An introduction for those that don’t know me (all two of you reading this blog)

I’ve loved words all my life. At least since I first knew them. My sister taught me to read at the age of four in the damp chill of our basement, our brown fur beanbags pushed side to side on the slate floor. She leaned over me with a book, her finger tracing words as they tumbled in fits and starts from my mouth, some of them catching on my tongue. As I read more on my own, I would drag out my mother’s electric blue typewriter and copy the words from the page, watching the letters punch the paper and only getting only a page or two in before I left the typewriter humming to go outside and play with the dog. I spent every Sunday morning across the kitchen table from my mom with a stack of dictionaries and thesauruses as she wrestled with the New York Times crossword puzzle. She would take a sip of coffee and call out a word, and I would rush to find them, thinking that the faster I found them, the more likely we’d be able to pin the puzzle into submission.

The more words I learned, the more they filled me. I wrote my first poem in sixth grade for in Mrs. Adam’s class. It was the color and consistency of cotton candy, a melodramatic mess about moving away from my best friend in New Jersey. But I got to read it for parent’s night in a packed middle school library and for the first time, felt good about being the tallest girl in school. Fast forward through high school, I stepped on to campus with the desire to be a business phenom and promptly enrolled as an econ major. But with the advent of my first “D” and my favorite poet coming for a semester, I switched to creative writing. I loved it but was fickle. Writing sometimes felt so personal and painful, it was like I was peeling my skin off. Add the ego of a 19 year old to the need for self protection and you get lots of first drafts without revisions. So I fought with my professors over “edited” pieces that were turned in two and three times with no changes coupled with some very creative grammar rules. If ee Cummings could do it, why couldn’t the rest of us?

Once I got out of school, I got away from writing. Moved across the country, lived my life according to the plan I had built in my mind. And then that plan began to fall apart. At first it was just a frayed edge, but as time passed, it began to unravel, the cloth falling apart until I was standing in the middle of my thirties, naked and afraid with one single blue thread in my hand. Writing is part of what helped me weave my life back together. None of these things give me the “right” to be a writer. Anyone can be a writer. And anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit. I am not published. I have not won contests, awards, or accolades. Writing either holds you in or tips you out of the chair depending on the moment, and why I love it so much. For the days I actually make it to the chair. I’m still the little girl that writes a page and leaves the computer staring in to an empty room to go play with the dogs. To quote Steven Pressfield, Resistance still kicks my ass on a regular basis. But I’m working on it.

Aside from writing, I love food, brussels sprouts in particular, and consider myself a connoisseur (pancetta and carmelized onions, baby). I am a recent convert to the Mini Cooper and am completely obsessed. The tiny rubber mini cooper thumb drive they give to all new owners justified the entire purchase in my mind. I’m a complete and total fitted sheet folding flunkie. I will admit to getting so frustrated that I resorted to watching tutorials on YouTube. I still can’t manage it and half fold and half stuff them into my linen closet. Can anyone fold those fucking things? I’m a frequent dropper of f-bombs. I’m also a repeated auto-correct victim (I’m fairly certain I DON’T mean ducking, Autocorrect, thank you very much). I am a fart joke enthusiast and am not ashamed about it. I am a Springsteen devotee (his music runs in my blood), but have a wide range of musical tastes, reggae and country excluded. Four years in Nashville couldn’t bring out the country in me. Don’t judge. I’m a die hard dog person and immediately skeptical of people who don’t like books or dogs. I am a fertility survivor, member of the tribe of the motherless, and a hopeful memoirist. And most of all, I hope you enjoy this blog.