Well, hello, fellow travelers of this thing called life. Life can be many things. It can be challenging, frustrating, boring, depressing, and too long. Life can also be sweet, wonderful, fulfilling, happy, and too short. So, what makes it both ways? Of course, perspective plays a role. Perfect example. How many people have gone to Disney World? Here is every child’s fantasy, and the temper tantrums that run rampant throughout the park shows how perspective can make the best thing horrible but can also work in bad situations. I worked for 10 years for a horribly abusive person. It gave me PTSD. I would have panic attacks every time I would pass by the exit on the highway long after I stopped working there. Almost 5 years after freeing myself from her, I still have triggers that stress me out, thanks to her.

I work in an unconventional place of employment. It is not for the faint of heart. I work in a meat processing facility. We are all animal lovers. But we see a necessary job to keep our area running. We provide farmers and consumers both a valuable service. Working in a place like this is not for the faint of heart. So, to combat this, we all have twisted senses of humor. We are a family and fight, complain about, bitch at, and care about each other like any other family. I have a large group of my coworkers I have had heart-to-heart conversations with, but you would never guess it by looking at them. We are all goofballs and make each other laugh by hurling insults at each other. We make working not so bad of a thing.

With this fantastic group, I have found 2 members of this group that have been upgraded from awesome coworkers to friends. Trust me that is so rare. I have 30+ of working only had one person I worked with that I consider a friend. I have been in my new hometown for just over 2 years, and I already have 2. One moved from coworker to friend after we shared twin tragedies only two and a half months apart. We ended up with a bond that I foresee as time being unable to break. She helps me be strong when I need it, and I hope I make her laugh when she needs it. I would have had a much harder time this last year without her.

The other friend, I must admit, is a total anomaly. Like myself, she is a strong woman. And I mean this in multiple weights. I have seen her load a pallet of 50+ pound boxes in record time, and she is the rock of her family. Like myself, she is a hard worker and knows her shit. We also have a very low tolerance for people that screw up due to negligence. Now both of us forgive simple errors; we all make them but expect so much from ourselves we don’t understand how others don’t. Being an alpha female generally doesn’t make for a good friendship. It is just my experience, so please remember your results may vary. However, sometimes, strong women find themselves a kindred spirit. We know we aren’t perfect, but we know we work our tailfeathers off to achieve what we perceive as perfection. We know this is impossible, but we still aim to achieve this.

There is nothing I can imagine I wouldn’t do for either of these strong women, and I feel safer knowing they would be there for me if I needed them. Cheers to the strong women in our lives. Without them, the world would be a much colder place.

I have always been an animal lover. And not only an animal lover, a lover of the underdog animal. I grew up with the best dog, Buffy. She was a black mutt with a lot of German Shephard. Buffy was well-behaved, a simple down to earth dog. I would take her on walks as a teenager, where we bonded, and she allowed me to get out of the house to exercise and have a cigarette or two.

After moving out of my parent’s home and with my new husband halfway across the country, I wanted a cat more than anything. I love dogs, but I had always wanted a cat and never had one. Within 2 weeks, my husband had located a cat needing adoption. When I had a surprise knock at the door, I was greeted by Ebony, a chocolate point Siamese. When the owners saw how much I already loved this cat I had just met, they offered her brother, Prince, a seal point Siamese. I had Prince for just 10 years when he died of massive kidney failure. His sister, Ebony, lived until she was 17. I have since 2 adopted more and more cats. I have discovered that 3 is the perfect amount for me to love and still be able to spoil each cat. When I go to the shelter to get another cat, I always ask for the oldest and the one that has been in the shelter the longest. I have adopted a thirteen-year-old, an 11-year-old, and a 16-year-old cat, along with a few younger ones that needed homes for different reasons.

When I moved up to New Hampshire, the pandemic left so many shelters empty that it overjoyed my heart. But when I was down to just 1 cat due to losing one to mammary cancer and another suddenly from a heart attack, I decided to adopt 2 barn cats. The kittens were born in March, and I adopted them at the beginning of May. I ended up with the kitten, who waited patiently for me to notice him, Skittles. He is a lover, loving to climb up on everyone and be loved. He also knows how to climb curtains, unfortunately. I also adopted a cat I had dreamed of since I was a small child. Not only a black cat but the runt of the liter. This cat was given the name “Adley.”

