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"Lemon, I cannot marry you. Not when a part of me is in love with someone else." George to Lemon in Hart of Dixie , The Big Day episode. (yes, I watch this show even though I'm not sure why. It's not my usual choice for entertainment, but, oh well.) I can't get this line out of my mind. In part because for some reason I kept falling asleep during this episode and awaking just at this point, so I kept rewinding and watching the last half of the episode again. But it's more than the repetition... There's something about how unrealistic it sounds. It's a very romantic notion. It makes good fiction, but can real life be that clear? Every time we love, we give a little piece of ourselves to the one we love. In return, we generally get a little piece of that person. When a relationship ends, often the love transforms to either hate or indifference, but it was love once. In love lives hope. In hope lives the willingness to compromise, to sacrifice, and t...

Life takes us where we need to go, or so people say. People tell us to accept where we're at in order to get where we're supposed to be. I want desperately to believe that because if it's true the mistake I made many years ago that changed not only my life but the lives of several people I loved wasn't a mistake. It was simply life taking me where I needed to go to find my way to where I belong. Yet... When I think about it, I can't help but wonder so many things. If I'd made that other choice, the one I really wanted but didn't think I deserved, would life be better? Not just mine but that of all those involved. I was so sure of things then. I never second-guessed my decisions - okay, maybe never is an overstatement. Instead, I acted and let things fall where they fell. The other night as I chatted in the warm night air of Louisville, Kentucky with my friend, KP, I couldn't help but revisit my past decisions. We talked about our lives in the years...

I brought my mini with me on my trip to Kentucky with the best of intentions... I planned to blog while here and to write reviews as I went. So much for intentions. I'm sitting at my friend, Kelly's house, and now I realize that didn't quite work out. This is the first time I've had a chance to work on either of my blogs since I left for Kentucky. Kelly and I are sitting here acting like we did in college. Working a little on our projects, chatting a little, and just generally being together. Funny how that works. You find yourself comfortable with someone and old patterns resume without a single thought. Conversation, work, and respect for one another's process and goals fall into place easily when two people know one another well. With friends like that it's easy to keep track of one's intentions and not feel guilty about pursuing those intentions. It can be easy to let work slide, to let goals slide, to let routines slide while travelling, visiting,...

I'm a strong advocate for women's self-empowerment.Women should embrace life and invite pleasure into their lives. Women should never cower in the corner or give over their power to another human being, male or female. In the name of women's empowerment, I recently read a book called Mama Gena's School of Womanly Arts : Using the Power of Pleasure to Have Your Way with the World . It was a fun and interesting read, but I didn't find it particularly eye-opening. I am a Southern girl. I know all there is to know about flirting. I know how to be the most angelic bitch or the bitchiest angel or everything on the scale between. I know more than a little about the art of manipulation. And, this is where the rub begins for me. I hate, hate, hate it when anyone tells me that for a man to treat a woman like she deserves to be treated, she has to manipulate him into doing so. I'm sorry, but, if that's true, then sign me up for the other team right now. Okay, not r...

I arranged my poems for a third book of poetry at the same time I created the two books I published last Autumn, and I hated the arrangement. I found ways to avoid thinking about it, working on it, even acknowledging it existed. Love in Silhouette: Poems and Reflections in Silhouette: Poems , the first two books of poetry I arranged spoke to me, but the third one felt like leftovers. No one loves leftovers. That's why they tend to linger in the refrigerator until weforce ourselves to eat them so as to not be wasteful or just throw them away because they're spoiled. Okay, someone is sure to say "What about chili? It's always better the second day." I will concede the point by being cliche. Chili is the exception that proves the rule. But as a general rule, leftovers aren't something we look forward to. The longer I thought about that book of poetry, the more I realized I couldn't publish leftovers. I went back to the beginning and started looking throu...

Time alone is not something to celebrate.... Putting in the time doesn't equate to quality of life or happiness. Time is simply time, the passing of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decade, centuries... I've only recently come to realize this. I've always, like most people, celebrated making it through another whatever, but making it through isn't much to celebrate in most instances. Time matters, but only if it is productive. Productive means different things given different situations. What I consider productive for my writing career isn't the same thing I consider productive for my relationships. I've been thinking about time a lot lately. I've dedicated a lot of time to a lot of things that haven't necessarily been productive for the goals I've set, but they've kept me busy and given me a way to avoid things I didn't want to face. There are a lot of demands on the time we have, but time spent is not necessarily t...

So you think when you call me a bitch, I'm going to curl up and cry for forgiveness? Yeah, right. Think again! As far back as I can remember I've been proud to be called a bitch. I realized early on that most of the time, this "insult" is hurled to make a woman back down when she stands up for herself or otherwise exhibits her strength and/or independence. I felt this way well before someone sent me one of those email chain jokes in the 1990s that defined bitch as a Babe In Total Control of Herself though I did love that email because it fit so well with what I already believed. There is something to that if you think about it. Women who are considered bitches are usually strong, independent, and outspoken. They are often successful or at the very least confident in their achievements. So I've never been one to shrink away from the label though that probably lead to me hearing it that much more often. I'm not encouraging people to lob the word at others by m...