This Perfectly Imperfect Life

Big news! I wanted to share this on 12/25, but since it was Christmas Day, I decided to hold off until now. My first published article! Well, my first since high school. And outside of a blog. 45 and a half years old - it's been A Long time coming! Check out my #5onFriday guest post for DIY MFA : Five Ways Journaling Improves Your Daily Life. (click here ) I had so much fun with this post. And it exercised my writers brain in ways it hasn't been exercised in far too long. Absolutely grateful for the opportunity! Did you happen to get a new journal this holiday season? Or do you want to pick yours up again, but you're not sure how? Whether you're new to journaling, haven't done it in a long time, or it's like second nature for you, I share "five ways your daily life will improve if you start journaling this holiday season and on" and tell you about my own journaling journey as well. I hope you'll drop by DIY MFA and give it a read! (click here )

Hello friends! Popping in quickly to say I haven't forgotten to be thankful daily despite the recent lack of posts and I am *so* excited about writing again and I can't wait to tell you why! To my fellow Whovians, wasn't Day Of The Doctor brilliant?!  Happy 50th Anniversary Doctor Who!  Bravo and well done! See you back here soon :-)

For my latest edition of #GardenWalk on Connect*Share*Grow , "Why #GardenWalk?" click here .

The inspiring Gayla Trail, aka You Grow Girl , created the Grow Write Guild , a "Creative Writing Club for People Who Love to Garden," in March and I discovered it last week via twitter gardening friend Louise's post " My Dream Garden? "  Every couple of weeks, Gayla posts a new prompt on her site.  I've been catching up since last week, first reading all of her posts related to GWG and then writing on prompts one and two.   Just before discovering the GWG, I shared my recent struggles with my writing here . Since that post, I've been feeling positive and revitalized. And these GWG prompts? Such fun and perfect timing!  I thanked Gayla on twitter for doing this, telling her that.   So let's get started!   Prompt #1: My First Plant (Write about your first plant). I wrote briefly about my first plants, two containers of bright yellow Pansies, in my first column for #gardenchat in " Getting To Know You ."  "...which al...

I feel so far away from writing at this moment. And as a result, I feel... discouraged, sad, pointless. Drifting. In a daze. And I don't know what to do about it. But, it's time to start somewhere. A Writers Journal : This new addition to Diggin' Around, which has been in the works since this Winter, is to help me chronicle my journey with writing, which I hope in turn helps some of you who may be struggling as well, like me. I have written since I was a little girl, inspired by Louisa May Alcott's Jo March on a sunny Spring Sunday when I was about 11 years old. I have wanted nothing more since then but to be a published author of novels. I am a writer. It is what I know I am, and what I am supposed to do. So why, a month shy of my 38th birthday am I no farther along than I was when I was that little girl? The normal distractions come to mind: Life in general can be less conducive to creativity for some more so than others.  Working full time and going to colle...

For the latest edition of my gardening memoir column,  Adventures In Gardening , now on Connect*Share*Grow , please click here .

Happy first day of Fall everyone!  My favorite, Favorite time of year is upon us and I couldn't be more excited. Even both of us being sick isn't dampening my spirits! (Pesky sinus infection & cold).  All week long I've been catching signs of the season, some of which I'm sharing here with you because they make me happy, and in honor of the day :o) Aren't they the cutest?! Faces only a (vintage) Halloween lover could love perhaps! Autumn sunsets are among my favorites Yes, we're still The Garden State, more visible at this time of year than others Now that's a whole lotta pumpkins! (They stretched outside the frame on both sides!) Speaking of Autumn, in other exciting (and somewhat unrelated yet related) news, after many, many (many!) years of writing, I * FINALLY * have an opening for a novel! A place for it to begin. (cue squeals, jumping up & down and excessive smiling) Whether or not it leads something entirely new ...

Every morning before Hubbs leaves for work, he comes back into our room to give me a kiss. (Every body altogether now, "Awww!")  Usually I go back to sleep after he leaves (since it's around 6am) and get up about 7:45am. But after a fitful & uncomfy nights sleep last night, I was wide awake. Oh, I tried to go back to sleep, but decided to get up instead of laying there frustrated that I couldn't sleep. Then I remembered the pink Morning Glories blooming on the arbor around the tall gate in the yard that I shared with you here .  (We have two yard gates, one tall, the other short).  I dressed quickly (quickly for me that is!) grabbed my camera's and went into our spare room to peak through the blinds at the top of the arbor. Sure enough I spied two small clusters of pink! So out into the beautiful, foggy, albeit it more than sticky, morning I went. Thankfully the rising sun was having a hard time burning through the dense fog, keeping the heat at bay, allow...

(Taken this morning in my garden, 'Queen Elizabeth' grandiflora (pink) & 'Love' grandiflora (red) opened as the fog lifted). Only one day before July is finished once again. I'm amazed at how quickly the year is passing by, but I'm glad Summer is getting on with itself. The heat, humidity & storms have been much to bear this year. Autumn is quickly approaching and that excites me so! Makes me a little sad as well - Summer, for me, seems endless while Autumn passes by in a flash! July 21st was a day I dreaded deeply, but glad we all got through unscathed (or so it seems). In the morning, we spread Dad's ashes where we spread my mother.in.law's 2005 then headed to his old firehouse where the fire company & family honored him. When asked to speak, the only thing I managed through my choking tears was that I love him. It was such a long day. When we walked through our front door, I was so glad to be home.   That night was the first ni...

For today's column, please click here .

