Tuesday, October 16, 2018

The View

All of my  blogs used to be funny because I love to laugh at myself and make others laugh in the process. However, tonight I was going to write about the  deplorable treatment of my mom in her nursing home, and I stopped. It is far from funny. It would depress me, and you would not want to read it. Besides, I would not have enough time to write about it anyway.

Then I decided to write about my son, there always used to be some funny scenario to share about growing tweens. However as I wracked my brains, I realized that there is nothing funny because he has reached the start of brooding teenaged funks! He mopes past me and grunts barely audible answers to any question I pose.

Lastly, there’s my husband, I am sure that there is a story there however, I am so busy teaching, taking care of mom, going to class, and grading papers or creating lessons that I scarce see him enough to experience anything funny. (Though I will say that my newly retired husband had the audacity to nudge me in an electronic game of scrabble because I had not made time to make my move.)

Which brings me to my final thought on this situation which is quickly becoming the norm and beginning to overtake my weekly submissions.

Last week, I couldn’t find the time to write at all, and the week before that I wrote a poem about… well, not having anything to write about.  The week before that it was a short paragraph about not having time to write… and the week before that I squeezed in a very short paragraph after school and before the parents arrived on Back to School Night.

And now here I sit basically filling this blank space with more banter on not being able to write due to time constraints as I watch the big hand near the 12 on the clock and my grad professor turning on her presentation.

Sadly, as I perch here straddling this window sill called SOL Tuesdays, looking out at all the other wonderful writers running past my house, I feel like Esperanza’s grandmother in House on Mango Street, who “looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow.” Life has a tight grip on my leg pulling me back, so it can board up the opening through which I have been trying my best to escape these past few weeks since finding you



Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Uncle!

The teacher who wanted to write
Said this taunting blank page will I smite!
She stared down the screen,
Tried looking real mean,

Trim and a Haircut: Beauty Parlor Blues

It was beauty parlor day at the nursing home for my mom. That means it has been nearly three months since I have made the time to pamper an...