Breathing Underwater

 For this week's Writer's Workshop, I chose the prompt: Tell us about your favorite homecooked meal growing up.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy!  Stovers What's that? You don't know what Stovers are? Well, I'm not surprised. I don't think I've ever met a person outside my own family who does. This could be attributed to a couple of things...  1. My family is Scottish and though I was born on the North Sea, I grew up in the US. Stovers are Scottish. 2. In Scotland - at least most of the country, as far as I can gather - the dish is not actually called  Stovers , but Stovies , so even if you're from there, you might look at me strangely if I said I was making Stovers. But that’s what my mama called ‘em, so that’s what I call ‘em.  I also grew up believing there was ONE WAY and ONLY one way to make them. I've since discovered this is not the case (but my way [or my mother's way, really... and perhaps her mother's way, I don't know], is the best wa...

It's Writer's Workshop time, so I hopped over to  Mama's Losin' It  to check out the prompts for this week. I decided to go with the first one: What do you miss most about being ten years younger than you are now? What do you miss the least? ____________________ Then as it was, then again it will be And though the course may change sometimes Rivers always reach the sea Blind stars of fortune, each have several rays On the wings of maybe, down in birds of prey Kind of makes me feel sometimes, didn't have to grow But as the eagle leaves the nest, it's got so far to go Changes fill my time, baby, that's alright with me In the midst I think of you, and how it used to be From 'Ten Years Gone' by Led Zeppelin ____________________ While some people keep journals or old diaries or appointment books to enable them to look back to see what they were doing or thinking in the past, I have a blog. It's a pretty cool reso...

Somehow Tuesday passed me by and it's nearly Thursday already! I took a quick run over to  Mama's Losin' It  to see what prompts she put up for this week. I decided on the last one (again): Book Review Time! What winter read has you snuggled in and turning pages? Well...  As you may or may not recall, I decided to let go of Facebook (et al) and Netflix (et al) in order to attempt to live a bit more deliberately . See, they were taking up so much of my time that I was getting absolutely nothing accomplished (with the exception of feeding the animals [it seems they need to eat every day ! Who knew?], cleaning the litter boxes [because ew], and the occasional load of laundry [so I didn't have to wear my bathing suit under my pajamas to work]). My addiction to social media and just plain old media was all-consuming and, if I'm honest, a bit mindless.  So, on January 2nd, they went bye-bye.  Sniff. And since January 2nd, I have read... 24 book...

When I started blogging, about a dozen years ago (on  my old blog ), I had the great good fortune to stumble across one of the best, funniest bloggers with one of the best, funniest blogs around...  Mama's Losin' It . Every Tuesday, Mama Kat would publish a list of writing prompts and bloggers from far and wide would pick one, write a post, and then link it on her site on Thursday. It was cool.  And in the heyday of blogging, back before everything was about advertising and selling stuff - when Blogland was a real community - we'd all read each other's posts and comment on them and just generally be nice and encouraging. I made loads of friends that way (friends, I might add, with whom I've stayed in contact and even visited in person [even crossed the Atlantic to meet!]). It was way cool.  And I wrote many, many posts from Kat's weekly prompts. Alas, things changed. Blogging changed. Facebook took over and Blogland became a place that I only droppe...