Stretches of time to sit and write were as rare as hens’ teeth when I worked full time, but now that I’ve retired, they are frequent and savored like a warm croissant drizzled with cinnamon honey butter. I’ve recently completed my late father’s unfinished novel with a fellow writer, a family friend more considered friendly family. Writing groups, monthly challenges and yearly challenges are springing up everywhere. Even though the official site closed down last year, November is still Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month), and alternative sites and resources are in full swing, Poetry Outdoors is happening, and one of my favorite Substackers, Tammy Evans, has a Flash Fiction challenge going on as well. Writing opportunities are everywhere! The Audrey Gidman prompts for November are always inspiring, and I could spend all day at home in the drizzling rain just writing.
First things first, though.
The countdown to Christmas is on now that Halloween is over, and I’ve found the perfect tea I couldn’t wait to share. It’s the mint hot cocoa of tea, and I found it in The Fresh Market in Peachtree City earlier this week when my sister in law and I went shopping for Mahjong sales in Heirloom Market next door. On a whim, we walked over to take a stroll and see what trouble we could find in The Fresh Market. I’m making the switch back to decaf, and I needed tea and coffee.
This tea is the perfect writer’s tea. I think the minty taste and aroma might actually wake up my brain more in the wee hours when I rise to write, before the dogs get stirred up and I help get my husband out the door to go to work. If you’re in the market for a new fireside drink with a zing of mint to awaken the senses but you can’t decide between hot chocolate and tea, here’s your answer!
My brother and I have spent nearly a year and a half shuffling through our late father’s things, using what we can and letting go of the rest. I replaced my great grandmother’s table I’d refinished so that I could incorporate our childhood breakfast table into my kitchen, next to the corner cabinet that I also brought here to the farm. The practical and sentimental things have been easiest to decide. But there were oddball things, too, like entire albums of vintage postcards and ephemera. Tons of costume jewelry picked up at estate sales. Old dishes, collectible Andre birds and baseball cards and old Corning Ware and Pyrex and McCoy ceramics. The books filled seven storage units, boxed human-high in rows down the. middle.
So what about those postcards? A year into the sorting of things, I began to realize that perhaps they had a use I could never have predicted. It came in my monthly small group Stafford Challenge writing conversations when Denise Krebs of California, Barb Edler of Iowa, and Glenda Funk of Idaho and I sat together in a Zoom and they invited me to become a part of the Cascadia Postcard Poetry Fest. I was dealing with a family emergency at the time, and almost let the opportunity pass. Thank goodness they persuaded me to take a stab at it.
I’m so glad I said yes. I created some postcards with various art techniques, and also added a few of Dad’s vintage postcards, sending them out in the mix after airing them out a little so they could breathe outside the plastic covers. Nothing crumbled, and the stamps stuck, so I sent out a few to test the system. I wondered if recipients even knew that underneath the stamp, it said “Place 1 cent postage here” inside a tiny stamp guideline.
After the July challenge to send postcards to the folks on our lists, a smaller group invitation came out for those who wanted to continue writing postcard poetry each month. All we had to do was email Barbara Robinette at rosablue722@gmail.com and request to be on the list. She sends the addresses and the instructions at the end of each month for the following month. The group is still open for new participants, and if you’re interested, you can email her at the address above.
I spent time last weekend organizing many of the vintage postcards into monthly piles and Ziplock bags so that I can work ahead a little, since I like to send out postcards to everyone on the list and not just the required three. I like to think of the history of each postcard as many decades later, it realizes its potential and comes alive like some buried time capsule unearthed into a new resurrected life. I wonder what shop it sat in, waiting to be purchased all those years ago, and who purchased it with the intention to send it to someone. I wonder why they didn’t send it as planned.
And I wonder what it says about hope. If postcards older than I can suddenly spring to life and travel across the globe with stamps as their passports to new places as they bring smiles to faces at 32 mailboxes each month, how can any of us give up hope of a miracle happening?
If you’re on the fence, thinking you might like to join the challenge but a little intimidated about writing a poem on a postcard, please take a leap and start with a short form like a haiku or an acrostic. No one has to be a famous writer to participate in this. It’s about the sense of community it brings and the ways we can share with each other to make a positive difference. Plus, you may receive a vintage postcard that wriggled its way out of a time warp to make its way to you.
