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 |   Reflections and ruminations from a modern day Alice - Life is Wonderland |
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Reflections and ruminations from a modern day Alice - Life is Wonderland  Welcome to the place were I chronicle my own falls down dark holes and adventures chasing white rabbits! Come on In, Take a Bite, You Never Know What You May Find... "Curiouser and curiouser." Alice in Wonderland    |
| "Blogging Circle of Friends " DAY 2237 January 3, 2018 I read a comic strip cartoon about New Year's Diet Resolutions lasting 3 days and exercise ones lasting a week. My question to you is what the shortest and the longest resolution you've made. Did you see this as a failure or just another social norm? How do you think you can overcome the hurdles of resolution failure? My answer is simple...don't make resolutions. The entire concept is doomed to failure because it feels like it comes from a purely emotional place. Instead, I make long term goals...with little pockets of mini-goals scattered along the way. This way I have a better chance of celebrating small victories rather than lamenting my big failures. "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" Day 1844 January 3, 2018 Prompt: "Every man should be born on the first of January. Start with a fresh page." Henry Ward Beecher What would your fresh page to say? My fresh page would say..."fill as many days as you can with electronic ink"...in other words, write more. Writing is the one thing I always know I can go back to and as a result, I find I too often give it the back seat in my life. I need to stop doing that. I need to start taking the time to do what makes me, me. I am a writer and so I should do more of it. It has been a while since I put anything out to publish, so the sentence sentence of my fresh page would be..."put yourself out there more". I need that pressure to develop my skills and my discipline as a writer. You can grow and learn as much from every rejection as you can from every acceptance. |
| 30 Day Blogging Challenge PROMPT January 3rd Are you an introvert or an extrovert? How do you recharge your batteries? The second question is easier to answer than the first, as I am no longer sure whether or not I would classify myself as an introvert any longer. I think I was introverted, at least for a large portion of my formative years, but having a child and becoming a mother then hitting my forties, has inspired me to become more of an extrovert. When I was a child and a teenager, I didn't go out for sport teams or join clubs. I spent my free time immersed in books and then writing for myself.I was a science student and long hours working in the labs or on individual projects set me apart from many of my more outgoing peers. At college I oddly managed to connect with friends that were into plays and acting, creative types who easy captured the spotlights in every room. I was a comfortable observer and felt, many times, like the anchor that moored our crazy boat to shore. In my mid-30's, with school far behind me, I felt myself starting to change. I still had all my same quiet passions but I began to pursue publication more and found I like having something to say and that a fair amount of self-promotion was necessary to get myself and my pieces noticed. Then I found out I was pregnant and that new discovery of myself coupled with my growing daughter, flipped a switch inside me. Suddenly I was joining groups, reaching out to other moms, taking a seat on the PTO board of Officers...making myself heard in a myriad of ways. I began to contribute when before I think my tendency was to hold back and be led. I found I've taken on more than I would have once and the result is living a much more demanding life then I envisioned for myself - which brings me to the second question of the prompt - how do I recharge? I used to take long hot soaks with a glass of Cabernet and a good book. Life with child and two dogs have made that virtually impossible. The last time I intended to take a long, candle-lite soak I self-impaled my nether region with a Disney toy that was cleverly hiding amid my soap bubbles....I'm pretty sure it was that spiky chicken from Moana. It had certain felt like that spiky chicken from Moana. At any rate, I realized in that one, painful and humiliating moment, that my old way of decompressing had ceased to exist. I was forced to discover other ways to recharge. These days, sometimes I take a long lunch and wander around the book store or library. I love to do that, roam amid shelves and shelves of books without anyone needing anything from me. I can feel myself relaxing with every book cover I examine. I use music to recharge a lot. I have a wide range of tastes and I can always find something on my playlist to calm or motivate me, especially when the work day is getting crazy or my desk looks like a cyclone hit it. When I really need some "me" time, I will take some vacation time during a school day. After I drop my daughter off and school and the dogs at daycare, I'll pick up my grandmother and do breakfast then spend the rest of the day enjoying my quiet house. I might clean or watch what I want on Netflicks or just sit and enjoy a coffee and the serenity of my backyard. Once a year, we take a family vacation to the tip of Cape Cod, a place called Provincetown. This is where all my full on, deep core recharging takes place. It never fails that as we near the shore and the landscape turns to beach forests and dunes, that I start to breathe deeper - feel myself calming. After few days spent on the beautiful beaches of the National Seashore, and I'm back on my game. This is the best way I know how to recharge. There are miles upon miles of soft, warm sand and wide tide pools you can swim in. There are massive sand dunes and wild sea roses everywhere. There are even visits by curious seals and the occasional passing whale and.....absolutely no spiky chickens. |
