The other day, I had a realization in the middle of a Walmart. I went there to pick out a comforter for my bedroom, as well as a set of curtains. First, I went over to purchase a curtain rod and picked up one that I thought would work in any room. In the moment, … Continue readin … | Continue reading
Currently, and for the next week, I am living out of the front room of my apartment. That is where the old twin mattress is lying on the floor, serving as both bed and sofa. That is where the space heater is, and the television. Pretty much everything else is in a box. 90% of … C … | Continue reading
On my Twitter profile, there has been a line in my bio for many years reading “Forever Following Detours.” The reason for this is that several years ago I saw a follow detour sign on the highway as I was trying to make an important life decision. The epiphany I had when I saw tha … | Continue reading
Once upon a time, I loved it September. September meant it was time for school to start, which most kids did not look forward to but with which I held great anticipation. I didn’t like school mind you, but I did like seeing my friends again and also, school supply shopping was th … | Continue reading
Every time I cry, all I can think of is this face: The day I took this picture, we were at Midway Park. I was very excited to go that day, but as I recall everything kept going wrong. It helped nothing at all that I was off my mood stabilizer at the time, and … Continue reading M … | Continue reading
“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”-Oscar Wilde I thought that when I lost my mother, I became an expert on grief. In many ways I did, as I researched all the ways the human body responds to it, deals with it, and can heal from it. Then my husband died, … Con … | Continue reading
My last blog was about the beginning of my trip, so this will be about the end of it. That Saturday morning I enjoyed my sunrise with my coffee, and then one by one my friends crawled out of their beds. We sat around having a lazy morning for a little while, and then got … Contin … | Continue reading
On Thursday afternoon, some of my best female friends scooped me up and took me away to a lake house on Ontario. The goal of the weekend was to be stress-free. When I first got picked up, I was full of stress, as I was intensely worried about Mark’s prognosis since the last time … | Continue reading
It looks like my blogs are going to be transitioning into me talking about dealing with Mark’s situation for the time being. I mean, when I think about it, aside from my self-care Sundays that’s all I have going on in my life. Sure, there is work, which I have been away from for … | Continue reading
Where would I even begin? As I stated in my last post, my husband contracted bacterial pneumonia. The long and the short of it is that he got Legionnaire’s disease, which shut down his kidneys, because his liver was already fighting for its life, due to genetics and a few too man … | Continue reading
Hello, folks.I am just dropping a little message here in my blog to let you know that I will be taking some time off. I cannot guarantee any blog or Patreon updates this week, or, at this point, next week, either. Without going into too much detail, my husband Mark has come down … | Continue reading
I was just minding my business the other day, scrolling through the former bird app, when somehow I saw a post from JKR demonizing a woman in the Olympics. I kept scrolling, wondering only why this crazy lady was still showing up in my feed. A few days later, I saw a post on the … | Continue reading
As a child, I despised the Summer Olympics. I recall not being able to watch my soaps because they were preempted by sports, something I gave absolutely no care about. As an adult, I never watched them because I still do not care for “the sports.” Sometimes, I will watch the open … | Continue reading
As you could probably tell from my past couple of blogs, I have been at my breaking point both emotionally and physically over the recent weeks. I decided the best way for me to take a much needed break was to skip town and hole up in my best friend’s spare bedroom in Cleveland. … | Continue reading
I have no desire to blog about the state of affairs of America right now. I wanted to get on my soapbox many times over the past few days, but I have refrained because I am saving myself for the polls in November. I have no desire to blog about the state of my health … Continue r … | Continue reading
Today is one of those days where I sit in limbo, wondering what I will do, wondering what will happen next. To say that I have had a period of stress in my life currently is a little bit of an understatement. Since the beginning of July, my car has had two seperate problems, and … | Continue reading
Once a month, I write a newsletter for my Patreon which sums up what I have been working on, writer-wise, throughout the month. When I wrote my newsletter last week, I realized there was a lot that I wanted to share with everyone, not just my paid subscribers. (Although, of cours … | Continue reading
So Louisiana it is trying to post the Ten Commandments in all public school classrooms, in direct violation of the First Amendment. Since more than half of the people I know identify as Christians, most do not seem to have any problem with this. I tell you what though, the minute … | Continue reading
Last night I was scrolling through Facebook and I did the thing I always tell myself not to do: I read the comments. The article was simply stating that there would be no mail delivery today due to Juneteenth. Obviously, it was simply meant to be a reminder since today is a feder … | Continue reading
Growing up Catholic, saints were a part of everyday life. Most of us born Catholics are named after them, in fact. We are taught to pray to them and ask them to intercede on behalf of their specialties. For example, a very common Catholic saying is “St. Anthony, St. Anthony, plea … | Continue reading
Once upon a time, I wrote a blog about killing your darlings. I talked about how I wrote most of a book and then had to kill not only the characters but the whole plot. At the time I wrote this, I had no idea what would come out of my murder of words. That … Continue reading Slau … | Continue reading
