Patchwork Prose and Verse
Weekend Breakfast
warm cinnamon toast
with peppercorn-scrambled eggs
cold mornings call for
piping hot coffee
in a gingerbread man mug
(a gift from a friend)
on a paper plate
to make cleanup a breeze
in case the pipes freeze
I drowned a little ladybug not knowing what I’d done
she was crawling on my cup ledge, this little lonesome one
her friends were on the ceiling
gathered all up there
when I woke up to take my meds, sleep still in my eyes
I saw her swirling ’round the drain, headed for demise
……oops
Mo Daley of Illinois introduced the X Marks the Spot poem in one of our monthly Open Writes through Ethicalela.com. To write one, find any page of print and make an X from corner to corner or across any part, then list the words the X touches. Using one, a couple, a few, some, most, or all of those words, write a poem. I chose a recent essay by humorist David Sedaris, “And Your Little Dog, Too,” for my X and used chained haiku for the form.
Here are the words I listed:
unconscious hole bent sells past shout seemingly walking foot mountain addicted leg snarling registered recreational pushed realized obnoxiously illicit downtown
Aha Moment
walking downtown past
addicted Christmas shoppers
who obnoxiously
pushed through seemingly
illicit mountains of junk
I realized it ~
we’re too hell-bent on
recreational spending
to give homespun gifts
If anyone ever thought I was slow to forgive, they might be right. But it happens, eventually, and I suppose that is what matters. First, I have to do the work of the mind and heart ~ relive the moments, do the playbook thing where I see all the coulda, shoulda, wouldas ~ and figure out where things stand going forward. Next, I have to pray it out. It may take awhile, but eventually, forgiveness happens. I’m convinced that every single forgiveness is on the heels of some kind of grief – grief over loss of something or someone, whether it’s trust or love or life itself. That’s just the kind of thinking I do when I see a light come on at 2:47 a.m. and hear the flush of a toilet. Because toilets make me think of all the crap, and the flush makes me think of forgiveness. Today’s poem as part of The Stafford Challenge is a list poem of things forgiven along the way.
A 3 a.m. Forgiveness List Poem Because I Couldn’t Sleep
*for those dishes she’d have wanted me to have
*for that jewelry box haunting
*for that remorseless tractor
*for that church drama walkout
*for the abandonment
*for all that vamoosing and skedaddling with so much business left undone
*for that texting tailgating fender bender boy the day of the truck
*for that tuition promise unfulfilled
*for the black mold problem
*for not speaking up
*for weight, always weight, even before hello
*for that prideful stubbornness of not admitting
*for that underbus-throwing beanspilling to the aunt and uncle
*for that secret to the grave incident she pulled
*for that showerhead lock-changing liar
*for that ignorant political post and not just asking
*for number one and fifteen
*for the last of the milk
*for San Antonio and The Alamo
*for that near miss with the Mash tent
*for that phone bill
*for that Christmas of the candle throwing
*for general sheepishness
*for that stupid Longhorn sweet potato
*for that unforewarned dinner party
*for her impersonation at the jail
*for the absurdity of the Vacation Bible School casket
*for that sunrise tattoo suspicion
*for the credit card driveway
*for telling the mortician her gray nails were a perfect fit for her
*for spray painting the bumper
*for wrecking both our cars at once
*for driving across a Costa Rican raging river
*for dancing like a drunk fool to the live band on the porch of Mullet Bay
*for that ridiculous Porsche to impress that classless redhead
*for all the denial
*for seven storage rooms since 2016
*for seven storage rooms, period
*for every last damn thing in those storage rooms
*for going down that road with the Running Ws
*for staying on the boat
*for buying flowers
*for not buying flowers
*for acting like he knew all about that wooden wine box
*for writing scarce and highly-sought after and rare as hen’s teeth in the front cover of every silverfish-infested book and brandishing them as gold
*for preaching instead of coming to my graduation
*for “you need to clean the john” and saying he’d clean the cobwebs
*for leaving us at Disney World
*for that Moonie on Bourbon Street with the candy
*for asking if this was Oxford a in a pitch black Subway train in England
*for no pictures
*for no Hospice when it was long overdue
*for asking if she’d brushed her teeth when it was clear she hadn’t, and then I had to forgive myself too for considering all the places I could have put his toothbrush before he used it again
*for showing up to preach in a leather vest like he knew how to be some kind of motorcycle gangster on the death of a friend
