Today, I modified a recipe that daughter Liz shared with me where you substitute 15 ounces of canned pumpkin puree for all the wet ingredients required in an 18.25 oz. chocolate cake mix to produce either delicious low-fat cupcakes or cookies. The only problem is that Ray and I don’t eat refined sugar so we…
Category: Timed Writing
Faulty Dryers and Surviving Those Early Married Years
We just spent the day at Sarah’s new apartment, helping her to connect her new washer and dryer. Well, her OLD washer and dryer that she purchased from Craig’s List . The washer is working great; the dryer not so much. A piercing squeak arose once the dryer drum was filled with wet clothes and…
Revisiting My Novel/Memoir…
I am thinking of returning to the memoir/novel that I worked on for a hundred years and looking at it with fresh eyes. I have work-shopped much of this writing and have had lots of feedback in the past. I’ve written and rewritten and gone from surface issues to much deeper ones. But I made…
Thank you, Edward!
A friend of mine in Texas, Edward Southerland, gave me a book when I was there a few weeks back. The gift was inspired, he said, from the reading he has done on my blog, which I will take as a compliment since I am always pleased to hear that people actually read my blog….
Hitting the Wall
We fully intended to get up this morning and head off to church for the celebration of one of St. Thomas’s most loved couples: John and Vince, who have been together for 50 years and who recently married after the new ruling by the Supreme Court on gay marriage. Ray and I both wanted very…
Students, Timers and Home
I am sitting with my first in-person (versus internet) student of the summer, George, who will be a 6th grader in the fall at Hawthorne Elementary here in Beverly Hills. George is here to work on speeding up his writing pace plus adding more details to whatever he writes. He is one of those boys…
New Course I’m Teaching: Writing as a Way to Heal
Today is the first day of a class I am teaching through Story Circle Network on writing as a means to heal. We are using the book, Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives by Louise DeSalvo. I have not taught this class before so this will be a…
“Calf Rope” – An Intuitive Reaction I Can Trust
Today is the day that I say “calf rope,” as we used to say in my family when my brothers or I were pinned to the floor by our opponent in a wrestling match. I assume this expression comes from the rodeo when a calf roper is done with the roping and jumps up to…
Happy 4th of July to All
We just returned from a fabulous fireworks display at Lake Texoma, which is about 20 miles from Sherman. We had ringside seats on the Austin College beach, sitting in lawn chairs right at the water’s edge and watching fireworks around the perimeter of the lake. We were there with our good friends Shann Schubert and…
Little Nuisances
I am sitting here in the dark save for the light from one small lamp and my computer screen. I am in bed with legs outstretched and my head propped up by pillows. The dogs are by my side, keeping Ray’s side of the bed occupied in his absence. He went back to LA for…
20 Minutes a Day 