Now, to the purpose of the title. Once I adopted Adley, things about black cats became obvious. If she is asleep, there is no such thing as a quick cute pic. I have to find perfect lighting and angles so you can tell which end is which. I joined a few black cat lovers’ Facebook groups with titles like “Mini Panthers and their Parents” or “In appreciation of black cats.” One thing that was common with all the groups was memes about talking to your cat and finding out you are actually talking to a shirt that fell out of the hamper, a blanket on your bed, or various other things. Now, to let you in on a little secret about me, I am clumsy. Not normal clumsy either. I have a plate and screws in my leg from missing one step. I have scars from accidents and have been told I say “Ow” more than any other sound. However, with a black cat, I have to watch my feet so much to keep from stepping on her; when I am at work, I am now walking into things as I am used to watching for her.

What is your experience with black cats? Or have you had other pets that seem hell-bent on your destruction, even unwittingly? Please tell me all about it on my Facebook page in the comments. Everyone loves pet stories!!! At least the best kinda people.

Til next week!!!

When I started my blog, I wanted to show all sides of my personality. So, it will be something funny or profound for you, my dear reader. No in-between. How about that for a kick in the pants. Especially if you are discovering this blog after hundreds are written. You are in for quite a ride.

The title of this blog is no error. I intentionally named it “-.” Some may have figured this out, some may have known from the beginning, and others are still unsure. Let me go back a bit, so this all makes sense, and to allow my creative flourish that makes this blog so popular.*

*Future projection only

My family went through a double tragedy in the first week of April 2022. In less than one week, we lost the youngest and the oldest person our family has lost in my lifetime. We spent the second week of April with viewings and funerals, one expected, one we couldn’t have foreseen 3 minutes before her life was taken. 75 years separated the two agewise. One was the first of her generation to be lost, and the other was the last member of her generation. Both taught me so much about myself, about how you never know what life has in store for us. My grandmother, affectionately known as Granny, did not have an easy life, but she still made it her own. She was a tough broad who I loved to brag about how she loved to craft, smoke cigarettes, and watch sports, especially baseball, and football, but she also enjoyed watching golf. She was a role model, and I took a lot of wisdom from her and her life.

My niece, who was just 16 when her life ended, was the victim of modern times and an improperly placed stop sign. The life lesson I learned from her was to no longer fear death. It will happen to all of us; most of us have no idea when it will happen, so just enjoy the ride because we don’t know how short it will be. We all have a mark to make on this world and an unknown time to make that mark. As I find myself concentrating more and more on my writing, my goal is twofold. In those final moments, I don’t want to regret the dreams I never pursued, and I want to make sure I did something with the life that some didn’t experience, and others didn’t enjoy.

Hello All. This week, made 33 years since I met my ex-husband on a date with his best friend. Well, let me start at the beginning.

Picture it. July 1989. I had just turned 16, and through a network of friends spread throughout Baltimore City and County, I had numerous acquaintances I had never met or met only once. This was before the days of social media and the internet, so you spent your life talking not only to your friends on the phone but to their friends in the room. And that is where I met George (not his real name.) George came on the phone once, and our connection was immediate. We would talk for hours at the weirdest times, as George and I had crazy parents that seemed to ground us at the slightest thing. We would sometimes go months without speaking, and suddenly, we got to talk for a few days. We even sent each other a letter once, using an old trick we teenagers used in the 80’s. We put our address as both the deliver to address and the return address, and that way, it would get returned for insufficient postage without asking your parents for a stamp.

All these months later, we finally found a time when neither of us was grounded and had our first date, February 24, 1990. George didn’t have his license yet, so he said he, his best friend Ralph, and Ralph’s girlfriend’s mother would be picking me up. When I opened the door that night, two teenage males were there to pick me up. One was handsome, and the other was a bit goofy looking. The goofy-looking one interested himself as George, and I was like, great. However, in the car, I could tell by voice that the handsome one was George. Imagine my relief as we headed to the mall to hang out all night.

Fast forward 8 months later, and I break up with George for another boy at a new school. Typical teenage crap. I am not proud of that, as I broke George’s heart, but it was part of my life’s journey. Almost a year later, life circumstances led me to some hard times, and George and I started to hang out. As did Ralph and me. Ralph began wooing me in a way I had never had before. Shortly after I turned 18, he asked me to move in with him to take me away from some tough times I was experiencing. I agreed and moved in with Ralph during my senior year of high school. Ralph and I were married during my senior year and stayed that way for almost 13 years. During this time, Ralph joined the Army, and we were able to travel to Missouri, Germany, and finally, Oklahoma. When we split, Ralph met the one he was supposed to be with; I was merely a placeholder for him.

There was a long time that led to some bitterness. I gave up all my dreams to be an Army wife and supported him. But as the years went by, I enjoyed my independence and freedom. Sometimes I wish I was with someone and missed just being married. And then one lousy date would relieve me of those feelings. Then I met my wife.

