Blue Willow

At a time in my life after a documented, critical medical miracle, I was the porcelain doll of everyone around me. My friends, cowrkers and church family handled me with great care. Two British army wives from the chapel took me to lunch at a British tearoom outside the city, where they served scones, cream and jam, and poured tea into Blue Willow porcelain cups. I fell in love with the #lovestory. "A boy and a girl were in love, but their families didn't want them to be together. They met at the middle of the bridge at midnight, and turned into doves. They flew away so they could be together forever. i've been collecting Bluewillow china pieces for 20 years. I've received boxes as generous gifts, and I've found pieces in antique stores. Last week, a friend moved his china cabinet to my dining room. My blue willow has a home. #bluewillow #usethegooddishes

BLOCKHEAD

You want to go to Mexico.
While I play in the snow.
I didn't like your best buddy in high school
And I told you to go ahead and go.
You tell me you discovered new music.
So soulful, I couldn't say it.
Tell me the artist and single and I
Thirty years ago on the radio played it.
You're no good for me.
You're too hood for me.
My brain needs one who is a "should" for me.
Your mind is too hailed.
You should probably be jailed.
I can't help you anymore.
Don't call me for bail.

The Crown Virus

I've been reading about and watching videos made of the Spanish Flue Pandemic of 1918-1920. How on earth did they get by that? With no modern medicine or social media? If one member was ill, whole families were dead in a day. Mass graves were dug. People were buried wrapped in the sheets they died on. We now relate so closely to these times. Some of us have lived through similar moments, and we're wearing masks. We're not going anywhere without our hand sanitizer. We can meet with our doctors via telemedicine, or Facetime. Most of the dead had "underlying conditions" and were elderly in nursing homes. As one of those with "underlying conditions," I've been something of a germaphobe since my East Coast internship in college. The rest of the world is just catching up. But, hopefully, now that the World Health Organization has put out a video on how to wash our hands, the planet will start doing it. A dot of alcohol rubbed on one's hands is not enough. So what have we learned? Three days' of groceries in the kitchen is not enough. It's better to be ready for emergencies, to help out our neighbors if they need to borrow two eggs, and a long spring. Puzzles. Because yes, that woman fed her husband to the tiger. Now start creating something useful. Rest. God created rest on the Seventh Day. We are allowed to take a nap. So we can focus on the puzzle better later, because it has a lot of sky or sea pieces. Live life.

Pushing a year, lifting weights and hawking books.

As the summer temperatures visit, my countdown increases. So close to a year without convulsions. *So* close. Thank you, medical science. Perhaps I should have stated, "countup." I hope to never have a seizure again. Ergo, I'm extremely careful with my keto seizure diet, and I'm back in physical therapy. I can legpress more than I've been able to since the brain tumor. Out of My Head finally coming out has been very cathartic, but perhaps a sense of too much completion. I have set in motion for myself a new project, and you will find out more about that soon. Thank you so much for all of your support!

Content.

"I like my life," she thought, as she slathered on face cream and climbed high up into her IKEA bed with her Macbook. "I fought for this." With forty degrees and dropping outside, and four layers of fleece on her bed, she would warm up quickly. Two suitcases' worth of t-shirts from charity events and radio stations occupied the floor at the foot of the bed. In two weeks, they would be sliced and pinned, ready to become another quilt. It was something Dad always said: "You know how to do that. You've been there, done that, got the tshirt." This family story evolved into, "Sounds like you're earning another tshirt," anytime something went haywire. With years of SURVIVOR shirts, radio stations up and down the dial all over the country, and a few extra charitable organizations in between, she had, in fact, earned the tshirt.

Let's talk about Love

Let's talk about Thankfulness. Ya know, I always tell you I was thankful for life pre-social media, because maybe we were more responsible with our relationships then. Maybe we were wiser about our behavior (okaaay, maybe not, but I had a Promotions Team to look out for me). I'm thankful for you. I'm thankful for those friends who keep coming back. I'm thankful for the fact that you remember the song we yelled out loud as we cruised down the highway. I'm thankful for that time we went for dinner and grabbed one item at each fast food restaurant in town, because let's face it: they all had the best SOMETHING: I'm really thankful for the little things. The walks across town. The calls when you just "feel" like I need them, or when I call you and you say, "How did you know I needed you today?" Because of us.