*for the rain off the roof in a styrofoam cup
*for nearly killing Mom with a jack-knifed trailer
*for feeding her steak when she couldn’t swallow
*for the many promises he wouldn’t leave her and the neighbors finding her fallen off the steps in the yard
*for that pair of discovery sunglasses he mistook for revelation
*for acting like that stinger was a lie when it was a proven truth
*for Aaron’s sick wife in the church foyer and the twin sister I don’t have
*for those obscene squirrel pups that could have cost him his reputation
*for not forgiving what should have been
*for forgiving too soon what should not have been
My hero of Golden Shovel writing is Stacey Joy of Los Angeles, California. She’s an LA Teacher of the Year, and I’m proud to call her a writing circle friend. Stacey is a true inspiration, and we write together three days a month as part of the Ethicalela Open Write hosted by Sarah Donovan. To write a Golden Shovel, take a sentence, phrase, or even a book title and write it vertically. These can be the words that start each line or that finish each line. And if you really want a brain workout, try a double or triple shovel by writing three sets of words vertically and spreading them out to try to make them fit.
I’m not ambitious enough to try a double or triple shovel today, but here is a Golden Shovel using the lines of my current book title my book club will read in January, Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson, as the starting lines in a poem. As part of the Stafford Challenge with Brian Rohr this year, I’m writing a poem every day using different forms.
Vertigo
Not just dizziness and spinning, but
Quite a bit more ~ nausea, stumbling
Dead to the world today
Yet twice as alive tomorrow
Click Here to go to a video on writing a Golden Shovel poem.
Drifting Off
every night, my husband gives me a
magnesium cream foot massage
to help me get better sleep
before bed, we read for
an hour to unwind ~
bedwarmers, we
turn pages
drifting
off
With a hug of gratitude to the ladies at wholesomehippy, who make good sleep great.
all I want to do
is turn pages and get lost
in a mystery
to read poetry
biography and memoir
fiction, non-fiction
I’ll take all of it,
add it to my TBR
pile, curl up, and read
Come sit right here by me if you’re a reader. Settle in, pour a cup of coffee, and let’s have a book chat. I want to hear what stories have kept you reading this year, and how your reading has inspired new adventures.
I’ll go first. Right now, I’m reading Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson, which will be the January 2026 pick for our Kindred Spirits book club. It has me on the edge of my seat at every new twist and turn. I especially like that the setting is taking me back to our trip to Woodstock, Vermont in November of 2024, where we had one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had in my life, complete with Vermont maple syrup that was made from the trees on the property where we were staying. A friend and member of the Kindred Spirits book club recommended Woodstock as a stop on our trip after NCTE last year, and we used her exact trip itinerary from a trip she’d taken with her daughter in planning our own. While my husband and I were in Woodstock, we took some time to go exploring a few back roads while we were there, and I have some of the setting assigned to places we saw, such as the famous bridge. It’s hard to imagine that a crime like the one in this book could happen there, but where there are humans, there will be crime. This book inspired me to wrap up in a blanket I bought from the Vermont Flannel Company while I was there and to pull up the photos from that amazing trip and add them to the new digital photo frame my daughter sent us for Christmas. Oh, to go back there!
The Kindred Spirits dive into exciting fiction, and this group tends to gravitate toward thrillers. Once we’ve finished reading a book, we plan some sort of adventure to go along with what we have read so that we allow our reading to inspire new discoveries. You can see our reading choices and adventures from 2025 here. We’ll be meeting December 19 to put the first six months of our 2026 list together. I’d like to ask for your favorite book recommendations. Please help us out ~ which books have you read recently that you savored, and what made you fall in love with them? Also, have you ever been part of a reading retreat where everyone reads a few books and then drives an hour or two to a mountain lodge for a weekend to talk about those books, read more books, sit by the fire, eat delicious food, visit a spa, and shop in the stores on the town square? We’ve heard of those retreats and are thinking of trying one sometime this year, so we’re all ears for your most exciting book experiences as we plan a few slices of life.