Something about Halloween in a Mahjong group has us scrambling for spooky snacks like we’re back in the days of making party treats for our children. What is it about the childlike fun of playing a game that makes us feel so excited again? The assignment: Bring a Spooky Snack to Mahjoween on Friday.
On Thursday, I scoured the aisles of the grocery store. Cranberry Crackdragons were out of the realm of possibility, since there were no fresh cranberries to put powdered sugar on and pop in the oven to create a burst of tart sweetness with every bite. A candy corn shaped cheeseball was a consideration, and that shifted to a cheese puff- crumbed cheeseball in a pumpkin shape, but I was not in the mood to cut cheese. I toyed with the idea of cream cheese-filled mushroom eyeballs with pitted black olive pupils and sun dried tomato veins. But honestly, I’m just not all that creative when it comes to food. I’d threatened to bring Halloween Oreos or BOO-nana bread, but even I rolled my eyes at the thought of that kind of laziness.
That was when it hit me. A certain little seven inch porch goose the host and I bought as a gift for our Sensei (Mahjong instructor) as a gift got me thinking about the little witch hat and the way I could try to replicate those same size snack hats using Bugles, mini Nilla wafers, and melted chocolate chips with a peanut butter chip as a hat buckle. I rounded up the ingredients, satisfied I’d made the right choice.
First, I opened the bag and found the best-shaped Bugles that had a rounded opening at the bottom so they would stand on the cookies until the chocolate hardened. I did the math and planned for three dozen, and then laid out some extra cookies to put chocolate on. I made one prototype so I could see if it would work, and lo and behold, it did! I surprised myself. Even the Reese’s peanut butter chip stuck once I coated the top of the cookie, coated the Bugle and stuck it on, and affixed the chip onto the base of the Bugle.
Our teacher from Augusta is coming to be with us. We call her Sensei Susan, and she is coming even as one of her dachshunds is recovering from back surgery last week (and an abscess after that) and she’s had to cancel her tennis games. We’re so blessed that she is willing to travel two and a half hours to be with us and spend time helping us refine our strategies and skills.
We got her a small porch goose all dressed for Halloween that is perfect for her kitchen counter, to remind her how much we enjoy spending time with her. We’ll sew on some Mahjong beads and give it to her as we play the day away and make plans for a Thanksmahj and Christmahj. And we’ll add some festive Mahjong outfits each time we get together.
We’ve already been shopping for the fabric and the rick rack and hem trims. Get ready to see a gaggle of gregariously dressed game-ready geese! I’m hopping from the kitchen to the sewing room now……
Have I mentioned lately how much I love being retired?
We are home from a weekend of camping, and what a joy to spend it with my husband and dogs at one of our favorite places! We left Friday evening with no trip to the grocery store, just our pajamas and toothbrushes and a change of clothes. We only took food we had on hand in the fridge and pantry.
That’s a big change from the first way we camped. We used to go all out with hanging string lights and decorating and doing all the camping things like making s’mores and having a thousand snacks. Now, we’ve learned that the more we put up, the more we have to take down. The more we prepare, the more we feel we must do. So now, we resist all temptation to put out more than our postside name sign that tells other campers who we are and where we’re from. We keep it simple, from the food to the decor to the clothes.
Over the weekend, I added another thing to my list of 100 Things to Do in Retirement. A necessary thing, but I would definitely not call it a favorite. It will go at the bottom of the list among the least favorite, and is there only because to do a fun thing, I have to do a not-so-fun thing.
I’ve helped do this task for years, but until this weekend I’ve not completed the whole chore of dumping the Wayfarer on my own. And it was a natural step in the process. I can drive it, back it into the campsite, and hook up the water and the electric. I can put out the slide and level the RV (okay, it’s self-leveling, but I’ll take it). And now, as of today, I can dump the gray and blank tanks all by myself.
I knew that I could venture out alone for boondocking with the generator, but now I feel good about setting up and staying somewhere for a few days if I get the urge to go on a solo camping trip or join the Girl Campers at a meet-up and make some new friends.
