Viewing: My World and Welcome to It
January 13, 2020
Fresh Air
This is our new house. We have spent the past three months working towards buying it, and our effort bore fruit last week when we closed escrow. I’m getting the keys tomorrow. This 1880 Queen Anne is a former duplex, waiting to be renovated back into one big home. We’re just the suckers for such a job. As the sellers were packing up, they told our real estate agent that it used to be a brothel. A BROTHEL. Where else…
Posted in family, House, MondayBlogs, My World and Welcome to It, writing | By Julia
November 16, 2015
Slingshot: This Is Not Where I’m Supposed to Be
I waken at about 1 a.m. and stare at the wall, trying not to look at the clock, its white number so stark, so painfully truthful. It’s past midnight. Hours loom before me. You’re not asleep. This is not your house. This is not your bed. Those are not your children down the hall. There are no children down the hall. No sighs, no whimpers, no calls for a sip of water. The girls are in their own beds,…
Posted in family, kids, memoir, MondayBlogs, My World and Welcome to It, Wedlock, writing | By Julia
October 5, 2015
Fill Your Paper…
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. –William Wordsworth When I sit to write my blog, I am like the slot machine that comes up with one lemon, one X and one banana peel. It takes a few pulls to get gold. As I sat late this Sunday evening to write the elusive *something* I wanted to write, I saw the clipped-out graphic with those words from the aptly named Wordsworth. So, to follow my own instructions, here…
Posted in My World and Welcome to It, rants, work, writing | By Julia
September 17, 2015
Home at the Edge of the World: Alameda Poet Laureate Inaugural Poem
Home at the Edge of the World Alameda Poet Laureate Inaugural Poem There are houses down your shaded streets – beneath your oaks, your ginkos, your avenues of palm – Leaded in glass, shingled in fish-scale, spangled with gingerbread, Victorian ladies tarted up for Carnival, their history and lore curving like a staircase into view. Gentlemen strolled in spats, ladies swung their parasols, bay breezes curling with fog and the clank of halyards, snapping flags. Water, at every turn, glittering…
Posted in My World and Welcome to It, Poet Laureate, poetry, water, writing | By Julia
August 16, 2015
I Get Anxious
My husband says I’m a delicate flower, and while, yeah, that’s true, it’s not all that’s true. I have anxiety. I have PTSD. I have issues. This is not a case of disease-or-malady-of-the-week, a la celiac wannabees, or whatever Madison Avenue tells us this month is wrong with us (You need oat bran! You need Vitamin E! You need aloe!). I really, really get anxious. I take a little pill each morning which cuts out the crazy part of anxiety…
Posted in My World and Welcome to It, random, tea, work, writing | By Julia