My daughter sent a text to alert me about a package to arrive shortly as she tracked its movements. She asked me to call when we opened it so that she could give us a few pointers about it (I’ve noticed that the older I get, the more my children have started offering pointers on how to work things).
As we FaceTimed, she watched our excitement when we realized she’d sent us a digital photo frame.
How wonderful! I exclaimed, already thinking of all the photos I would upload and wondering if I would be able to figure it out. It would be nice to see snapshots from our recent week in the Great Smoky Mountains. When I’ve wanted to see those photos, I’ve had to scroll to them on the camera and search – – but a digital frame would keep them rolling and keep us thinking of the family members who mean so much to us!
That’s not just any digital frame, Mom, she explained. That’s a Cozyla interactive frame. If you invite all your kids to upload photos, we can send you pictures anytime and you can see them pop up in real time. You’ll hear a Boo…Boop and it’ll be a notification alerting you that we’re sending you new pictures.
I set it up while she was on FaceTime with me and already have nearly 200 photos in the album. I’m going strong, and I didn’t need as many pointers as she (or I) thought I might. I can’t wait to get my first notification that a new photo has popped up. We’ll be on the lookout for new smiling faces of our grandchildren – – which is like a new gift every day, especially during the holidays with all their excitement. It’s even more so since with four children in four different states, we don’t get to be together in person nearly as often as we’d like.
digital photos
family togetherness
keeping moments fresh
We’ve needed for about 2 years to redesign our front hardscape bed when the river rocks we’d put down many years ago began looking dated and worn. Instead of taking them up, we left them as the base, killed the weeds, and laid new landscape fabric over the top of the lackluster layer. We began the process a month or so ago, knowing that pacing would be important for us at our ages. Still, we wanted to do it ourselves because we’ve always enjoyed creating a vision and making it happen – – together!
We started with bright white rock (which will turn a light gray in about 6 months), curving one edge of the rock to prepare for the next layer. We also wanted to use black rock and possibly some pine straw as a way to blend some landscape into the hardscape – pine straw not really being the first choice, but a budgetary consideration and trade-off for the black rock I really wanted to be able to include in the overall design. It’s a lot like building a house – – you have to make some sacrifices to realize some gains. We added a barn scene Christmas flag and moved the American flag to the Purple Martin pole while we clean out their house, and added a faux boulder to the mix. A few solar pathway lights, a couple of my late mother’s birdbaths, and a pre-lit Christmas wreath with a sparkly red bow completed the design we’d needed to update for a handful of years. We pulled out the elephant ears and the jasmine that was everywhere, even climbing onto the roof.
Our goal was to create a low-maintenance garden look that doesn’t require a lot of weeding or fluffing. Our budget was to not break the bank. But with rocks being $12 a bag and covering the space of the bag itself times 2, we were only within budget for the white rock section. Added plants will only happen minimally henceforth, and only in pots so that we can keep the pruning and weeding under control and raise the pots if we can’t bend.
We’re satisfied with the finished look, and more than happy that the front bed work will carry us to the next decade….and now, once we’ve let our backs recover for the winter, there’ll be the beds in the back of the house that will need some attention come springtime. For the first time in my life, I see why senior citizens choose condominium living complete with groundskeeping fees. It’s tempting. Very, very tempting.
—–for now our sore backs
keep reminding us that we’re
not twenty years old…….
go forth in reading
peace, turning the pages of
life in full color
Last night was our first annual Kindred Spirits Book Club Christmas Party, and six ladies celebrated a year of reading 11 novels and one month of daily poetry with dinner and dessert, games, gifts, and laughter. We even chose our first book of 2026 (Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson) as we picked our seats for the movie The Housemaid, which we will see together later this month as a book-related adventure.
Our book club came as a granted wish of one of our reading sisters who had been attending a book club sponsored by one of our community partners when we were grant recipients of an initiative to build literacy in schools and communities. This community partner experienced a change in its leadership when its organizer took a different job, so our book club sister Janette came up with a brilliant idea. She suggested that we pick up the pieces and read the books that were purchased, and then, to preserve the integrity of the grant, to fill the Little Free Libraries with these books once we finished reading them and having our meetings.