Retirement officially began for me August 1st, so each second and fourth Friday, I reflect on the first year of retirement in two-week windows and what it’s like in this new chapter of life. This idea of retirement reflection was sparked when members of my writing communities and personal friends asked me how I would spend my time and if I thought I would get bored. At the beginning of my first week off, I used a green spiral notebook to make a list of all the things I wanted to do — something enjoyable each week, blending in some new hobbies and routines as well.
My late father said this about retirement: You don’t retire FROM something, you retire TO something, and you’ll be busier than you’ve ever been. He was right, and I love doing what I want to do when I want to do it and having the flexibility to travel and engage in new hobbies – or stay home in comfortable clothes and enjoy more relaxed pace on the Johnson Funny Farm.
Here are eight of the most recent things I’ve enjoyed in my first three months of retirement:
51. Kindred Spirits October Book Club – We met at our favorite coffee shop last night to discuss Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth and The Songteller by Dolly Parton. We talked about the power of story, the refusal of women to be thrust into a particular identity determined by the world, and the perceptions of aging women in terms of freedoms and restraints. These two books paired nicely as nonfiction and fiction text selections. Our book club has remained six strong, and we’re nearing the end of our second year together.
50. Watercolor Poetry Postcards – One of my favorite things to do is enjoy a watercolor painting day a couple of times a month. I like the watercolor workbooks by Emily Lex because she simplifies the process of creating art. Recently, I’ve discovered the YouTube Easy Design painters, who take viewers step by step through techniques. This month, I created postcards for my November postcard poetry challenge and also Bible bookmarks for Christmas gift bag items collected by a faith-based women’s recovery program in a neighboring state.
49. Attending two Stafford Challenge Guest Poet Zooms – C. Marie Fuhrman was the October Guest Poet on the Stafford Challenge monthly lineup of poets that we get to write with throughout the year. She used poetry by Joy Harjo to inspire us to write our own poems in our one hour Zoom session for October. Dr. Deborah Grayson kicked off a Poetry as a Healing Art series this month and brought spectacular prompts for getting us geared up for writing. I always look forward to these monthly evening events – I gather my notebook and pen, make a cup of tea, and log in to see the faces of other poets from all across the globe as we write together.
48. Open Write with my EthicalELA writing community – I’ve belonged to the Ethicalela writing community for nine years now, and each month we write poetry together for a few days out of the month (excluding April, when we write poetry together every day in honor of the Bard’s Birthday month – a/k/a National Poetry Month). This month, I wrote four poems inspired by prompts shared by rotating hosts throughout our writing community. You can check out the Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com and click on Open Write to see what this community offers!
47. Making the Perfect Cup of Tea to drink while making mental notes about Things that Don’t Suck– For Christmas in 2025, I got one of those electric tea kettles that has the Digital Touch feature to make certain kinds of tea at their optimal temperatures. In Blue Ridge, Georgia in the fall of 2025, I picked up two tea mugs with the metal steeping strainer that lets us steep loose tea leaves directly in our cups for maximum coagulation with the water. When my late father returned from a mission trip to China in 2014, he’d brought back loose tea and given us a masterclass in how to steep it. It’s a retirement treat to be able to sit back with a cup and reflect on the day joyfully with at least the work demands removed from all the bad things happening in the world.
46. Daytime Movies – It’s always been a weekend thing or an evening thing for us unless we were on a break, but being able to take off in the day to go see a movie is a guilty pleasure!
45. Decoupaging Candles and Bookmarks with Wildflowers – It will take about 6 weeks for my own pressed plants and flowers to be ready for projects in the traditional plant press, and I don’t own a microwave plant press, so I found a Utah-based flower farm as a source for pressed wildflowers and ordered a selection based on birthday month flowers. These are the plants I’m using currently to create decoupaged candles and bookmarks. It’s fun to feel the energy of creativity and see the beautiful transformation of candles as I work. I also love how something as simple as a bookmark and a touch of greenery and some flower petals can create the loveliest page markers.
44. Plant Pressing – I hauled out the old plant press and gathered wildflowers and greenery from all across the Johnson Funny Farm, including my sister-in-law’s zinnia gardens. I pressed plants for using in decoupage projects.
Here are the previous things I’ve added to my list of 100 Things I’m Enjoying in Retirement. I’ve reversed the order, going backwards in time to the beginning.