| "Blogging Circle of Friends " DAY 2236: January 2, 2019 Prompt: My grandmother always said that what you did on New Year's day you would be doing for the rest of the year. What did you accomplish on New Years day? Will you be doing it the rest of the year? Laundry...that is what I spent my New Year day doing...and most certainly what I will be doing for the rest of the year and all the years of my life to come. There will always be laundry...oodles of mismatched socks, soiled doggie diapers, changes of barely worn clothes discarded by my fickle daughter and sodden towels left on the floors and draped over the backs of chairs. There will always be damp swimsuits and grass-stained jeans. There will always be grease covered sweatshirts and hairy, smelly doggie beds. It will never end for me. I know this with a rare certainty. For the most part, I embrace the chore. There is something satisfying from turning a heap of dirty, soiled garments into a fresh, crisply folded pile of clean clothes and towels. I feel accomplished once the various laundry baskets are emptied and all the cleaned laundry is put away again. No matter that the baskets don't stay empty, or that the dirty cast offs sometimes fall just short of the basket's wide, easily accessible maw. This is my task to bear, mostly because entrusting it to another member of my household would certainly spell disaster; like the time my visiting mother-in-law managed to shrink all three of my pairs of maternity pants, or the time I found my husband had folded and put away an entire load of laundry that was still damp.  So yes, this New Years..and all on those blessed ones to come...there will be laundry. "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" Day 1843 January 2, 2019 Prompt: "Open a volume and next comes fragrance: fresh, green and inky if it's new or a bit dusty and aged like a grandfather's cozy den" Which do you like better, new books or old books? This is a tough call. I have always loved the texture and smell of old books. Near my new home there is place called the Book Barn that has a seemingly endless series of rooms and outbuildings filled with books. Some of them are very old volumes, their covers mottled with mold. I love looking at those books, imagining all the hands they've traded to and from over the years. Then there is a this inherent joy with cracking the spine of a new book, that fresh ink smell and the crispness of pages not yet thumbed through. I love being the first person to take a new book out of the library. It feels like a secret privilege of sorts. I have never wanted an e-reader for these reasons, there is something so tactility satisfying about reading physical books that you loss with those electronic devices. |
| 30-Day Blogging Challenge PROMPT January 2nd I’m 24 today! Write about your most memorable birthday. I'm fast approaching the "45" milestone so I have a lot of birthday celebrations to look back over. Overall, many of the ones I can most remember are marked by disappointment. They stand out in memory because they take place during darker times in my life when celebrating anything seemed inappropriate and misplaced somehow. I'm sure many of my childhood birthdays were fun-filled and joyous, I seem to recall them in a collective blur of merriment but I couldn't pick out one with any clarity and be able to name it my "most memorable". Oddly enough, the birthday I would pick is one I can remember very clearly for being the first birthday in a long time I felt was entirely about me. It was not tainted by the demands of a co-dependent ex or an addict brother. I'm not sure I really remember if I was turning 33 or 34 honestly, the age wasn't what made it so special. It was just the first birthday in a series of birthdays when I didn't feel guilt or distraction or pain or disappointment. I had started dating the man I would eventually marry and he had surprised me with a birthday weekend in Newport, RI. He'd booked us a room at the Bayberry Inn, a lovely B&B just outside town that had richly appointed rooms with fireplaces and Jacuzzi tubs. He had wine and chocolate covered strawberries waiting for me at the room. We dressed up and went to a beautiful birthday dinner at Castle Hill Inn. Castle Hill is just about the most scenic place in Newport, a grandiose mansion perched on top of a high with a perfect night sky view of the Newport bridge. That birthday I felt like I began to finally breathe again. I took great big gulps of grateful air and felt good, I felt hopeful. I'm not sure my husband even knows how significant that particular birthday celebration was in my life. It felt like a beginning, not just for our relationship, but the beginning of me taking back a life I was living too much for others. |
| 30-Day Blog Challenge PROMPT January 1st HAPPY NEW YEAR! What is your opinion of New Year’s Resolutions? Do you make them? Do you keep them? New Year's Eve is not my favorite holiday. It is the celebration that marks the end of the cherished holiday season and it serves as a harbinger for that wave of the post-Christmas let-down depression that I always experience. As a result, I never banked much on the New Year's traditions. I rarely stay up to watch the ball drop these days and I resist the urge to make those resolutions. I've always felt that any promises made in the wake of something significant ending are infused with too much pressure, too much hype to have any real chance at success. Instead I work hard to connect with the positive aspects of the coming new year. I take comfort in what I can formally leave behind once the calendar rolls over and the new slate begins. I might not make resolutions but I set goals for myself...goals with staying power, goals with a lot of leg room. I generally want to write more in 2019. I strive to develop more discipline in my writing, actually more discipline throughout my life. I want to be more conscious of my health, more dedicated to taking care of myself...whatever that ends of coming to mean. I don't make those goals with any midnight-hype, ball-drop enthusiasm but rather a honest desire to be cumulatively better over the span of the next twelve months. |
