RoadBroads

I was diagnosed with diabetes just over ten years ago. Up to that time, I was very haphazard with my doctor visits. I did not do regular check ups nor worry about my health. But right before my wedding, I went to get my eyes checked so I could buy new contacts for the honeymoon.

During the visit, I found that I was unable to see out of my left eye. It was as if someone has smeared Vaseline on the lens. Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that my retinas were bleeding in both eyes, but the bleed in the left was affecting the main area for vision. I underwent laser intervention and, after a time, the sight has healed, though not entirely. I still have slight blind spot right in the middle of my left eye’s field of vision.

When this happened, I realized I had to start taking better care of myself, and that meant better eating habits. The road to a more balanced way of life is a long and hard one, and, I must admit, I’m not there yet. However, I have made good strides towards a healthier lifestyle.

For one thing, I cut out most of the soda intake. Prior to that moment, I drank regular Coke as if it was the recommended servings of water — eight or nine a day of the 20oz bottles. Yup, a diabetes nightmare waiting to happen… which it did. It was hard to move toward drinking water. I honestly hated the taste of it at the time. However, I made myself drink it, and with the help of coffee, I managed to change my palette. Now, I really enjoy the refreshing taste of water… and of course, coffee.

I also added exercise to my life. Having dogs was a great motivator for this purpose. I enjoy a good half hour minimum walk with Arya, and, on the days when it’s possible, we extend it to a full hour. In addition, I have discovered the wonderful effects of yoga. The suppleness it leaves on your muscles, the way it helps build strength, and the relaxation of the mind as you mindfully focus on your breath and the position of your limbs have all been a great boon to my life. I even occasionally add in a Zumba class, or a bit of weight training. The latter, according to my doctor, I should do more of as building muscle helps burn sugar.

In spite of this, the main struggle remains — food. Unlike drugs, you can’t stop eating. You have to eat everyday, so the battle for what you choose to eat and how much is a continuous daily war in your mind. Balanced meals with vegetables are important, but sweets call to me like drug dealers peddling their wares. Stress makes the war harder to win. Some people don’t eat when they are under stress. I, on the other hand, feel a need to eat all the time.

Working with my doctor and my therapist has helped me build in new ways of looking at food as well as strategies for healthier stress management. But the battle continues to rage, and I don’t think it will ever be fully over. The road to being a healthy, balanced person is, in my opinion, the road of life; one which we must all traverse until our time to depart this mortal realm arrives.

** I hope you enjoy the pictures of artist Diane Gelman’s work. You can visit her studio at the Sawyer Yards in Houston, TX.

As we begin this new month, I’m so happy to be working as head of the Houston Writers Guild with the leadership of Brazos Bookstore and Women in the Visual and Literary Arts (WIVLA) to bring to Houston a fun event connecting readers and writers.

On November 5 from 6:30pm to 8:00pm at the Brazos Bookstore locale authors will be reading out loud from original work. The theme is Haunted Holidays. The stories will be set during a holiday of the author’s choice but with a haunted element in the telling.

Last year, the collaboration resulted in a wonderful event via zoom. I enjoyed writing and reading my short story about a Witchy Christmas. This year, I’m working on a story about A Very Dragony Halloween. Some of the pictures that have inspired the tale are posted here for your enjoyment.

Having built a rich world with multiple planets to play with, I’ve decided to highlight the one which the dragons across Thyrein’s Galactic Wall have chosen for their home world. Driven out of planet after planet, hunted to extinction on many, the sentient dragons and the dragon born offspring have banded together to create a safe place for their kind.

The planet is not acknowledge by the intergalactic alliance. Many in the alliance are opposed to allowing dragon born to go unmonitored. Fear of the power that these beings hold makes gaining equal rights and protection for them difficult.

I’m still working out the details for what my story will be about, but it will feature dragons and set during the time of Halloween. What will this time of year look like for that world? What will be similar to our own? What will be different? These questions keep my mind churning with possibilities.

Do dragon children trick or treat? Do they dress up in costume? If a dragon child were to choose a costume, what would it dress up as? Would it choose to dress up as a human? If they carve pumpkins, what kinds of pictures will they carve into the fruit? Most important of all, do dragons enjoy pumpkin pie and pumpkin spice lattes?

The fun part of being a writer is getting to explore questions that probe and push the creativity of our imagination. We’ll see what I come up with.

Sign up either to read a story you wrote OR to come and just enjoy the stories of local authors. Here’s the information on the event. Go to the store’s page to learn more and to sign up.

As some of you may know, I play table shuffleboard in a couple local and national leagues. This exciting game is played on a raised table that is 22 feet long, narrow and slightly concave. The object of the game is to get your weight down the table to the scoring side. Your opponent tries to knock your weights off and/or go around your weights so that they are the ones scoring.

This year, I attended the 23rd Annual Women Wondering the World Tournament in Del City, Oklahoma. Several of the Houston ladies got together to travel there and we rented a lovely house. It was like being in a sorority with your fellow sisters for a whole week. Not that I know what that actually is like as I never joined a sorority when I was at university. But I imagine it was kinda like this past week’s adventure.

