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# Realisa

~ Living an authentic life

## Sitemaps

- [XML Sitemap](https://www.realisa.org/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website.

## Posts

- [Blog](https://www.realisa.org/blog/) - Blog
- [Reread](https://www.realisa.org/reread/) - Why return to something over and over? I am not one to reread a book. I remember a novel but I don't reread it. Once done, it can't be redone. And yet, who I am now is different than who I was and my processing, comprehension, perspective and context have changed. So, that book and
- [Step 1](https://www.realisa.org/step-1/) - I want things to be fair and kind. The counter voice admonishes and reminds me, life isn't fair. Indeed, life isn't but the aspiration, nay the commandment is to LOVE. And love is fair. God so loved the world that He sent his only son. He (note capital H) came into this world as a
- [Tackle](https://www.realisa.org/tackle/) - I get stuck. Snagged on small, distracting details or inconsistencies. Once upon a time, anxiety shrink wrapped me. It happens less off - the freeze ray of anxiety. Maybe that is time and experience. It certainly isn't a reduction in anxiety provoking situations. But now-a-days, if I am anxious, it propels me. I square off
- [Mystery](https://www.realisa.org/mystery-2/) - When I was young, my mother converted to Catholicism. I was taken along and ended up in CCD classes. My maternal grandmother had also converted to Catholicism when she remarried in her forties. She became Dorothy Hall, wife of Joe Hall who was very Catholic. So, while I was baptized as an infant at a
- [Atmosphere](https://www.realisa.org/atmosphere/) - When Artemis 2 launched, I scoffed. Annoyed. Griped about Space Bro Billionaires hijacking NASA and one of the greatest historical achievements unique to America. And while other countries have made it to space and recently, a few groups of Stellar Wealthy have gone to space like a European Tour, WE alone have stood on the
- [Try](https://www.realisa.org/try/) - Some days are just shit. There is no joy. No sunshine. No happy place. The capacity to find even a remnant or sliver of goodness feels impossible. Yesterday was that kind of day. It felt like combat. With the extra addition of gaslighting and condescension. It is a recipe for a truly unpleasant day. We
- [Microjoy](https://www.realisa.org/microjoy/) - We're all on social media too much. Social media. It's not social. If anything, it has become a pathway to avoidance and isolation. Heads crooked forward, phone in hands, fingers dragging across screens. As if reposting is the modern equivalent of show-n-tell. It is an illusion, trickery. A lie. It even robs us from being
- [Dance with mountains](https://www.realisa.org/dance-with-mountains/) - There is a fundamental need to get away. To break from the routine. We develop muscle memory for our day-to-day that allows us to be efficient and successful but in that efficiency, we underutilize our capacity. There can be weakness, contracture, atrophy in other areas less used or neglected. Taking a break, going on vacation
- [Stellar](https://www.realisa.org/stellar/) - Ten years or ten thousand hours. To become an expert at something requires time, investment, dedication and determination. There is a demand for steadfastness. The persistent application of will. And often this is at the expense of other things. To master something, one must forgo other things. Make sacrifices. One cannot have their cake and
- [Me or Mine](https://www.realisa.org/8963-2/) - Motivated to be responsible, to care for myself and make my own health a priority after nearly three decades of caring for others, I went to the doctor. Ironic. What is the proverb? The cobbler's children have no shoes. Too often, doctors do not attend to themselves the way they care for their patients. It
- [A Woman](https://www.realisa.org/a-woman/) - My childhood was filled with some very interesting women. As a young girl, I know I took these women to heart. My mom was a stay at home mother. As my parents explain, "that was our arrangement." My father left our house every morning and worked a job. He was an engineer. My mom, raised
- [Estrangement](https://www.realisa.org/estrangement/) - A December 2021 article on the BBC Family Tree website showed up on my Twitter feed this morning. There is a growing phenomenon of adult children selecting to detach from their parents. This is beyond estrangement or discordance. In the UK, estimates are that 1 in 10 people have a permanent rift with a family
- [Rejoice](https://www.realisa.org/rejoice/) - Joy is not the same as happiness. Even in seasons of health and abundance, we can lose the ability to delight in small things. Writing became my way of remembering that wonder still exists, waiting quietly in beauty, stillness, and attention.
- [Giving thanks](https://www.realisa.org/giving-thanks/) - In every day, there are things or people or situations we encounter that bring pleasure, joy, happiness, satisfaction or ease our daily life. I feel that speaking gratitude and praise aloud has power. I want to feed the positive energies in my life and cultivate a thankful existence.
- [The playlist](https://www.realisa.org/the-playlist/) - There are several playlists on my iPod that trigger very real and intense memories. Some are memories of places. Some are memories of people. I recently made a super playlist of about 5 albums that are all tethered to a specific person. I can put that playlist on and it plays for a few hours.
- [Playing possum](https://www.realisa.org/playing-possum/) - Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in faith, knowing that your fellow believers throughout the world undergo the same sufferings. [2Pet 5:8-10]. When in fear for our very lives, we have limited choices. Everything becomes binary. Adrenaline pumps
- [Relearning how to play](https://www.realisa.org/relearning-how-to-play/) - When we were children, we knew how to play. We were encouraged to play. Our mothers sent us outside with a simple command: “Go play.” At some point, we abandoned that instinct. We unlearned how to play freely. Adult play became competitive, scheduled, and often obligatory. Office leagues, church game nights, organized sports for our