| Unofficial 30Day Blogging Challenge: Dec 4 Prompt: I live in a place where snow is so rare, I'm amused at snow in a tube- and I'm pretty sure my students would be, too! Give me a list of 12 things you can do with the snow, and be creative (so I don't want typical things like snowboarding, skiing, etc Here in Southern New England, snow can be a challenge. Some years we have so much that we are forced to be creative when dealing with it. One year the totals for cumulative storms were almost two feet. In an effort to make use of all that white stuff, lots of people created igloos, or dug tunnels in the large drifts for their kids or dogs to play in. Around the barn, snow is useful to clean mud (and horse poop) from the pasture off our boots.  Some people used to eat snow but with the climate issues today, I'd hardly recommend that. My dogs however still love a snoot-full of the stuff sometimes! In college, snow was frequently used as a weapon...for pelting friends or for dumping buckets of the white stuff on the heads of unsuspecting roommates while they showered. A few times we witnessed some drunken frat boys turn the snow into a private luge course - throwing themselves headfirst down the covered hill wearing big black garbage bags over their heads as makeshift sleds. During those holiday parties when the fridges get too crowded, a kiddie pool filled with snow makes an excellent auxiliary cooler too. We've not had much significant snow yet so my list is admittedly weak and uninspiring I fear! "Blogging Circle of Friends " DAY 2207 December 4, 2018 Use these random Christmas words in your blog: snowflakes, dolls, wrapping, paper, pine, sales, greetings, and celebrate. Have fun! Sugarplum shook herself free of her wrapping paper bed and stretched the sleep from her limbs. She wondered how long it would take to shake the sent of pine off her now that she opted not to spend the night in the family tree again. Sugarplum cocked her small head and listened to the quiet house. Confirming that the family had all gone, she set about planning her day. Sugarplum started off my cutting snowflakes out of tissue paper. She thought they looked lovely on the windows in little Lauren's room. She left some cheer filled greetings on Matthew's spiral notebook for him to find after school. She rummaged through the sales flyers advertising all the Christmas deals, taking special care to mark the pages with the items from the children's Christmas lists for Sharon and Michael. Sugarplum deftly tiptoed past Ruffles, covering her tiny mouth to keep from laughing at the way he frantically pawed the air in his doggie dream. She rounded out the rest of her day leaving little touches around the house that the family would delight and celebrate upon their return. Sugarplum was very good at her job. As the hours waned and the light beyond the windows darkened, she made her way upstairs to Lauren's room. She settled in among the other dolls to wait for the little girl's return. "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" DAY 1814--December 4, 2018 Prompt: What would improve your hometown? Can you convince your town’s officials to make a change that would improve your neighborhood? We only recently moved to the our new town. Apparently the hot topic issues for most of our new neighbors revolve around trash. We have a town transfer station where residents pay a fee to take their trash. The town has frequently weighed this option verses offering the more expensive option of curbside pickup. The town seems largely divided over the issue, and I'm not sure either side could be convinced one way or another. Certainly, curbside pickup would be easier but it would also cost the residents more in taxes and therefore I am not sure it would serve to improve the neighborhood in general. We are still getting used to this more rural community. We are still learning about life in this community and other than the trash, which people are very vocal about, nothing else has surfaced that I think I could comment on as of yet. |
| 30-Day Unofficial Blogging Challenge Dec 3 PROMPT by(557) Not to pull a Frosty on you or anything, but that snow-person said you built? It just came alive! *Shock2* What happens next? Lola's insistent whining finally pierced the bubble of my spiked eggnog hangover. I sat up too quickly and was rewarded with a jack hammer pain in my right temple. I realized that my days of emblazoned drinking and making merriment with friends were solidly behind me. I thought about calling for Greta but feared the sound of my own voice would betray my tender spirits. Better to not clue my eight year old in on that fact that the party had continued well beyond when she'd been send to bed. I quietly cursed my old friends and slowing swung my feet over the bed and rising up on shaky legs. I opened the bedroom door to the dog's reproachful eyes. "Sorry girl", I said, following her flouncing tail down the stairs. On my way across the kitchen I almost slipped in a puddle of ice cold water. I took another step and my toes once again found an ice puddle. I flicked on the light and saw a series of tiny puddles