• Fashion,  Pregnancy

    White Eyelet and Red Snakeskin

    I have to confess: I took this belt off within five minutes of getting to work. It’s one of the sad things of being pregnant; lots of my favorite skirts and belts don’t fit so well any more. But that just gives me leave to buy MORE skirts and belts that DO fit! It’s also made me wear dresses a lot more, because there’s more stomach room in most of my dresses, and the waists aren’t usually as snug. We’ll see how long that lasts.   I have also been trying to wear the lightest (as in, coolest) clothes possible, and the least amount of layers I can get away with,…

  • Thoughts,  Writing

    Free

    Dedicated to my second nephew, Benton, who was stillborn this morning, three days before his due date. And for my brother and his wife as they mourn for their fourth child and first son. Bliss. The most beautiful light he has ever seen, shining around him, filling him with warmth until there are no shadows. He floats into awareness and knows that he is before the most powerful being in the universe. He is unfettered by the weights of the world. He is enveloped by a love purer than any he would ever have known. He cannot remember how he came to be, nor where he had come from. Thoughts…

  • Writing

    Aphotic Pulchritude

    Being a writer, there isn’t a creative spurt that goes by where I do not stop to search for synonyms when one form of a word just doesn’t seem like enough to me, or when I have to use that word more than once every few paragraphs  and need more forms  of it  to make it less repetitive. And more often than not, I find that there are so many more interesting synonyms for everyday words than I thought there were. Today, I wanted to share the less-used synonyms of words that pertain to the chapter I’m currently writing. I’ve searched for all of these today, and I absolutely love the synonyms! They’re…

  • Writing

    Decay

    She smells like peppermints and chamomile tea, aged cedar, and something I cannot quite name. As I sit across from her in a Victorian needlepoint chair, her smile is full of yellowed teeth and memory. Slowly, gently, she lifts a shaking hand and pats her white hair with arthritic fingers that swell painfully at the knuckles, and she nods. “I was once Ophelia and Juliet, my dear,” she says, her voice roughened with time and seasoned by years of smoking. “But the real love story; the one you have come to ask me about… well.” With a chuckle that ends in a cough, she reaches forward and takes my pen…