43. Virtual Author Reading for Time in the Landscape
42. Author Readingfor Anna Roseboro’s Book Study
41. Indie Bookstore Shopping
40. Dock Time on Jackson Lake in Georgia
39. Adopt a Dog
38. Train Ride to See Fall Foliage
37. Cabin for a Birthday Celebration in North Georgia
36. Fall Baking
35. Hosting Open Write
34. Kindred Spirits September Book Club
33. Mahjong in Blairsville, Georgia
32. Daytripping for Lunch and Small Town Adventuring
31. Hiking the Appalachian Trail
30. Camping at Vogel State Park
29. Lunch with Friends
28. Almost-Birthday Pedicures with my Sister-in-Law
27. Mahjongg Regular Group Formation
26. Stafford Challenge Writing Workshop
25. Stafford Challenge Small Group Zoom Meetings
24. Dolly Parton Tribute at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee
23. Labor Day Camping at F. D. Roosevelt State Park in Pine Mountain, Georgia
Joel shares, “My studies taught me that many poetic forms winnow down in length as they ramp up in meaning. A sonnet’s couplet, a sestina’s envoi, a haiku’s closing pivot, a villanelle’s quatrain – you get the idea & the impact: As the form gets smaller, the idea feels more potent, more provocative. There are exceptions. Exceptions like the cherita.”
I love narrative poems, and Garza reminds us that these are, essentially, stories in poetic form. He explains the process:
Remember that the cherita is a story. Aim for a tale that you need to tell (or maybe a tale that you’ve never told). Be as direct as possible in welcoming your reader – one line only.
As you develop the story, be deliberate and succinct. Two lines only for this middle stanza.
Finally, resolve with a comparatively expansive meditation on the meaning or mystery of this story. Knock yourself out — A whole three lines!
One line. Two lines. Then, three lines.
Jay
I looked to the directions, but I only needed the final stanza to tell my story. So I followed my gut and wrote what was inside.
I used to love making pressed flowers for bookmarks and decoupaging plain white candles and decorative soaps when I was younger. My mother taught me how to take newspaper and fold it to match the pages of a heavy book and use that as a press. About six weeks later, we’d use tweezers to take the petals and stems and arrange them over a flat surface using Mod Podge. I think our hobby started back in the day when women carried hexagon-shaped wooden purses decoupaged in collage, with tortoise-shelled handles. Macrame purses were all the rage at that time too. As I was looking for some photos of the ones I’d possibly blogged about before, I did a quick search and discovered I had created a list of 50 things I planned to do in retirement from November 2024, and pressing wildflowers was one of them. How did I forget that list? Check it out here. The dream hasn’t changed much!
During the middle of last week, I called my sister in law to see about coming to get some zinnia clippings from her wildflower beds to press between old newspapers. Off I went, clippers in hand, and came home and pressed a paper sack full of greenery and flower petals I’d collected. In 2008, I participated in a teachers’ study along scientists doing research in the field in South Georgia, and I became the owner of my own plant press and field guide for the plant studies of native species. Still, I use newspaper and not the fancy acid-free white poster-thickness paper that we used throughout that summer in Americus, Georgia at the Jones Ecological Research Center.
For the first time, I’m pressing fresh basil, since a recent bouquet gift had an abundance of this fragrant herb. One thing that never changes: native Georgia ferns are my go-to greenery in any arrangement.
I’m marking my calendar for mid-November to check the plant press and create some decoupaged pillar candles for a Thanksgiving centerpiece. As we have lost mothers over the years, we light candles to remember them on Thanksgiving, and this year I have something other than the plain white tea lights in glass jars in mind. 🙂
I’ve never met a bookstore I didn’t like, so in this chapter of life where there is more time to read, I added Independent Bookstore Shopping to the list of things of delights that retirement would bring time to enjoy. I knew this would go in my green notebook list of things to do after visiting Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Oregon in June. They call themselves “fiercely independent,” and if you read a little about the history of this amazing store and the philosophy about reading that guides its management, you know both the the power and the risk of the break from big box corporate bookstores. Take, for example, the poetry section. Those sections are usually what I would consider the weakest link in a bookstore. But not in Powell’s. They have several sections of floor-to-ceiling titles of poetry books, and the best curated collection I have ever seen. In the eastern United States, Malaprops in Asheville, North Carolina gets the highest mark for a poetry curation. I’m on a quest to find those that stack up to the gold standard of Powell’s.
