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MissMelisshttp://www.missmeliss.com

Soaking Meditation

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Bath time, for her, is as sacred as Sunday mass, and as soothing to her body as yoga might be for those who practice it.

Even though her tub is hers, and hers alone, she lights candles, pours a glass of wine or a mug of herbal tea, sets the radio to play her favorite feed from NPR’s weekend array, and brings a book along.

Sometimes she uses grocery store bubble bath in lavender or mint, but she’s a fan of expensive bubble bars and bath bombs as well.

She especially likes that one from Lush that smells like autumn.

#Thursday 13: 2015-01

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1. What’s a nickname only your family calls you?
Miss Meliss

2. Chocolate or Vanilla?
Chocolate

3. What is your favorite quote?
I don’t believe in favorites. Right now this is speaking to me:
“Autumn stars shine through gaps in the wall…. [H]e… brews midnight tea by the stove’s ruddy light.” ~From a traditional Taoist song, quoted in John Eaton Calthorpe Blofeld, The Chinese Art of Tea

4. What’s a song you secretly LOVE to blast & belt out when you’re alone?
“Man of La Mancha,” but it’s hardly secret.

5. What’s one of your biggest pet peeves?
Poor table manners.

6. What was the last thing you ate?
Greek yogurt with fruit and organic local honey.

7. If you could change your name, what would it be and why?
I wouldn’t. I used to hate my name, and I still think it’s frumpy, but I’m accustomed to it.

8. Favorite pizza topping?
I don’t do favorites. Pepperoni and pineapple make a good combination, though.

9. What did you want to be when you were little?
A marine biologist. A jockey. A writer.

10. What’s your favorite flower?
Again, I don’t do favorites. I buy whatever’s seasonal or whimsical.

11. Which of the 5 senses do you consider to be your strongest?
Hearing.

12. What’s your favorite food that begins with the letter “S”?
My tastes change too frequently for me to have favorites. Lately, I’ve been into shawarma.

13. Name the last song you listened to.
“This Never Happened Before”

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Lingonberry

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He loves to go out for crepes on Saturday mornings.

It has, in fact, become their weekend ritual: morning sex, slow showers, and then out to breakfast, to the comic book store, and back home for cozy, puttery afternoons.

On rainy Saturdays she spends the afternoon writing and backing, moving between her laptop on the kitchen table, and the actual kitchen.

Most of the time she bakes batter breads – banana, pumpkin, zucchini – or cookies (his favorite: chocolate chip with walnuts), but sometimes she’ll surprise him with lingonberry tarts or strawberry rhubarb pie.

Every Saturday morning. This scene from their marriage.

Baby Grand

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The piano came with the house.

They found it discarded in the basement, the soundboard cracked.

She’d always wanted a piano, so they hoisted it up, and put it back together, had it tuned and timed.

She didn’t know how to read music, but she could play by ear, her elegant fingers coaxing beautiful sounds from the cast-off instrument.

If anyone else had bought the house…
If they didn’t live in reasonably humid New Jersey…
If music wasn’t as much a part of his soul as it was hers…

But that did, and they do, and it is.
Baby grand.

Diminished

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At some point she began talking to the walls.

Really, she said, she was speaking to the former residents of her house, whose shadow-selves had been imprinted thereupon almost like a mural only she could see.

An animated, techni-color mural.

We’re never sure if we should humor her, or try to coax her awareness back to the here and now. The truth is, it’s harder for us than it is for her, because she doesn’t register the devastation on our faces when she fails to recognize us.

“Why aren’t you in school, sweetie?” she asks.
“I’m thirty,” I remind her.

Sunday Brunch: Random

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Random things about today:
Leftover birthday cake for breakfast, a mug of steaming coffee to cut the sweetness and wake my brain cells.
When you’re a freelancer weekends are arbitrary, anyway.

I read and write and nap and watch bad television and cuddle dogs.

“Are you hungry?” my husband asks.

What he really means is, “I’m hungry, but I don’t want to make anything so I’ll just sit and starve until you can be coaxed into the kitchen.”

“I’ll make an omelet if you let me watch the end of this movie.”

“What channel?”

“Hallmark.”

“Use lots of cheese.”

“Okay.”

Fear

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Vintage Typewriter

Vintage Typewriter | Credit: MorgueFile.com | Click to embiggen

I’m working on a piece of writing – it’s only fanfic, but I have readers who are demanding new chapters, and it’s good for playing with structure and dialogue – that is going to a very dark place.

I realized I’m afraid of it on two levels.

I’m afraid of letting my brain dwell in that darkness for the time it will take to finish the piece.

I’m also afraid I’m not skilled enough to pull off what I keep envisioning.
I only know I have to try.

Writing is so much harder than improv.

I remember when the opposite was true.

Only 94

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autumn coffee Today’s projected high is only 94, which is cool for early September in Texas. Break out the parkas. At least it’s not terribly humid.

Still, the softer light of waning summer makes 94 feel less intense at this time of year than it did a month or two ago. Autumn here isn’t the cool, crisp experience it is in New Jersey or Colorado, or even northern California. It’s more of a gentle glide from brutally hot, through comfortably warm, to kinda-sorta sweater weather.
The leaves still fall. The light still changes.

But until November we’ll be wrapped in golden warmth.