Excavation With a Side of Feng Shui:

A Poem Cycle Part II

VIII

I’m Ready For This To Be Over, Now. 

My novel shunned, paints dried,

 Must unpack, but want to cry

Enough boxes, please!

If I sit and do

One thing, beginning to end,

I feel accomplished.

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Excavation With a Side of Feng Shui

A Home Improvement Poem Cycle

Part I

   I 

Procrastination

A slob with peerless

Clutter tolerance, postpones

Huge, unstarted job.

Beige carpets dappled

With spilled tea, and other things

I no longer see.

My clutte… Read full post »

 

 By Melissa Houle

Late one summer night when I was six, my mother and I returned home exhausted after hours at the Emergency room, me with my broken left wrist newly immobilized in a plaster cast. Once home, we then collapsed at the kitchen table and ate a dinn… Read full post »

       

It's The Berries!

             By Melissa Houle

       One of my earliest breakfast table memories is of my mother setting a/… Read full post »

            If I’ve ever been turned down for a job, as a heterosexual Caucasian woman I can be 99% sure it’s because my skills did not quite match the job requirements, or because another candidate edged me out. I don’t feel &n… Read full post »

             Hello Everyone, I'm very sorry to report that last night, I had to help my darling Nina cross the rainbow bridge.    She was about three weeks shor… Read full post »

            I remember the moment I fell in love with Julia Child.  Before then, Julia Child was “that cooking lady on TV”,  and while I felt a vague kind of approval for her  I'd  never actually wat/… Read full post »

  I am one of those odd people who is periodically amused by watching paint dry.

Watercolor paints rather than house paints, that is. After oil painting proved too messy and smelly for my taste, I tried… Read full post »

1. What is your favorite word?  Prowl. It sounds exactly like the activity it describes, and it’s powerful.  Helpless creatures don’t prowl.

 2.What is your least favorite word?  Screech, although it too is very descriptive of a certain tone of voice.  Any term or/… Read full post »

 So, I have a new car as of last Friday. To my great relief.  Not least because I absolutely hate the process of obtaining a new car. It’s been a week of scouring the pre-owned car inventory of Honda dealerships from Pleasanton to San Jose.  I was glad to turn my/… Read full post »

In some old family album I have no idea where to find, there's a picture of me and my sister wearing our Christmas felt skirts on some 1960's Christmas Day. I remember how they itched and how the exuberant yarn fringe sewn around the bottom hem tickled my highly ticklish knees. … Read full post »

            Ten seconds in an out-of-control car is a very long, terrifying time.  My Honda Civic was no match for the commercial silver box truck that merged right onto the freeway exit ramp without realizing I was already occupying that pa/… Read full post »

Them There Eyes

       If Sofia Loren were a cat, I think she would have eyes like yours, Nina.  Those big golden eyes with the black eyelids that make you look as if you were wearing dramatic eye makeup.  The eyes y/… Read full post »

   “…So in that moment all the flowers  in our garden and in M. Swann’s park, and the water-lillies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the… Read full post »

The Old is New, Again

Centuries before

We could fly, we sailed over

This watery planet. 

Does It Make Too Much Sense?

Planes can’t fly through ash,

But ships can sail beneath the

Black umbrella, no? 

Old Time Glamor

“Getting there is half

The f… Read full post »

My Evil Twin Martha came roaring back to life on the morning of April First.  I hadn’t even left the local H&R Block office  in the little strip mall after my tax appointment when it happened.  The magic “refund” word was for Martha like the reviving kiss of sunse/… Read full post »

 Who could resist such a perfect excuse to go photograph flowers?   This is really my favorite season of the whole year. Most of the photos below were taken at the Gamble Garden Center   or in my mother's garden, both in Palo Alto California either this sp… Read full post »

 It may be presumptuous of me, as I am not Jewish, but I'm inspired by Sally, Deborah and Lea in wanting to remember and observe Holocaust Remembrance Day.  Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.

 So let's remember. And don't let ignorance and bigotry pass unchalleng… Read full post »

This Easter, while I doubt the recession is "over" with so many people still out of work and hurting, I  AM hoping that we're on the upswing. (That seems modest enough.)

 I hope the birthday cake I baked for my brother and my nephew will taste good as it's not the… Read full post »

From here on out, that's MISTRESS Sarah to you, worm!

     "You betcha it's true!" Sarah Palin, the one-time Governor of Alaska and Republican Vice-Presidential candidate and  current darling and political God-Mother of the Tea Party Moveme… Read full post »

In my family we’re readers.  Bedtime was story time in my childhood, and a chance for some undivided attention. As the youngest of four, this wasn’t always easy to come by, for me.  Even then, it wasn’t always a guarantee that one of my siblings wouldn&rsquo/… Read full post »

            I love Julia Child for many reasons; her Gratin Dauphinois, her Sauce Beurre Blanc, her Crème Caramel—well, I believe I’ve illustrated my point. But there are times when I don’/… Read full post »