zigzagging across the kitchen tile. Greta., I thought. Forgetting about my delicate state, I yelled out to her in the general direction of ceiling. What on earth had she been doing this morning? My pounded head barked back at me, angrier with my outburst than I could ever have been about the mess. I reached the slider and let Lola out. She bounded into the snow banks and relieved herself, then proceeded to race about the yard, kicking up the drifts and whirling like a dervish. I watched her mindlessly for a few moments before I noticed something was wrong. The yard looked oddly empty. I rubbed my eyes and peered out again into the snow covered yard. The snow beast. It was missing. Yesterday afternoon Greta and I had spent hours building the creature, which had started as a standard snowman but had quickly morphed into something that resembled a hunched beast, with a disproportionately bulbous head and bright blue pool noodle arms. We topped it off with a wide orange scarf and mop bucket we found in the back of the garage. Greta had painstaking installed two garden stones for its eyes, and a piece of red licorice with candy corn teeth for its mouth. In a last ditch nod to tradition, she used a large carrot for the creature's nose. By the time it was done, it had stood nearly two heads taller than her in an old ratty blue and gray wool coat. It had been an oddly impressive effort and now it was gone. I had the vague recollection of my friends, clutching their cocktails and taking selfies with it in the moonlight. Had one of them knocked it over? I pulled on my boots and trampled out in the yard. There was no evidence it had melted or been stomped on. The coat, scarf and bucket were gone. It was like I had just disappeared. Overnight. I thought briefly about those puddles in the kitchen. Then, ridiculing myself, I went back inside and began to clean up the water. It had to be a prank of some kind. I fired off a text to each of my girlfriends asking who'd taken the snow beast out. I received a flurry of confused responses. I was just reading the last installment when Lola began barking at the slider, it was her alarm bark, punctuated by the sound of her claws frantically dancing across the glass door. It was then, over Lola's racket, that I thought I heard a low growl. Greta padded into the kitchen then. "Mom, what the heck is wrong with Lola?" Greta shouted to the dog and in the brief reprieve of a silenced Lola, that menacing growl came again. My daughter's eyes widened with alarm. We both turned slowly toward the pantry at the rear of the kitchen. One door hung slightly ajar. There in the blackness beyond, we both screamed as we saw something shift in the darkness... "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" DAY 1813--December 3, 2018 Prompt: Seneca said, “A great fortune is a great slavery.” What might such a great fortune be and do you agree with Seneca’s claim? I will very likely never know the burden that great wealth and fortune bring. I believe Seneca's quote is referring to how such things can create an obligation to serve them. It often takes a great energy to amass wealth and to uphold it, even more so. While some fortunes come easily, most are the result of hard work and perseverance and ultimately sacrifices. I can see how these things might feel like a great slavery to someone, at least in the consuming way people have to work to keep what they have earned. Given that, I believe many people would forgo a massive fortune if it required them to sacrifice other aspects of life, like falling in love, or raising a family, or pursuing a passion. Life has to be about more than material wealth, or else what is the point of the journey? "Blogging Circle of Friends " DAY 2206 December 3, 2018 Do you prefer homemade gifts or store bought? Do you exchange food gifts? Clothing? Or Gift cards? Each holiday season I come to the inevitable feeling that gifts, the commercial kind, ultimately cheapen the spirit of Christmas. Everyone loves presents I know but the bustle and grind of shopping coupled with the anxiety of gift-giving, can sometimes be a real damper. I had opted more and more to give gift cards. Even though they tend to be impersonal, I feel like the thought counts. I want my gifts to ultimately be useful and therefore appreciated. Maybe my gift card means an extra special coffee treat on a day when they could really use it but can't justify the expense? Or, maybe there is something they've been eyeing and my gift card gives them the chance to get it for themselves? I wish I was a crafty person because there is also something really appealing about homemade gifts. I like it when someone makes me something, there just feels like there in more sentiment behind a present someone makes with their own two hands. I am planning to make some homemade Christmas candies with my daughter this year. Our plan is to distribute them to some of our neighbors in our new neighborhood. I think it will help with the whole "season of giving" sentiments that sometimes I fear the holidays can lack. I want Christmas to be a time of family and charity for my daughter. When she finally outgrows Santa and the Elf of the Shelf, I want her to see that the real magic of Christmas is about believing in those values and spreading them out into the world. |
