A Good Cup of Tea....

  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 ho...

   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  N...

  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 ...

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 mad...

                              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...

Have you ever been at a crossroads in your life, easing onto the new path to check out the flora and fauna down this way, seeing new wildlife and following leaves down a stream for so long that at some point you look up and find yourself looking back and wondering how you got here?  This is where I find myself today - looking up and realizing that while I have enjoyed meandering for awhile, I see sunlight ahead and I want to move forward towards a place where I can meet up with my friends, stretch out, and see more of the world.  This is the place to do that. In July I attended Tony Robbins' Unleash the Power Within, and spent 4 amazing days with 6000 other people overcoming our fears and transforming our lives.  You may have read about this event in San Jose, or seen it on the news.  It was said that 21 people were hospitalized with severe burns.  They were not - and this was later retracted.  Out of 6000 people, 21 people were treated for minor burns - ...

Oh my, it's been such a long while since I've sat here on Saturday morning, reading posts, and reaching inside to find out what I have to say that needs sharing.  For some reason this week's topic, Do-Over, struck a chord and today, I want to talk about worms.  Hahaha... I am sensing a lot of double-takes and re-reads will happen with that.  Let me explain.  I live in a town that is fairly serious about recycle, reduce, reuse.  We have a town ordinance against Styrofoam which ever biodegrades.  Please think about that the next time you stop at a coffee place and receive a Styrofoam cup, or take away food in leftovers in one of those containers.  It is much more inexpensive to bring your own reusable container, as well as less damaging to your environment. My friend, Tanya, embarked on a school project in October with her children to help their school recycle more.  What started as a wish to make sure each class had a recycling bin in it, bec...

Monday night while trick or treating my 8-year-old has asked me not to hold his hand.  There were a lot of kids from school around and, unconsciously, as we walked down the street I had automatically reached out to keep him close. He said he wasn’t a little kid, and I didn’t need to hold onto him.  I think all you parents will understand when I tell you that it broke my heart a little. This is not the first or last time that will happen while watching him grow, it has been a series of steps and leaps and bounds he has made since last June - some so huge that friends and family who haven’t seen him in more than a week or two remark to me how different he is, how he’s grown and changed.   As a parent, you celebrate your children’s successes, and this independence is a huge accomplishment for him because when he was in kindergarten, my son suffered trauma at a daycare center.  For about 6 weeks, two older boys hurt him on a daily basis.   It has ...

When I saw this week's topic, I had two different thoughts about the prompt which I thought were separate, and as it turned out were very similar. I have been participating in Oprah's Lifeclass on OWN.  (Talk about branding yourself!)  The first class talked about ego, and how it got in the way of our true selves. It resonated with me because I am a firm believer that you must own yourself.  You must take ownership of your thoughts, your actions, your choices.  You must live your life learning who you are, and what lessons are brought to you.  If you find something repeating in your life, you can be sure it will continue to repeat until you learn the lesson.  At the end of the day, we only truly have ourselves.  No matter our relationships, our families, our friends and supporters.  We only have ourselves.  I also truly believe that we cannot own another living being.  Not our husbands, wives, partners, girlfriends, boyfriends, frien...

*** My thanks go out to Brenda, Joyce and Beth because in reading their posts on this topic, they invited this one!! When I was a little girl, I lived in a closet for months and no one seemed to mind.  I was the 5th of 6 children, so space of my own was hard to come by.  I shared a room with my sister, Nancy, on the 3rd floor of our house that had a large closet built into the eaves.  It was large enough to hold my twin bed and I could sleep looking out. I’m not sure if I wanted to live in there because it it was my own place, or if it is my nature to seek time alone. I was born in June, a Cancer - sign of the crab.  The crab retreats inside itself when threatened, and will only come out when it is ready. I embody this trait.  Being alone though, I never feel lonely as I can entertain myself quite well with books, music, and my own imagination.  I have created a safe haven inside myself, which I believe we all need to do to get through our days...