At first, we weren’t sure whether a book club would take root, but we took Janette’s idea and extended an invitation in January 2025 to read a book and meet at our local coffee shop a few weeks later to discuss it. We found some universal book club questions and were thrilled when six of us came to talk about it. By the time we finished the first couple of books, we had enough momentum to choose books not provided through the grant to continue the club all year. Fast forward to December, and we’re still going strong.
We were not all diehard readers when we embarked on the journey. A couple of us knew we needed books – – and adventures that are sparked by things we’ve read – – but what we didn’t know is how much we needed each other. We’re a classic example of an eclectic group of women with different reading tastes, in different stages of life, with a range of life experiences. But we’re drawn together by books that unify us and common themes that allow us to share our own perspectives. And when human hearts find the right books and the right space, they bond as readers with a sweet kinship. Like us, they are Kindred Spirits.
This morning, I celebrate a year of reading with Janette, Joy, Jill, Jennifer, and Martina. Here are the books we’ve read in our club this year, in order, along with the adventure we shared (a few of us belong to other reading clubs, but here is our list):
| January – The Beautiful and the Wild by Peggy Townsend | Emerald Chandelier Tea Room Brunch |
| February – Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon | Mexican Restaurant Night |
| March – The Wedding People by Alison Escape | Cake Tasting |
| April – The Last Flight by Julie Clark | Airport Dinner with a bag of 3 things we’d bring if we changed identities |
| May – First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston | Played Two Truths and a Lie |
| June/July – The God of the Woods by Liz Moore | Made Indoor S’mores |
| August – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid | All wore green on an outing |
| September – One Tuesday Morning by Karen Kingsbury | Shared 9/11 Stories of Survivors and Victims |
| October – Regretting You by Colleen Hoover | Dinner and Movie Night |
| November – The Housemaid by Freida McFadden | Dinner and Movie Night |
| December – The Book Club Hotel by Sarah Morgan | Christmas Party |
| Selected Poems for National Poetry Month | Wrote poetry |
(Full Disclosure: Not all of us liked or would recommend all of these books to others – but in true book club spirit, we stayed the course and kept turning the pages).
In our first book of the year, a character was always making tea, so we visited a tea room for a Saturday morning brunch. At our party, we played the Left, Right, Across game with the story below (feel free to modify and use it for your own book club), and each of us took home a mismatched teacup and saucer in the bag that ended up in front of us. We played Mad Libs, had a wrapped book swap, and had a gift exchange as well, and we can’t wait to see what 2026 brings!
Don’t miss the photos of our book club through the year under the story.
A Book Club Christmas Party
It was the evening of the annual Christmas Dinner party as members of the book club arrived and settled in right on time for what was left of the day. Last spring, with books left over from a grant, they stacked their hands right together in a huddled pledge to read across the year. They’d started right away with The Beautiful and the Wild, Mother-Daughter Murder Night, and The Wedding People, which left them all wanting more adventures like tea parties and movie outings and even driving slap across the county to the airport with packed bags. They shared what they’d take with them as they sat across the table after reading The Last Flight. They even read across genres that included poetry. They had some books left, so they dove right straight into First Lie Wins, The God of the Woods – which they read across the summer months – and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, each reader thinking secretly of one or two of the books, “well, geez, that’s one I might have left out of the lineup” right before starting the next books ~ One Tuesday Morning, Regretting You, The Housemaid, and The Book Club Hotel. Eleven books across the span of the year, and here they were right at the table, celebrating all their different tastes in reading while gathering each month to read books they may have left out of their own lives except that they yearned to be right there discussing books together with their reading sisters, appreciating how their reading tastes, though often a mixed and mismatched bag, revealed all those moments of having just the right book at the right time because that’s what books do – they unify. Each realized, across the span of the year, that reading together is just the right medicine for the soul. In the perfect spirit of solidarity, they clinked their cups before heading right back home already dreaming of the next gathering, and as each guest left, they felt right at home in their book club family, where they fit snugly and belonged, as precious and interesting as fine mismatched china.
Common Threads 