My writing muscle is a bit weak these days. Much like working out my abs or, God-forbid my butt, it’s a use-it-or-lose it scenario. I have found that the less I write, the less I am able to get words out of my head in a conversation, much less tap them out on a keyboard. How does this make sense?

Time is such an illusion. Revisiting memories feels like yesterday but forever at the same time. It’s sad when you can’t pick your babies up anymore. Or hold their hand.

Judge if you must, but what I learned from this unplanned experiment has changed my perspective on a lot of things. First of all, if you really know me, you might be thinking, “This really isn’t that much of a stretch, she wears black all the time.”  TRUE. However, I have never repeated the same outfit every day for a month. As for my favorite color, a few years ago I saw a meme that read, “I’ll stop wearing black when they make a darker color.”  I seriously wanted to hunt down the person who wrote it, because I was convinced, we had been separated at birth. 

A few years back, I was in a bookstore and stumbled upon a book called The Birth Order Book: Why You Are the Way you Are by Dr. Kevin Lehman. I read this book cover to cover in one flight from Phoenix to Columbus, Ohio and concluded that Lehman was a genius. But then again, I was always looking for some kind of reason or justification as to why I was different from my sister, or anyone else in my family for that matter, and Lehman helped prove my case.

I have always been one who's up for a challenge.  I mean, any kind of challenge, really.  So, when I first heard about Twitter in 2008, I was very intrigued by this new kid on the block, this two-year-old "toddler of technology" at the time. How hard can it be, I thought.

It doesn't take long to begin to decipher what your newborn baby's cries mean. Lamb-like quivering cries mean, "I'm hungry." Sudden red-faced squawking means, "My diaper's wet." Relentless screaming with tight fists means, "My tummy hurts." Thankfully, as babies grow, it becomes much easier to understand the messages. Cries are replaced by noises, sounds, reaching for objects and food, and then eventually -- words.

Tuesday and Wednesday were really the pits - lower than low and I don’t know why. It’s been 27 days now and it seems like yesterday.  Maybe there are just too many unknowns, maybe because of not having closure with his death certificate, or maybe just because I am lonely. 

Recently I had to take a trip to the emergency room because of a nasty reaction to a horrible "black box" antibiotic that is typically used for things like exposure to Anthrax. I was thinking my doctor was trying to kill me. I thought I was dying when this all started, so two of my daughters dragged me to the car and drove me to the ER which turned out to be one of the craziest situations that I have ever experienced.

It's been a while since I've sold a home, but my house has been on the market for the last six months. This is not good. I was so hopeful at the beginning too, when the realtor's "sign guy" pounded my sign into the ground at 5:00 a.m. one Saturday in October and my dogs barked their faces off. The next day, like a good "Cafeteria Catholic," I buried my St. Joseph statue beside the signpost while reciting my "happy home seller" prayer, urging the little guy to do his job.

It’s Thanksgiving again.  But, how?  I say that every year as the holidays roll around, staring at the tiny calendar numbers on my phone in disbelief. Where did the year go? Heck, where did my life go?

I’ve always been a big believer in the power of the love and the moon, and the goodness of humankind. The order of the three of these tends to shift around, depending on what’s going on in life or in my heart at the time.

There’s something about fall that’s undeniable.  But it’s much more than the change of seasons, the shorter days, and all the pumpkin spice.  The equinox and the harvest moon usher in an internal “knowing,” as if on a symbolic level, this is the time to harvest what we've been tending to over the seasons in our lives, whether several months or even years.