sunflowers in Bulgaria Happy Baba Marta! Happy Grandmother March! If you click on the link, you can learn more about the holiday. Unsurprisingly, I was fairly pleased to learn of a holiday with my name in it, even if I wasn't a grandmother. The tradition of giving someone a martenitsa on March 1st, and then …
Author: mapelba
I'm a writer, artist, teacher, mother, wife, daughter, friend, coffee addict... What else? A success, a failure, a mess, a fan, a hater of housework, a lover of dogs, a liberal, an obsessive, and a bunch of other things that probably would never occur to me. I reveal myself in more ways in my writings and art than in any list of adjectives. And whoever you are, I hope most of all that you are a reader.
Weeknotes and Nurses Everywhere
Mom died suddenly. She was there, and then she wasn't. An aortic aneurysm killed her at 45. Now Dad is 89. He's not sick and bedridden, but currently, because of a fall, he's in a skilled nursing center, and there are many things he loves to do that he is not doing. Perhaps Mom would've …
Weeknotes again, and what a week.
This week began as usual. The country's dumpster fire continued apace. Papers needed grading. Appointments waited. Then Dad fell again. It's his second fall. If you've taken care of an aging parent, you know the problems falls bring. So we headed to the ER. Papers didn't get graded. Appointments got booted down (or off) the …
Head in the Clouds (Weeknotes)
I don't think my head has actually been in the clouds--metaphorically or otherwise. I've been too grounded in the news. Or sucked into the news like a 1970s tv character into quicksand. Except the news is real. No director is going to yell cut and end the scene. If only... But between the destruction and …
January on Fire (Weeknotes)
Literal and metaphorical fires are burning everywhere, and I do not have a sufficient water supply. Who does for this conflagration? But what is community for if not to bring those buckets together--those heavy buckets, rusty buckets, buckets with holes, buckets without handles, all the buckets belonging to those with sense and decency to know …
It’s Still January. Weeknotes.
Well, I used to like Neil Gaiman. But I never read Sandman, and the first book of his stories I read, I only partially liked. I particularly enjoyed a story about an old woman who bought the Holy Grail at a thrift shop. A few stories I didn't like at all, and most of the …
What-a-Week Weeknotes
One friend is in the hospital. I don't want to say much about it because her situation is ongoing and I don't want to throw her business too far into the internet. And really, there's a lot I don't know about her situation anyway. We message each other almost every single day, and something was …
30 Days & Drawing (Weeknotes)
You know what I don't need? Probably one of the same things you don't need! Another obligation. But not all obligations are equal, obviously. For the last year-and-a-half (with no sign of abating) I've been letting obligations smother and strangle my writing and art. It's not been pretty. Well, for a while, I've been a …
Oh Dear January (Weeknotes for the start of a year.)
Oh, dear January!OrOh dear. January. Punctuate as you see fit. I suppose it makes sense that everything I like about January is everything I don't like about January. The month's name come from the the Roman god Janus, the god with two faces, protecting gates and doorways, looking into the future and into the past. …
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Weeknotes–Organizing Stories Edition and Our Sweet Sadie
'Tis the season for clearing out and organizing, is it not? Sure, there's spring cleaning, but end-of-the-year clear-outs and New Year's Resolutions are everywhere. One sign, in case you needed one, was the wall display at the grocery store. Gone were the Christmas dooddads and baubles! Instead were the very tempting storage containers. I don't …
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Marta Bacon 