| 30 Day Blogging Challenge PROMPT November 30th What is one new fact you learned about a fellow blogger this month? I typically kicked off my weekday mornings by pulling up the prompt and trying to write in that quiet space of time before my co-workers start showing up. The office is vacant and the water cooler is the only thing making noise. It has been a great time, really my only time, when I could focus on the challenge and the work of my fellow bloggers. I have tried to read mostly every blog, even on the days I wasn't myself contributing. I have learned about bloggers who were new to me that I have since favorited. It has feel more like a community to me this past month and I have really needed that connection. Writing can be such a solitary practice by nature and so knowing that my fellow bloggers have been out there, and have taken the time to read and comment on my blogs, has been very uplifting and encouraging. I struggled with some of the prompts, others came more easily. There were some days I just wanted to take a pass, and others when I pushed myself after reading some of the other entries. It was good to be part of something like this - perhaps, dare I say it - it might have even given me a push toward the discipline I so need to develop as a writer. It was not so much that I learned one thing about a single blogger, but more that I learned a lot from the group at large. Again, that sense of community...the willingness for my fellow bloggers to share and then take the time to read and comment on my writing...was a connection I didn't know I needed this month. Even though I never managed to do all the prompts, my Monday-Friday routine became a staple for me that I really worked toward. Thank you for hosting and for the prompts and thanks to my fellow bloggers to whom I have enjoyed reading these past 30 days. Wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday season! |
| 30Day Blogging Challenge PROMPT November 29th On this last Wildcard Thursday of the month, make me a list of prompts to add to the Challenge War Chest for future rounds of the 30DBC. What has been your favorite day of the week, and why? Some days I just struggle...today is one of those days. I'm just not feeling it, not trusting what will come out if I let it - maybe its a touch of seasonal depression although this is very typically a time of year when I am feeling upbeat and hopeful. Whatever the reason I can already tell I'm going to be less than impressive about coming up with a list of prompts but I'm gonna try.... * Musically Speaking: How important is the role of music in your life, in your creative process? Do you write to music? If so, what kind and why do you think that helps? *“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” —Ernest Hemingway...How do you feel about this quote by a writer many consider a master. Who are some other writers you admire and consider masters? *You've been given a full budget and creative license to bring a novel you read to film, what novel would you pick and who would you cast as the characters? I got three...a fairly weak contribution but I did try to make them quality over quantity at least! As far as my favorite day of the week..without a doubt it is Sunday. Sunday is my day to catch up on family stuff, getting my house back in order after the hectic week. I love making breakfast while listening to NPR early when I have the kitchen to myself. I enjoy the rumbling of the dryer as I get the week's laundry done and sorted. The domesticity of a Sunday is very appealing to me. I usually cap off the day by making a big meal, something that's spend the afternoon roasting and filling up the home with enticing smells. |
| 30Day Blogging Challenge PROMPT November 27th Do you have any "weird" tastes in food? Carrots and ketchup? Peanut butter and ice cream? Watermelon and salt? Can you convince us to try your odd food combo? I had to think about this prompt for a while because I wasn't sure I could come up with any examples of weird tastes in my food repertoire. Even when I was pregnant, I don't recall any cravings that would be considered odd. I did sustain on a lot of grilled cheese and McDonald's vanilla soft serve ice cream to quell the horrendous heartburn I suffered with until my daughter's birth. Those choices were out of my normal consumption patterns but not what I would consider "weird" tastes. I'm fairly adventurous with food, I like trying new things. I enjoy eating and cooking dishes from many different cultures. The term "weird" strikes me as being a relative one. What I might consider a weird food choice or delicacy, another person could have grown up eating it as a familiar and normal meal for them. I spent a lot of time in Mexico with my ex-husband. It was entirely common to see his young nephews running about with a bag of chapulines, (chapulines are roasted crickets dosed in copious amounts of chile and lime) crunching and snacking to their heart's delight. It was something they grew up eating and while I would politely and emphatically decline their offers to share, I was never offended by their choice of snack. It wasn't weird or strange for them so it never resonated that way with me either. I do like several things that might be considered more acquired tastes perhaps. I'm an avid fan of asparagus. I liked mine roasted with lemon and feta cheese. I love roasted kale...although, admittedly, it has a very noxious odor while cooking it. I really like brussel sprouts, tossed in olive oil and dusted with some Parmesan cheese and powered garlic...even better when roasted with mozzarella and bacon! I will eat most sushi but steer clear of eel, urchin and those big orange spheres of salmon roe. There is nothing better than a really good grade of tuna steak chopped and tossed with salt, lime and avocado in a fresh tartare. As far as some of the cooking ventures...I've yet to be able to convert many people beyond my immediate family to partake some of my Turkish dishes - like the one with cool pasta in a garlic yogurt sauce with a pepper paste relish. I find food interesting though, and I'm looking forward to reading some of the other blogs on this topic. |
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