as in bats in. The other day I found a file on my desktop with the title 88888...8887.doc. Of course curiosity got me and I opened it. Ha ha! on me. The Word file was my writing journal, the one I had started a few months ago with good intentions. Uh-huh. I was fishing around in my head for a story to latch onto. It had (and has) been a long while since I tried. The narrator a woman in her late 50s. A lot of ways I could go with that. A lot of ways. Did I? No. Will I? I don't know.     See. This became a post. Ha! Sorry for the blurriness of the photos of the scribbles. Hmmm, maybe that's a projection of my imagination right now. What you read is actually less than 855 words. I left out

Pain. We take painkillers for the pain. My question is this: Is the pain still there even though we no longer feel it because we're on the painkiller? Okay, another question. How does the painkiller know which particular spot to de-pain? Or, is it just our whole body has become numb? What, still another question? Molly the Cat. She's a bed hogger. Sometimes, by the time I go to bed, Molly is  sleeping in the middle of my side of the bed. She likes to sleep on my side because I drape an extra blanket over me. It's  a fleece blanket. Ah. Just got it. The softness and warmth of fleece must remind her of her Mommy-Cat. Molly likes to knead it into that perfect now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep spot. Doesn't matter if I happen to be under the blankets. The Mama. Two weeks ago, the Mama was in the hospital for dehydration and pneumonia. The bacterial infection had jut begun, but because her body was dehydrated, it couldn't tackle the infection. The Mama had gotten the bug