New Site

I can't give up the daily word-limited writing so have started a new blog. If you want to peek, go here: http://67x365.blogspot.com

Same format, one more word, different subject. I'll be writing 67 words about something I've observed the previous day. I hope this exercise will make me a little more observant of the daily world around me.

Thanks again to Dan, the originator of this fun.

365/365 FBH

She thinks that changing her mind might be a sin, plans plans and wakes up early to put things off. Avoiding mirrors and make-up counters, she feels the draw of places where people laugh. On the day before her sixty-seventh birthday, Fran realizes that almost all she is came as gifts from those people who gathered around yearly cakes and helped her blow out the candles

364/365 Aunt Ruby

I always thought we were much alike. We shared a family sense of humor. When a persistent nosebleed week kept me from attending her sister’s funeral, she didn’t approve and sent me a scathing letter – how dare you, she said. Crying, I called to further explain. Forgiveness was given. Yet, as I pack up Valentine cookies to send her, the tape still has a sharp edge.

363/365 Kathleen

Who’d think you could have so much fun with newspaper, glue and a balloon? But as we slipped on the floor and created our masterpiece, we did. This middle child who loved crafty things was eight, I was thirty-something. Kathleen’s a grown-up teacher now with a child of her own. As we sit waiting for lunch, someone mentions piñata and our eyes light up in unison.

362/365 Fat Buddy

He calls and it is 1962 again. His youthful enthusiasm hasn’t left – you can hear it in his voice. He tells me his wife is not having the lung transplant and is struggling with breast cancer but they are on the road again in their RV. I know he’s smiling and wonder how. Like sea glass, Fat Buddy seems to gather luster from all the tossing.

361/365 Brad

The older girls in the neighborhood planned a formal dinner party for their charges that summer evening. While the adults moved from house to house for a progressive dinner party; the kids gathered at our house. The teens, dressed in formal gowns fussed with decoration and food. Tow-haired Brad arrived wearing a tiny suit and carrying a bouquet of wildflowers – a Norman Rockwell come to life.

360/365 Pearl Buck

My shaking hand reached toward her chest to pin on a corsage. She said, "How pretty. "I said, “I loved your book.” She didn’t say, “Which one?” She did say, “Thank you.” She’d sponsored a classmate and was speaking at our graduation. I don’t remember one word of her speech. What I remember was meeting a gracious woman and not stabbing her with a corsage pin.

359/365 Peggy

“Don’t call me Eng Eng,” she says in the yearbook. Peggy – sponsored by Pearl Buck - was a nursing school classmate who smiled often, studied diligently and cooked the foods of home in our tiny dorm kitchen. When she asked the hospital chef for some soy sauce, he gave her a gallon. I’ll bet it’s still there. After her very long voyage, she longed for home.