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The Pope’s Cat

When I read a book to my grandsons, I read from the beginning. Specifically, we pause and read the page containing the author’s name and illustrator’s name (I’m sure there’s a fancy word for this page, but I don’t know what it is.) I start here because I want the boys to understand that who wrote the book is important and who illustrated it is...

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Mardi Gras Day

It isn’t what you’ve seen on YouTube. It’s not drunkenness and lifting tops. It’s exuberance and cleverness and so much work spent on costumes simply because being alive is an amazing wild ride. I wore a diorama of myself. That’s my book, THE BONE TRENCH, in the diorama. It may never get sold, so I made one myself....

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Chiseling On Through, Y’all

I have just completed another rewrite of Jazzy and the Pirate. I created a document to hold the cuts I made, in case I wanted to add them back in. The document is 31,252 words. That’s 124 pages. The finished version of this draft is 48 pages shorter than my last draft. (I read once that you don’t have a first draft until someone reads it; I had...

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New Year’s Eve Wishes

Happy New Year to those with stars in their eyes on how grand life has become. And to those struggling with the dismay of dreams lost. And to those standing in the middle, unable to discern whether they feel happy or sad with the way life is going. Our lives are our stories, writ large. May each of us have the best tomorrow we can. And the day...

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‘Tis the Wonder of the Season

My husband is “watching football” on the couch. He’s snoring. The dog is curled up in the nest made by the crook of his bent knees. I’ve just hung up Facetiming with my family in North Carolina after 3 days of celebrating with my family in New Orleans. The grandsons are 6 and 4. They will grow up and will remember as if...

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It’s the Damn Christmas Season, So Be Nice

So I was in a hurry today and I needed to get my life insurance premium paid and I ran into the Farm Bureau office and I flashed a smile at the clerk behind the desk and shoved the check into her hands and whirled to the door, and she said to me, “It’s nice to see you again,” at which point I was already halfway through the...

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After a Year, Enough

I have lived in shock for a year. I could not believe that a man who put himself at the center of the universe and tore down everyone around him in the ugliest manner possible had been elevated to the presidency. The vote of my fellow and sister Americans sanctioning his behavior felt like gaslighting, an attempt to convince me that all I saw...

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