There where several events during the tournament and I decided to hop into all of them. It started on Wednesday with the AB draw. This is where a top level player is paired with a beginner player and they work as a team. I was paired up with the amazing Mary Hoang. Unfortunately, we didn’t fair well, mostly because I was so nervous I gave up way too many points on my end of the board. Still, I got to see her play and watch her strategy which was a great learning experience.

The next day’s event was the ABC Draw. Like the AB match up, players were randomly sorted into teams of 3 ladies with an advanced, intermediate, and beginner player. I had the awesome Joyce Roberts and Amelia Reed on my team. We fought hard, but were defeated quickly. Again, my nervous anxiety at failing these wonderful ladies managed to make my self-fulfilling prophecy come true — I failed them.

Then there was the Singles tournament. In the winners bracket, each match consisted of best out of 3 games of 15 points each. I won my first contest against Carla Louvier. She was a tough opponent and I managed to win just barely. Then I lost my second match up against Lesley Petterson. She is an amazing player and placed in many events. Once I struck out of the winners bracket, I landed in the loser’s bracket and had to play a single game of 21 points to stay in the running. Sadly, I lost to the amazing Linda Aragon. What a great player and such a nice person too.

The last day, was the Doubles tournament. My partner was Sharon Gilmore. We are both beginners so we didn’t expect to do very well. We lost our first match up 2 our of 3 against the powerhouse team of Helen Soto and Patty Pierce. Then we went into the losers bracket and won our first match against Kathy Sparger and Tera Bradstreet. Sadly, we lost the second match in that bracket against Cayenne Kilpatrick and Leanna Prigmore. Considering we thought we would lose every match, we did very well for our first time.

I learned so much from all the wonderful players and had a blast hanging out with the great friends from my Houston league. I will definitely do this again next year.

WIVLA (Women in the Visual and Literary Arts) have a project collaboration between a visual artist and a writer. The topic is Reflection. When I read the information about the opportunity, my mind filled with a collage idea.

For a long time, I used to oil paint. As the years have progressed, I have put that part of my creative nature aside, literally, in a closet. Mostly because I’ve lacked the space to have a studio ready to go. With time being so tight in my life, having to set everything up before painting, and then put everything away again… well… that’d pretty much be all I had time for.

For some reason, though, the WIVLA collaboration spoke to me. I could see a collage in my minds eye. I reached out to Ellen, of course, my blog partner and friend. We began to share the ideas of what I was hoping to create.

So much has been changing in my life as a woman, and the journey of a woman’s life has been filling my heart and mind. I decided to do something which expresses a reflection of womanhood.

It began with this meme. The idea behind it, that how you see yourself matters, drew me. At first, I was going to try to use smaller pictures about women engaged in aspects of their lives to somehow create the big tiger, while pasting the small kitten to look at it as a reflection.

Well, I soon got realistic. I don’t have the artistic chops for such a project. So, slowly, the project morphed. It became focused on the idea of a woman in silhouette seeing herself in a mirror. The reflection in it would be of her lifespan.

Then I started collecting the pictures from magazines. As the images emerged from the pages, the project took shape. It became about expressing the journey of a human being born female, to reflect our life’s spans and the decisions we make in each phase.

At one point, we thought of using boxes to symbolize the way that society tries to make us conform to what it considers appropriate for a woman. But in the end, we discarded that. Rosa Glenn Riley, a very dear friend, suggested adding some young girls as well, not just starting in a grown up woman.

That added an element of the men in our lives. Having found a picture of a young girl and boy playing happily together, I began to find pictures of men in the background with women in the forefront. At first we are just good friends, then society makes them become the focal point of a woman’s existence. We must be fit and sexy to attract one, but also modest and demur.

Inside us, we long to fulfill our purpose in life, with the talents and skills that we have been given. We have keen minds, and can offer professional talent to the world, yet we are pressured to be mothers and wives. While, some equality has been achieved here, there’s this idea that women should put family first, while men continue to be unencumbered by the pressure of putting parenting first.

I found beautiful stickers to add a three-dimensional element to the piece. Plus the symbolism of the animals in it: butterflies, lions, eagles, dragons. My favorite are the google eyes. We are always being watched, critiqued, and forced to stand up and defend our decisions when they don’t conform with the basic understanding of society’s traditional version of womanhood.

It was interesting when it came time to doing the older woman’s life. If you get a chance to look through a magazine, you will find that there are few images depicting a successful older women receiving accolades for professional efforts. You do find them standing behind their husbands though as they take the spot light of life achievements. And there’s a ton of pressure to remain youthful and wrinkle free. Yet, that’s not applied to men. Men can grow old and still be considered hot, wrinkled and grey hair not withstanding.

Well, here’s the end result of this project. I still need a good frame for it. But, for what it’s worth, I think it’s a pretty good reflection of womanhood. Maybe that’s what I’ll call it.