My ex-husband and I are still Facebook friends, and I miss all the goofiness we used to share when we were friends when I was 16 & 17. That doesn’t mean I wish they were back. I am happy for Ralph. He has a wife he has been with longer than we were together, they each have one kid they brought into the relationship and then had 2 together. Ralph appears to have his dream house on a lake, and his wife is a successful insurance agent.

I have moved 6 hours away from the life I knew in Baltimore and live in a town of 800 in the Upper Valley of New Hampshire. I live in a house everyone knows from the family we bought the house from, who lived here for over 70 years. They had 6 kids, and I have met all the boys and 1 of the girls. I live 2 doors from a library, have a fantastic neighbor on one side, no neighbor on the other, and have mountains surrounding me. I work as an Office Manager and have gotten to know many locals. Except for missing my wife, who is away from home with her job waaaaaaay too much, I have the life I had dreamed of. The anniversary of meeting 2 men that forever changed my life doesn’t stick out to me every year. In fact, I usually don’t remember the date until a month or so later. However, for some years, the date just sticks out to me. Not sure about the difference between some years, but this is the first year I remembered on the date. Thank you, George & Ralph; not your real names, but I am sure you will know who you are.

Hello my fellow Women of Fabulousness! So, as I spoke to work friends about how much I had to do at home and how I just didn’t have the energy. That night when I went home to watch TV and check out Facebook, I was flooded with ads for apps about procrastination. So, the more I read about the websites and apps I can purchase, they all seem to be talking to me. “Are you a perfectionist?”, “Have you been putting off projects for months, even years, and these tasks generally take small blocks of time?”, “Do you feel lazy even though you don’t really think you are?” Well, these lines screamed out to me like a beacon. I looked over a few and before my sanity overtook my need to be cured, I signed up and prepaid for a year of an app. Trust me, I am shaking my head as I type this. I mean, do they realize that the people that suffer from things such as anxiety, OCD, procrastination, perfectionism, etc., will pay for this and then never look at it? Of course they do. So the site I chose has challenges and one of the challenges is consistent bedtimes for 2 weeks. I thought that sounded fabulous as I wanted to be able to enjoy my time awake and not have to do constant math beginning at p.m. regarding how much sleep can I get, how much I need, and can I make it through my next workday if I am tired from staying up too late. I was doing very well with this and even incorporated a consistent wake up time for 2 weeks also. Now, before I get too ahead of myself, let me tell you my schedule now. I get up at 5 am, leave for work at 7:52, work, come home around 5-5:30, go to bed at 9, turn off the phone by 9:30, and start the whole thing the next day. Before I leave for work, I generally do school work, as structure keeps me awake in the morning. So, for one day, I forgot to mark on my little calendar on the app that I had stuck to the routine one night. Now it is showing that I failed my first attempt. What in the actual heck? I mean, this is an app that is supposed to encourage me and now it makes me feel defeated even when I have accomplished my goal. I am sticking with the schedule just to see if it has long term effects. So far, I am sleeping very deeply. Waking up knowing I cannot decide if I should go back to sleep is a great relief in the morning. But now I am seeing this more as a metaphor for women. I mean, we accomplish so much. We take care of our families, we work, whether inside the home or outside, we are the anchor in our homes, and no one notices until something isn’t done. Even those of us that are single, even we don’t give ourselves a break. So, what is a fabulous female to do? First of all, let’s all agree to give ourselves a break. Men have this ability inherently. I am not bashing men or saying one sex is superior. I am saying that our minds are mapped a bit differently. Not better, not worse, simply different. Men do not second guess their decisions anywhere near as much as women. Women feel like the weight of the world is on their shoulders. We never seem to let up on ourselves or give ourselves a break. We aren’t perfect, nor should we strive to be. We need to strive for happiness in a way that both benefits ourselves, our family, and if possible, society. Society can be just a neighbor, a store clerk, your town, country, or all of humanity. No one knows your strengths and interests better than you do so why are we constantly measuring ourselves against others? This needs to stop. For our own sanity. And the sanity for our daughters, nieces, and other young females looking up to us. And the marvelous thing about this? The young men in our and our young females’ lives will know that females are to be respected and cherished.

Hello, my faithful,

As I start writing this week’s blog, I find it amusing. I mean, after all, this site isn’t live. Yet…… But, my dear reader, I knew the day would come when you would be itching to read anything I write. Or at least, in my fantasies.

I will be 50 in June. I remember growing up, and 30 sounded so incredibly old; I never wanted to reach that milestone. 10 years go by, and 40 separates the young and old. 50 means I get AARP sent to my home. Woohoo. But there is so much more to this.

