My daughters gave me gift certificates for several massages for my birthday and today Rachael and Liz took me to the “Oasis Relax Spa Foot Massage” location, where we all three had an hour-long massage for 20 bucks a piece. Yes, that was an HOUR for TWENTY bucks and it wasn’t just a quick slam,…
Tag: timed writing
Flash Essay: Chest Cold, Students and the Oscars
I have a grand chest cold, one that causes me to seize up when I cough and rattle when I breathe. No fever, no aches and pains, just a cough that makes people instinctively step back, as if to say, “Please don’t give me whatever it is you’ve got.” Besides that, I saw students from…
Flash Essay: What I’ve Learned from Research about Huck Finn
I am helping one of my students with a term paper on Huck Finn and as part of the process, we’ve researched what inspired Mark Twain to write the books he did. Here is some of what I’ve learned: Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens) started Huck Finn in order to tell the humorous anecdotes he’d…
Prompt: Haiku about Illness
Sick Sitting this morning Kleenex box right by my side …
Prompt: My Day in Verse
I am sick, have caught my husband’s rasping cough My throat is scratchy and my ears are itchy I don’t feel that bad so I saw all my students They moved away as I coughed We are in the throes of AP term papers Beloved and Catch 22 How different can you get? Oh, and…
Flash Essay Prompt: Ash Wednesday and My Modest Lenten Plan…
It is Ash Wednesday, and, yes, I have the ashes on my forehead now as I write. I will go up and wash them off before I go to bed, but now they are there, dark black with a big +. That means Lent has officially begun as of today and this is my only…
Flash Memoir: Where the Love Was
I didn’t want to go to kindergarten when it was time for me to go. All my friends were going to Humpty Dumpty Play School, but I hated it. I much preferred to stay at home and play by myself or with baby Sam in our room, near Mama. I played school on my own,…
Memoir Prompt: Memories of My Dad
Yesterday was my father’s birthday. Here is a piece I wrote about him a while back, but still rings true for me. A window into my world with him: “Have I told you today how much I love you?” This was a question my father asked me every day I was growing up. “I love…
Flash Fiction Prompt: Three Weeks After
She woke up lonely. She knew it would happen. She’d been expecting it. One day she was busy and life was filled to overflowing and then it wasn’t. She could hear the silence bouncing off the walls in her now too big house; her only companions her dog and her cat. She sat down on…
Prompt: Haiku: Illness
Coughing punctuates The quiet LA evening My husband is sick Texas maladies Brought back to ail in LA Have him hacking hard Tomorrow may bring A trip to the Urgent Care Medicine to aid He is quiet now But only for a brief time Before the cough quakes I hope he can sleep He needs…
20 Minutes a Day 