Third Time's the Charm

I felt awesome after my second brain surgery. Awe. Some. I felt so awesome, I was ready to start businesses, nonprofit organizations, organize all of my friends' fundraising needs, and travel the world. I felt indestructible. I was unbreakable. I moved across the country and began new things, so unlimited was my potential. Then the echoes began. For a few years, they were like popcorn. Here. And there. Now it's an all-the-time worry. Again. Now, instead of just one medication, they've added another. And another. Now, since none of those work, I eat special food at certain times of day. I sleep a lot. My surgeon is waiting. There is no specialist in my part of the country. When they can schedule it, I'll get the call. I'll fly back. Scans and wires and hopefully he lets me have coffee. #OutOfMyHead

Got that tshirt

From a long-distant past, comes a tshirt I have to wear again. It's been hanging in my closet all my adult life, because as a woman, I keep important clothes. Every experience we go through, we get a tshirt. I have a tshirt from every Relay For Life, my Team Breakthrough race, every quarter theme at work, every radio station, and a tshirt for each important vacation. This tshirt is the experiential tshirt of seizures. Keeping a long story from getting too long, after my second brain surgery to stop the seizures several years ago, I hadn't had too much of a problem with them. Until a few years ago. Now what? A better doctor, more medicine, nutrition changes? Whatever it takes, I've never backed down from a challenge. That might be why my noggin is in trouble, but let's take one thing at a time. #outofmyhead #ketogenic #braintumor #seizures #seizuredisorder #josieblaine

It's been a little woof at times

My library is advertising that kids can read to a therapy dog. Although I'm older than fifth-grade, I have interest in doing this. When I began writing Something About Sophia, I often read to Lucky. She enjoyed it. I think most dogs enjoy being spoken to as the people they are. In my ponderances of reading to a therapy dog, my memories of reading to my own dog fell down my cheek and onto my pillow. I'll spend more time with my mom's dog. She bites me. It's an honest relationship. I know she loves me, she just bites me.

More Thoughts Than You'd Think.

It has come to my mind this week that I have more thoughts than I'd care to admit. In other words, I'll try to keep this focused and simplified for those who don't want to read about my personal analysis of Shakespeare's relationship to bullying in the modern school and office. Perhaps I should just stick to writing, but I also have to go to work every day and try to function as an adult in the world, while others seem to be keenly, blissfully unaware of their misfortune toward their fellow society-walkers. "I'll look to like, if looking, liking, move..."

Step-By-Step

I'm an early riser. Okay, truth be told, I'm a late oil-burner, too. This weekend was my birthday, filled with coffees and shopping errands and dinners and lunches. Opportunities for Mom abounded to regale tales of an easy child to raise. What an angel, oh, what a precious little darling (she was speaking of me). I don't want to miss a thing. My brand sparkling new niece is the same way. She has to be cradled to sleep like a chicken, for she doesn't want to miss anything going on. She's three weeks old, but she looks in the direction of voices, and listens for stories. Oh, I just love her. I wonder if my aunts, my grandmothers, felt like this about me when I was born? For sure, your ancestors looked forward to your coming. They thought about you, and imagined you, and dreamed of the things you would do, and the people you would help, the concertos you would compose. With all of those people cheering us on from Heaven, it hardly seems worth it to sleep in. #dogood #begood #loveandwartimeless #outofmyhead

The Supercoolest People Were Born in March

My great-great grandfather would be closing in on 160 years of age this week. I have a brand new niece, who is pretty much, the coolest person we've all met since forever. Among my loved ones' March birthdays, we must remember the one who told us we had, "Brains in your head, you've got feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose." Dr. Suess was born March 2, 1904. He promptly went to work scattering verse and smirks across the globe. I mean, Horton heard a WHO, and I know it wasn't, "Who's on First?" Please don't tell Abbott and Costello, also born in March, by the way. March babies are cool, because you're either Pisces, and you're chilled-out in a pool somewhere doing synchronized swimming/ Two weeks later, you're an Aries, and you know you're cool. You don't have to prove it to anyone. They'd better catch up to you, you're so cool. You're so on top of it, you're practically into April already. Take it easy and go for a swim. Congratulations, March babies! You are the spring! You are for whom everyone has been waiting!!