I moved away from home 2 months after I graduated high school. I moved from Baltimore, MD, to Ft Leonard Wood, MO. This was in 1992. No internet, no social media. I lost touch with all but 1 of my friends throughout the ’90s. Sadly, that last friendship ended in 2008. Not with a bang but with the slow closing of a door. Although I went out of my way to nurture the company, sometimes things run out of our control.

When female friendships end like that, it causes pain like a romantic friendship. This was a friend I met on my first day of high school, and I always considered her my all-time best friend. I had even known her husband for longer, as I had known him since I was 6 from church. I have other friendships that lasted a few years and ended when the person no longer had a use for me, such as they were in a relationship or I was no longer worth the time to reach out to. Some of these I know will never be friends again, and others I call friendships on hold. Whenever my friends from various points in my life want to be my friend again, I welcome them with open arms.

Then there are the true friends. Not family friends, or even friends of my family. But true friends. They are mine; I met them, found things in common, and both sides worked on the friendship equally. I am very blessed to have 2 of these friends.

The friend I have had the longest is Kelly. I have known her since 7th grade. We went over 25 years without contact due to circumstances such as different high schools and different paths our lives had taken us. We still wouldn’t have been reconnected if it wasn’t for a chance encounter on a website about grave markers. Now, she and her husband and son are our closest friends. We don’t get to see each other often, as we live about 8 hours away, but we think of each other all the time and shoot over little hellos in various ways, such as sharing Facebook posts. These are the kinds of friendships that put your faith in humanity, and some people enter your life not with a bang but more like a scar. You remember them throughout the years, have nothing but fondness for them, and then one day, they reappear bright and bold, and you carry them eternally.

My closest local friend is Tara. What started out as my boss quickly became my most intimate friend after we had similar, life-altering tragedies less than 3 months apart. We were each someone the other could talk to, and that understood what the rest of the world was afraid to ask. We cried together, laughed together, and shared our hopes for the loved ones we lost so suddenly. We have had the unique ability to open up in ways that feel so safe together that I call us the Grief Gals. As my spouse is away 90% of the time with work, Tara gives the best hugs next to them. Maybe it is her always being a Mama Bear, maybe because of our connection, but her hugs make the jagged edges of my heart seem to go back together again.

One day, I may tell you about my family friends and my friends that are also family. If, dear reader, that would be something that would interest you.

Until next week!!!!

Everyone I knew growing up, I have made friends with in my travels, and everyone I work with that falls under the GenX category has clinical anxiety. Some of us don’t go for treatments, as we are hard chiseled from being latchkey kids, babysitters for younger siblings since we were too young to be on our own, and for us that were the oldest, in charge of things such as cleaning, cooking, and taking care of younger siblings. We were the generation that was the bridge from mothers staying at home with their families to families with both parents working. In elementary school, in the late 70s to early ’80s, I was jealous of the kids that went to after-school programs. There were 2 that the other students talked of. One was a single woman on the street the school was on that watched about half a dozen kids. The other was a day car that had a green school bus. It had an incredible front yard with old-school wood and metal play equipment. In a school of 360+, one school bus, not even halfway full, was all that was needed to take the few kids needing daycare to their program after school.

A few years ago, I worked as an office manager at the home office of a small chain of daycare centers, four strong. Whereas forty years earlier, there was only a hand full of kids needing daycare, we coordinated with the town’s school buses and had kids dropped directly off at our centers. Some buses were full of our kids. Such a difference. And such a massive difference in what these daycare centers offer. It is a wonderland for the kids to look forward to.

As GenXers get older, we realize how we were the forefathers of this movement, where kids are allowed to have fun with many different activities to keep them occupied. And what has become of us GenXers? While we were responsible for keeping our families together as children, that role hasn’t changed as adults. We are now the ushers of these kids. Although I slowly watch the friends I grew up with, one by one, first having babies and now having grandkids, we still support the whole family. This is what leads to anxiety for us. We feel guilty taking time just for us. And as we are either in our 50s or fast approaching that milestone, we find we don’t know how to relax. We feel, rightfully so for many of us, that we are the bones of the family, and if we don’t constantly support our family and loved ones, it will all collapse. We carry the weight of our parents, our generation, and the ages after us all on our shoulders. So what can we do about it? Well, here is the sticky wicket. Anxiety leads to procrastination.

Procrastination is like an illness. You don’t want to feel this way but you must ride it out. After years of baby boomer parents and teachers calling us lazy for leaving unpleasant tasks til the last possible second, we believe it, at least on some psychological level. And yet, everyone procrastinates. Why else would there be so many saying about procrastination? While GenX was growing up, anything less than perfection was not good enough, at least for a lot of us, either from home or from school, or a combination of both. These parents and teachers lived through wars, overcrowding due to the baby boom, and an explosion of change in the world. They thought they were doing best, just as our generation thinks we have done best with the next generation. Hopefully, we will be correct.