For newer friends who don't know: My parents divorced when I was 6 months old in 1976 and my father died before I turned 4 years old in 1979. To say he didn't treat my mother well is an epic understatement. To say he was abusive is an epic understatement. His 'tough' city fire fighter co-workers were afraid of him. He drank heavily, another epic understatement, from a very young age and, for all intensive purposes, drank himself to death. He had his first heart attack at the age of 36. He died shortly after his 3rd heart attack at the age of 44. It was a case of Doctor Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, but Mr. Hyde was in control more often than not, whether he was sober or not. And despite everything he did to her, had she known he was lying in a FL hospital bed dying, she would have gone to see him to say goodbye. But my grandparents didn't want her to know. That's another story for another time. Grandmother eventually told my mother his ashes had been scattered in...

For my latest gardening memoir column on the #gardenchat blog , please click here . To scroll through all of my past columns, please visit the Adventures In Gardening archive, by clicking here . Hope to see you there! 

Actually, this is about one of my favorite things in our home: the mantle. Many years ago, when I was a little girl and my hometown was still a wonderful community in which all of yours needs could be met without leaving its' one square mile, one of my mothers many purchases for us from the used furniture store down by the hospital on the river was this fireplace mantle.  Back then it was more off white than yellow and the barn red insert was a faux black & white marble.  It also came with one of those light-up electric log sets that had a tiny fan which blew strips of yellow, red & orange cellophane for that "cracking fire" affect.  I loved it!  I remember lying on the livingroom floor in front of it, in the dark, watching & listening to the "fire." Fast forward to 2004.  I'm 29 and Mom decided to get rid of the mantle.  She told me if we didn't pick it up by the end of that weekend, she'd take it apart and get rid of it herself.  ...

Happy first day of Spring, friends! With having 'the Winter that wasn't' and things blooming two months ahead of time, it seems as though Spring arrived weeks ago! I wore my heavy wool coats twice this Winter. Twice. During Winter in the Northeast. My Snowdrops bloomed six weeks early so none were in bloom for St. Patrick's Day this year. (That's a first. However, my Aunt's started blooming in December!) I've seen Mountain Laurel blooming up the road. In March. March?! Allergy & brush fire seasons have also arrived here early this year. And from what I've seen on the news, Summer has surpassed both Winter & Spring in some areas, which to me is even more disturbing than our lack of Winter. Makes me weary of the warmer months to come, quite frankly, especially since our precipitation is already below normal for the year. But, I digress. Y'all know how I love my cooler weather months of the year (and snow!) and that heat & humidity make m...

A week ago today, Mom and I took a walk around the town we were both born & raised in. I've been battling an upper-respiratory infection for a couple of weeks and decided getting some fresh Autumn air would do me good, or if nothing else, get me out of the house for a bit. Why I wanted to take a walk around our hometown instead of where we're living, I don't know but I'm very glad I did. I wasn't surprised that it's changed. All places do with the passage of time and despite not having lived there since 1993, I did work in town off & on into 2003, and by then it had already changed a lot, but what a transformation it has apparently gone through in the last 8 years! Aside from my Church, grammar school and 2 shops, it literally doesn't resemble the place of my childhood & teen years, nor does it Feel like that place. As a matter of fact, I felt nothing as we walked! It's That different now. As you look at the buildings, their architecture and ...

I'm curious... Generally speaking, given the books released in let's say the last 5 years through the present & reactions to those books, do you feel that messages and experiences are taken more seriously (or given more credit) when released as nonfiction/memoir as opposed to being released as fiction? Which style of writing holds more weight for you when it comes to taking the overall theme of the book (if there is one) to heart? Are you more likely to relate to the book when it's nonfic/memoir or fiction? Regardless of your preferred genre, if Eat Pray Love had been written as fiction book, would its' impact be as far reaching as it has been being a memoir? And what if The Help has been written as a non-fiction/memoir book?

Wonderful video of Elizabeth Gilbert speaking about writing, creativity and the like. (About 20 mintues long, but well worth listening to). http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/453 The video loads automatically. If you scroll down a bit, on the right you can click on "Amy Tan on Creativity," which is laugh out loud funny and inspiring as well. Fabulous website! Thanks to Barbara from http://www.writingtime.net/ for sharing the above link with her readers! (Another case of blog borrowing!)

A freewrite written this afternoon from Holli's prompt from last week over at CoW. (The front door slams shut behind me and I'm...) The front door slams shut behind me and I'm... Out on out front porch. The air smells like fresh rain, sweet & humid. I put the laundry bag down and turn to look at the mess Mother Nature has revealed with the recent thaw, Old Man Winter's last snow melted into the dirt, and sigh. Twigs & branches in and around everything. Bits & pieces of garbage blown from the dumpsters and what "accidentally" falls out of the cars in the parking lot. More, lots more of the same in the back yard, though little garbage. Too much to ignore, though too wet & mushy to do anything about today. My mind is itching to be in Spring mode. What needs to be cleaned up, thrown out? Which pots need their paint refreshed? (All of them this year!) What's going to go where? (Veggies out front, full sun - but what else? Shade flowers out b...

My Father's Hands Large or small? Soft or rough? I don't know. They held bottle after bottle. Held a gun to my mother's head, playing russian roulette. Smashed her body, time and again. Held her back. Kept her down. Could have killed her, but that would have been too easy. Killed her spirit. Neither will kill mine.

"...Being stubborn is one of the most important keys to writing. Not giving up. Not succumbing to that voice in your head that says: Who cares? This sucks. This is too personal to write about. This is too hard to write. Why write about this stuff? Etc. etc.. ...keep going. The only way to silence that negative voice in your head is by writing your way right past it, through it, over it." ~Barbara Abercrombie, http://writingtime.net