A Good Cup of Tea....

  My last conversation with my sister Colleen was a brief call.  She was going up to her camp and asked if I wanted to come with her.  I was tired from my first day home from a trip I'd been on, and I didn't go with her.  I have often wondered if I had,  if it would have changed everything else and she would still be with us.  One of the biggest regrets of my life.   Her husband found her on the floor at camp when he arrived a few hours later.  At the hospital they discovered she'd had a tubal pregnancy and performed surgery to remove it.  Her 9-month-old daughter was with me at my parent's house.  My Mom had been at the hospital all day working (she was the nursing supervisor) and then all evening with my sister but had come home because my niece had a fever that I couldn't get down.  The phone rang right before I was going to wake her to go back in to spend the night with my Colleen.  They had found my sister on the floor with wide pupils.  She needed a CT scan an

  What book that you’ve read was life changing?   It has been my experience that people who write tend to be people who love to read.  I myself was raised by a reader and sharing books has always been part of my life.   I love to share my favorite books and have given away more copies of some books than I can even count.  I do not currently own one of my favorite books because I gave my copy away.   If I don’t know what to get someone as a gift, I always give them a book.  Family, friends, teachers, acquaintances - if you know them a little bit you can find a book.  Or ask a friend who reads and they can make suggestions.   I have many books that have altered the course of my life but for this topic if any of you don’t know this book - find it, read it, and absorb what it says.  It’s called ‘The Four Agreements’ by Don Miguel Ruiz and if you haven’t heard of it, I would be surprised.  It’s been a bestseller for over a DECADE, has sold more than 10 million books in the US alone, and bee

  WHAT IS THE MUSIC BACKDROP OF YOUR LIFE? Music for me started with this: Southie Is My Hometown I was born down on “A” Street, Raised up on “B Street, Southie  is my hometown; There is something about it, Permit me to shout it, It is tops for miles around; We have doctors and flappers, Preachers and scrappers, Men from the Old  County down ; They will take you & break you, But they’ll never forsake you; For Southie is my hometown.  I never seem to follow my first inclination of what a writing question suggests would be a good story. I truly thought that I would tell you that I love almost all music with good lyrics.  I'm Irish and grew up in Dorchester and South Boston, Massachusetts and St. Patrick's Day was more than a celebration, it was almost a sacrament.  You didn't have to know the words, but you learned them eventually.  My blog's name - A Good Cup Of Tea - is because I'm Irish... we drink a lot of it.  A good cup of tea (pronounced tae in my grandfath

  MY SPIRIT ANIMAL  I am a water girl.  Born in June, raised near the ocean.  I now live a few minutes away from my favorite beach and I found peace there.  I took a test that said dolphins are my spirit animal.  While that seems to track, I don't know that I have only one spirit animal.  I love all the animals.  I believe since we all share this big round rock in space that we are all meant to be here.   There is a very long list of animals I wish I could meet.   I love gorillas and wished that I could meet Koko - the gorilla that was taught sign language.  She passed in 2018 at 46 years old.  She loved kittens.    I have seen baby giraffes and grown ones, a white rhinoceros, a roaring lion, and the gorillas at Disney's Animal Kingdom on a behind-the-scenes safari.  We saw the elephants eating quite close by and so many other animals.  Disney is an animal steward and tries to save animals that are perishing from the earth.   At my house, I have a dog and cats.  I truly enjoy t

  12.29.2023 What if.... ?? What if I had taken the road less traveled?  What if I had pushed harder to get my Health Occupations teacher to get me hours with the veterinarian across the road from the second high school I had attended?  What if the guidance counselor at my primary high school had asked what I wanted to do and had actually looked at the classes I chose and guided me towards college as a means to launch me into the life I wanted?   Had either of those two things happened, my life would have been so vastly different.  I would have been a veterinarian, or maybe I would have found the story I wanted to write much earlier in life.   What if I told someone... anyone..  about what happened at my grandparent's house and why I locked the bathroom door and dropped the key down the air vent so no one could get in, would they still have been upset and angry?  Had I driven up to my sister's camp with her and the baby the day I came home from my trip when she asked if I wante

   Stephen King is my favorite author.  My favorite book of his is ‘ The Stand’   which is pretty ironic  because  COVID-19  made me think we would all be living this book in real time. King’s characters are drawn in such detail and from so many different angles   that I always feel I know them and relate to some so strongly  it is  as if they become my friends ,  and I miss them when the book is done.   I have often wondered what happened to them and hoped for a sequel. I would like to go home to New England with Frannie and Stu and Kojack.   I want to know what that looks like through his eyes.  So, Mr. King, if you  write it, I will come.   I hope you do. I’m sure I’m not alone.   I grew up  in New England, first the Boston area, and then in New Hampshire where our little town bordered Maine.  A lot of King’s books are set in Maine and some do some wandering  over the border to  New Hampshire as well.  As a teenager, I saw the name of the town I was living in mentioned in the pages

  I will not try to choose my best day ever.    We all have so many days that qualify for THE day.    At least I hope we all do. Instead, I want to talk about creating the best day you can have today. Every day has its challenges and its high points.   I have 17 cats in my house right now - and a dog.    Yes it is a lot.    For those of you who aren’t cat fans, it seems like way too many and it probably is but I  am not a hoarder or a breeder and I am not a fan of either.   I  am a foster for a local rescue and we ‘specialize’ in bottle babies without their Mom.    It started 11 years ago when we took in kittens that needed a place to go.  There were only 3.    One of them was neutered and started having mobility issues.    We kept him.  He’s 11 now, and we had 3 cats at the time. The others have passed on. Then we got 4 bottle babies and wanted to keep two but friends who were going to adopt the other two could not so we kept all 4 of them.   We lost a cat earlier this year from cance

Hi, I'm Cherie.  I've been blogging since MySpace in 200-- I don't remember because it was that long ago.  I have always been a writer, being blessed to be born into an Irish family who loved to sit around the table  telling stories.  When I close my eyes I can still hear my grandfather's brogue as he made me my first cup of tea with lots of milk and sugar and helped me feel part of all the stories swirling around us.  We lost him when I was 11, and he was approaching his 100th year.  I still make my tea the very same way he taught me when I was 4 or 5.   He was a very kind man and I grew up getting to know him through my aunts and my Mom's memories of how, when the depression hit and they were only allowed to buy so much food, my grandfather would spend it all buying food for the nuns and he would put it in a cloth bag and bring my Mom with him to hang it on the door, ring the bell, and leave.  They shared because someone else was in need and made due with what the

                              LOSS All of us have suffered loss in life.  We've lost our skates, our pet, the lead in the school play, a game, a job, or some thing or someone very important to us.  Grief is different for each loss that occurs because each thing means something different to you.  Losing your favorite sweater can be temporary and less important than losing your car keys.   How do you judge grief?  It must be by the gravity of loss to you.   I've lost a marriage, friends, aunts, cousins, my father, a sibling, and a child.  I didn't place these in order because one can be as bad as the next depending on the distance and the depth of the relationship.  Each loss made me someone else, not the same person I was before the loss occurred.  Some losses are so difficult and cut so deep that they re-shape you from the inside out.   My mother is the strongest woman I have ever known.  When my sister died, it dismantled her.  Losing a child is completely devastating beca