I’m not sure how I managed to let an entire week go by without updating my blog. I don’t even remember all I was doing, but I guess I was busy. Anyway… I woke up this morning and scrolled through my Facebook, and one of the first posts I saw was from an old friend … Continue read … | Continue reading
Since I have been living with Generalized Anxiety Disorder for most of my life, I’m accustomed to the occasional panic attack. In fact, I take three pills a day in hopes to avoid them completely, but it does not always work. Typically, my panic attacks involve shortness of breath … | Continue reading
Last night, my Aunt Mary accompanied me to an exhibition for a spoken word artist whom I enjoy. We got there just in time to see him perform a few poems and explain the art that adorned the room. Most of it was focused on the home and church in which he grew up. This … Continue r … | Continue reading
This may be obvious to many people already, but I recently thought about this in a few scenarios and figured it may be valuable to articulate it clearly. One note before the main discussion is we should acknowledge that LLMs do have some sort of independent and creative thinking. … | Continue reading
One of my absolute bucket list items is to see the Aurora Borealis. I live in the northwest corner of New York, right near Niagara Falls, Canada. Now, if it were 1999, I could simply pay $1.50 and show my ID to cross over into Canada. In fact, sometimes they didn’t even ask for a … | Continue reading
I learned a lesson about myself today, and it is that I am much better at keeping my cool in a situation than I used to be. I believe I have learned through both maturity and therapy how to manage my emotions properly. This was put to the test today, as a gentleman at work … Cont … | Continue reading
The above is a post from a grief support group that I follow on Facebook. The topic got me thinking, which brings me here to the blog. It occurred to me literally yesterday that I will not be able to pick flowers from my mother’s garden this year. My father no longer lives in the … | Continue reading
Of course, I would pick the bear. If you have not already heard, there is a conversation on the socials about bears versus men. It is a thought question of sorts, where a woman is asked: who would you rather meet in the woods? A random unknown man, or a random unknown bear? The o … | Continue reading
Sometimes, it gets really hard. It gets really hard to go to bed at night, because I never know how I’m going to feel in the morning. It gets really hard to get up for work in the morning, because I know the moment my eyes open that I’m going to be sick. It gets … Continue readin … | Continue reading
Some short housekeeping. How is a human being supposed to deal with their mental health during a chronic illness flare up? This is a question I am pondering today, as I am 2 days without psych medication. This is not due to a med error, but instead due to the fact that I haven’t … | Continue reading
Meet Studio by WordPress.com, our new, free, open source local WordPress development environment. | Continue reading
Few WordPress features offer more return on your learning investment than block patterns. | Continue reading
Life is wild. One minute, you think everything is going to be fine and dandy and then the next someone rips the rug out from underneath you and you are flat on your back again. That has happened to me a couple of times in the past few days, but I’m only here to talk … Continue re … | Continue reading
Whether you're a design pro or a total newbie, you'll find a great tool in this list that will take your website skills to the next level. | Continue reading
Mercury has been in retrograde, which is one of those things I never used to pay attention to until I did. I still do not know much about astrology, and if I have questions about the stars, I tend to ask my sister who knows a little bit more than me. I do know that … Continue rea … | Continue reading
Try it out: WordPress' new Interactivity API provides a standardized way for developers to build interactive, dynamic elements within their websites. | Continue reading
What's harder: winning the Masters Tournament or re-creating its website in under 30 minutes? Watch the video and find out. | Continue reading
Let's discuss: What if you could register custom post types and custom fields directly in the WordPress admin? | Continue reading
I am not used to being wordless. Very few things in life leave me speechless, very few things keep me from touching pen to paper, but lately it seems an insurmountable chore to put anything out at all. The absolute last thing I want to do is write another blog about writer’s bloc … | Continue reading
When it comes to website-building, WordPress themes set your site up for success by providing stylish, preselected options for fonts, colors, and layouts. Even though themes provide the overall aesthetic, you still need to build out the posts, pages, and templates on your site. T … | Continue reading
If you’re at all interested in or curious about WordPress, these are folks to pay attention to. | Continue reading
"Hey, Brig?""What up, brain?""You haven't blogged in a week.""Well, crap." In all honesty, I haven’t had much to say. The week went by in a flurry of chaos because work has been pure bedlam, with dozens of cars coming back daily after spring break. Yesterday was a little crazy be … | Continue reading
We’re excited to share a new feature in the desktop editor and Jetpack mobile app that makes it a breeze to upload media to your WordPress posts and pages. | Continue reading
April has arrived! And with it, comes National Poetry Month. In the past I have shared my poems, I have written about poetry, I have shared the poems of others, and I have talked about some of my favorite poets. I haven’t much to give today, because I haven’t had much time to wri … | Continue reading
Zander Rose recently took a visit to one of Automattic's data centers. Here's what he learned about what the cloud looks like in person. | Continue reading