Since I would live and breathe reading if it were possible to do, I like to get as close to it as I can and inhale deeply, taking in the feel of the books, the smell of the shop, the vibe of the readers considering what they want to read next. On a recent North Georgia Mountain trip, my sister in law and I visited indie bookstores in Ellijay and Blue Ridge and also in Copper Basin, Tennessee. My favorite moments are when someone asks complete strangers if anyone has read a particular book. That happened in Copper Fox Books in Blue Ridge, Georgia recently, and we helped steer a reader to Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth as her next book after chatting preferred genres. It’s a lovely feeling to be a book matchmaker.
I’m always eager to hear about favorite bookstores. If you have any, please share them. My dream trip would be adding bookstores to a wine tour. I’d get on a bus and go wine tasting but in between all the wine tastings, the bus would stop at bookstores. I wonder what books I would add to my library if there were such a tour – – and whether it would be poetry and novels or whether I’d branch out and surprise myself with some new genres when I arrived home and checked the boxes to see what all I’d bought!
Five of our six Kindred Spirits Book Club members, September 2026
Our Kindred Spirits
more than just a small book club
we share heart and mind
Each month, the Kindred Spirits Book Club with a six-strong membership meets to discuss our monthly pick. We’re nearing the end of our second full year of reading together, and there’s a deep soul-knit sisterhood that we share. Back in January, our Kindred Spirits readers each chose two books that would take us through 2026, then we mapped out our choices on a calendar and set our meeting dates and locations for each month so that we could guard those calendar days and set ourselves up for attendance success.
It wasn’t until our actual book club meeting day (the last day of our trip to Vogel State Park last week) that I finished this month’s book, The Sideways Life of Denny Voss by Holly Kennedy, on the drive home (I like to go back and forth between Kindle and Audible). What I think I loved most about waiting until the last minute before the meeting to read the book is that so many of the details were still fresh in my mind for discussion. Generally, I read our selections far ahead of time, and by the time we meet, I’ve read a mix of other books and get the details mixed up. I’ll be more strategic with the timing of my book club selections in the future.
This book is an absolute treasure, by the way. Holly Kennedy is a Canadian author, and she had me in stitches with the kidnapping of a Canadian Goose named Tom Hanks. If you’ve never had the experience of sitting by a campfire reading a book that has you in a full-blown belly laugh while total strangers walk by chuckling from your contagious laughter, please find your way to a bookstore (or get a copy free on Kindle Unlimited) and meet Holly Kennedy in the pages of this novel as you sit by the fire this fall. I’d classify it as a comedic whodunit and go as far as classifying it as a modern Bildungsroman because the main character functions in so many ways as a child but grows in his understanding of the world. As a writer, I appreciate the way the author uses one character’s elaborate t-shirt collection to build character development throughout the novel. This book will change your perspective on those who face life with the deck stacked against them. Visit this link for more information about Holly Kennedy and read the Substack interview. Even in her author photo, you can tell she’s quite a character herself.
Reading by campfire
October’s selection (changed slightly from our calendar) is a choice of this trio: Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth, Remain by Nicholas Sparks and M. Night Shyamalan, or Songteller by Dolly Parton, just to give a fourth-quarter choice of an ironic author collaboration on a romantic ghost story, a timely biography, and a book flying off the shelves and so compelling it pulls you in and won’t turn loose, and then leaves you wanting to read it all over again. Here are our other selections we’ve read this year. We’re always interested to hear what others are reading and how it has broadened minds, opened worlds, and led to new adventures!
Today’s host of the final day of the September 2026 Open Write at www.ethicalela.com is Leilya Pitre, who writes: In Louisiana, we often use the word lagniappe, meaning “a little something extra.” It is an unexpected gift offered in generosity. Today, I welcome you to a little lagniappe: one more space for conversation, reflection, encouragement, or an unexpected poem.
Leilya invites writers to look back or look forward and suggests considering a Gogyohka. She explains: Developed by Japanese poet Enta Kusakabe, a Gogyohka consists of five lines. Each line holds one phrase or breath, but there are no syllable counts, required themes, or preferred topics. You may write about anything that calls to you. That’s it: five concise but free lines.