Well read.

I saw a meme for a perfume to mimic the scent of old books. Well. Okay. I've spent time in the basement of the library, and while it has its charm, and I've communed with the fabled ghost down there (which Al, the librarian, SWEARS to me has gone on to somewhere else), I perhaps am not a fan of smelling like a musty old cellar full of paper. Don't get me wrong. I adore poring over history and filing book jackets for semesters on end, then being promoted to transcribing immigrant interviews. These were some of the best days of my life. I am hoping that when insisting hipsters spritz on the scent of old books, to smell, well read, they... well, READ.

Announcing...

If you aspire to write The Great American Novel, you must write with all your heart. Having traveled to and lived in other places, I see that my grandparents were unique people. They were not unique to North Dakota, but they were unique. They dug in and developed land and a farming industry they were proud of. They were humble and never backed down from a challenge. When the country called, Grandpa marched off to defend the Red, White and Blue, so he wouldn't have to do it here. #loveandwartimeless #historicalfiction #northdakota #bgmercantile

The time is now.

My characters have always been independent women who love their families and like to travel. I probably should have been a mapmaker. When you have spent two years marketing other projects, and outlining, writing notes, having conversations, drinking gallons of coffee, and loving a new book into a manuscript, eventually the day comes when you click into Cover Creator. The time is now.

#loveandwartimeless

Mia dropped Rae and the baby off at her house and swung by the hospital parking lot to deliver a form for a class. She had to turn it in to the administrator's desk at the nursing school next door to the hospital. This will all be very convenient, Mia thought, in the long run. Her whole life was within a 5-block radius. She was really pretty pleased with herself. This was at least two days early. She never turned in something a day early in undergrad. As she glided between the automatic sliding glass doors, Mia caught the first notes of a breaking news bulletin from the waiting room to the right of the entry. She couldn't help herself. Like a moth to the flame, she was drawn toward the soft green and gray walls, as the nervous anchor stumbled over hastily written copy. "The U.S. began retaliation today against Russia..."

Time after Time

"People like that," my friend Regina said. "Other people know those people are like that." So today, friends, I urge you to be discerning. Watch your backs, your fronts, and put your best selves forward into the world. Ever watch a basketball game and watch someone fake a drawn foul? People will do that in real life adulthood, to draw news cameras, insurance claims, or whatever they can. Turn from these people. Keep from them. It's actually in the bible. Psalm 34:13 "Keep your tongue from doing evil andc your lips from spreading lies; Depart from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it." Basically, I'm finding myself to be a little bit surrounded by crazytown, and I hope it's just the season. I pray it will pass. Maybe by November, when everyone is counting their blessings once again.

Settling Down.

The leaves are brilliant hues. Crimson and gold beckon to me, that I should be out among them, playing and swirling and breathing in the very last of this season before the icy air blows in. Alas, I have a pile of notes and a promise to myself. By day's end, another chapter will appear. Mia will know more about her destiny, and my laundry will be put away. Oh, Saturday, how I love thee. Also, may the Bison win. #loveandwartimeless #gobison

Counting sheep and words

Personally, I feel if I'm going to write, I should be writing the book, and if I'm going to type, I should be typing form the stacks of notes I've written FOR the book. But I digress. Allow me to say, Once I get myself disciplined enough to sit still for 30 minutes, there's a WHOLE BUNCH of story development that has gone on, longhand. And I have several yellow legal pads and lunchtimes to thank for this revelry and literary abandon. My characters are real to me, and I have been gushing about them to anyone who will listen (thanks for that), and they are living, breathing and experiencing real-to-life moments and backstories. I have beautiful editors and a patient designer ready to rock. I think this will be good. Now to type it in.

Getting old, probably. A little irritated with tech, maybe, but not really. But 56,000 words into Book 3 and I opened my Word doc tonight to a text doc that would not look normal. Why? WHYYYYY? And HOW can I blame Millennials?