So, why exactly is a writer talking about anxiety? Well, pressure leads to procrastination, which leads to feeling lazy and just not getting what we want to accomplish, whether it is cleaning out a closet, putting up a new picture, setting up a budget, or in my case, writing.

I wrote about my novel, currently under construction, in my first blog post. I haven’t written more due to procrastination. When you have a passion, hours melt away once you get involved with it. I have lost many hours in the pursuit of the written word. As I get older, I hate to lose one day of my weekend. I am unsure if it is because I need as much rest as possible to get through 5 days or if I am tired from the years of carrying so much weight on my back. In the end, I guess it doesn’t matter.

So I am making the commitment to you, dear reader, that at least once a week, I will blog to you, let you know where I am on my journey, and maybe give you more insights into the solitary and not-so-solitary life of a writer. And to my GenX family, we are all family; we all have each other’s back, and damn, I miss my big hair!

Throughout my life, I have loved books. From the time I could pick a toy out of a toy box, books was my favorite toy. Even that young, I knew the power and the magic that the written word brought to the world. When I was 7, my mother introduced me to chapter books, the first being “Tales of the Fourth Grade Nothing.” by Judy Blume. I felt like in an instant, I had the secrets of the world at my fingertips. I loved reading so much, I wondered if there was joy on the other side of the work, in the creation. Throughout school, my favorite companion was always a spiral notebook where I could write whatever book was going through my head at the moment. To this day, opening a brand new spiral notebook still gives me a giddyness of the possibilities of the pages.

I married in high school at 18 to a man that was leaving for basic training in the Army the next month. It was to a man I had known for a couple of years and was only a year older than me and we started a 13 year journey together, traveling to Missouri, Germany, and finally Oklahoma. Oklahoma was the last stop for us as a couple and I moved back to my hometown, even renting an apartment only 5 blocks from the house I grew up in. Throughout the marriage and my new singledom, I was a huge fan of true crime. I read my first true crime book, “The Wood Chipper Murder,” and was immediately hooked. Once I started college in 93, I was a psychology and criminal justice major. I loved not only reading about the true crime, I wanted to know what drove people to commit such henious acts against each other. Due to military moves, my education stopped after three years, in 1996.

After 13 years of the single life, and the realization that I met my wife. My wife travels every year to two years for work and that was how we met. She had just moved barely within my search parameters on a popular dating site. From the first conversation, there was never anyone else for either one of us. When, during a work trip, I saw a sign for a remote college offering not only BA’s in Creative Writing, but also MFA’s in Creative Writing, I jumped at the chance. I knew I was but a mound of clay that needed an artist to help me become the vessel that allows writing to flow from my fingertips. That is what brings us here.

On long road trips, I let my mind wander and occassionally, I hit gold. That is what happened during an eight hour trip at Christmas time 2021, where my idea hit me. This idea is now a planned book series, entitiled “Avenging Angies.” The series name is a play on the term, Avenging Angels, but has the same spirit in the words. In the first book, subtitled “Angie’s Story,” we meet Mia, a loner, living with her cat Khalua, when she gets a mysterious voice mail from her college roommate, Angie, who she hasn’t seen or spoke to since shortly after college graduation. Angie asks Mia to travel back to Delaware, retrieve a letter she has written, and has given her no further details. Mia does as asked, as Angie helped her through a trauma during college. When Mia goes to retrieve the letter, she learns that Angie has perished. When Mia opens and reads the letter, her solitary life is forever changed and Mia is willing to sacrifice her body and her sanity to make sure that Angie’s death was not in vain and that the person resposible pays, no matterr how law enforecement thinks this is a closed case. Throughout her journey, she is assisted in various ways by three equally strong women, Detective Grace Joilliette, Sister Mary Louise, and Gina, a house cleaner turned friend that not only keeps her house and cat safe, also keeps Mia’s sanity safe.

This year, I will be turning 50. I remember my grandmother turning 50 and it makes me realize just how old I am. Time is a thief, it sneaks away the preciousness of life, abd when someone is taken from us too young, especially at someone’s hands, we want to take action. This series I hope will be an empowering book for females. Although most of the men in the pages of this series will be deranged men who love to be superior to the women in their life, this is only a small percentage of men in the world. Unfortunately the evil among them tend to outshadow the good.

I hope you will come back and learn more about me, my writing process, and the interesting turns in the book. And there will be samples to entice you even more.

Jessie