- [Getting lost and found](https://www.realisa.org/getting-lost-and-found/) - Seven months lost. To the pandemic. To the monotony. To purposeful distraction. When the world grinds to a halt ( or worse, fails to grind to a halt) and a novel virus spreads across the earth, what does one do to manage. I am less worried about dying. I envisions a ravaging plague that decimated
- [The ghost of Christmas](https://www.realisa.org/8248/) - Christmas. Advent. Holidays. This bittersweet and melancholy season. I miss when my sons were little. In their Gymboree pajamas, super excited about Santa Claus and cookies and presents. It was a period of absurd overindulgence and extravagance and excess. The were spoiled. Showered with things. True piles of presents. Now, I can barely bring myself
- [Moonlight & moonshine](https://www.realisa.org/moonlight-moonshine/) - At fifty-seven, with a solid twenty-eight years of food exposure, I have a list. My top five meals. Making this list requires a unique food experience such as venue, city, romance, and my companion(s). The first time I identified a place was on my first honeymoon. O'Flarrety's in Carmel, California. By contemporary comparison, the meal
- [Messy rights](https://www.realisa.org/messy-rights/) - For the last five days, we've been staying at a Cambria Hotel in Downtown Boston. Seems newish. It was ideally located to Freight Farms headquarters where we did our farm camp training. Nonsensical that farm camp was in an absolutely urban space. But the hotel was on the Redline and helped with easy navigation around
- [Pick me!](https://www.realisa.org/pick-me/) - Do you remember being eleven? Fifth or sixth grade. Standing in a line at PE? Kick ball or dodge ball. Waiting to be picked by a team captain, a fellow eleven year old who had been elevated to Captain by your physical education teacher? And with an abnormal swiftness, a hierarchy assembled. Them and you.
- [Not done](https://www.realisa.org/not-done/) - A life is built one choice at a time, one decision, one selection. The proverbial, and at times, literal, fork in the road. Go high? Go low? Swing right? Veer left? Head up or step down? And too often, as time passes, we shed parts of ourselves, like a rose dropping petals. I prefer to
- [Dumb and dumber](https://www.realisa.org/dumb-and-dumber/) - Once, in time, a human mind imagined elevating a cathedral dome toward heaven, driven by the desire to venerate the Lord. Motivated by the cultural push to build HIGHER as if the verticality might get the contrite kneeling below an audience with the Creator. But, for a moment, can we ponder the mind that designed
- [Taking a vacation and going nowhere](https://www.realisa.org/taking-a-vacation-and-going-nowhere/) - I have been on vacation for the last week. My family was to travel to London for our Easter break. Instead, we chose to be frugal. We stayed home. We didn't do much of anything. We ate at home. We made simple meals. We stayed up late and we slept in late. We lounged in
- [The face of my child](https://www.realisa.org/the-face-of-my-child/) - I can stare at the face of one of my children and be captivated, especially if they are asleep. Their sweetness is overwhelming. Their innocence makes me feel reborn. I glimpse the hand of God in their eyelashes and their lips and their freckles. I wonder what they dream. I wonder what they feel. I
- [Painting toenails](https://www.realisa.org/painting-toenails/) - What is the point of painting toenails? Absolutely nothing except the sheer pleasure of being able to look at them. That is whimsy! Something that you do for the sheer pleasure. It gives no value, adds to meaning, serves no purpose except to please. So....I paint my toenails and wiggle them and smile.
- [People who listen](https://www.realisa.org/people-who-listen/) - Listening and hearing are not the same thing. I am thankful for the person in my life who listens to me. Often I am talking aloud, sorting through my feelings. But a truly gifted listener, can detect even in silence. Listening is not only auditory. I am thankful for the people in my life who
- [Chocolate](https://www.realisa.org/chocolate/) - Chocolate is one of the simplest things in life. It can be complex and subtle. I personally like dark chocolate. Dense and smooth and rich. I like small squares of bittersweet chocolate melting on my tongue. The flavors are intense. It can be like tasting wine. Chocolate can have peppery undertones or fruitiness. I like
- [Speaking of Love](https://www.realisa.org/speaking-of-love/) - When life slows enough to allow me to spend time thinking deeply, I often like to consider how I want the balance of my life to be weighed. I will not be a great historical figure. I doubt I will write a sentinel piece of literature. I will not make a fantastic scientific discovery. In
- [Fresh Cut Flowers](https://www.realisa.org/fresh-cut-flowers/) - There are few things in the world as temporary and transient as the beauty of a fresh cut flower. I love flowers. I have planted all kinds of flowers in my yard, mostly perennials that return each year. I have probably 20 varieties of daylilies that will bloom in May and repeat through summer. But,
- [Fighting the Blues](https://www.realisa.org/fighting-the-blues/) - There are days when IÂ lose my MOJO. When I have no oomph. There are days when I feel cloudy and blue. There are days when I wish I could stay in bed or disappear or run away. There are days when I wish someone with a giant rolling pin would roll me flat as pie
- [Real Food](https://www.realisa.org/real-food/) - Life is too short for fake food. I like real food. My mother cooked everyday. Her mother cooked everyday. My Granny canned and "put up" food. My mom prepared and froze meals to be fixed or reheated later. I work outside the home and find it hard to cook everyday, but I have learned in
- [Cookies](https://www.realisa.org/cookies/) - I love cookies. I have been baking cookies since I was about 8 years old. I would go through my mother's cook books and read recipes. My dear father probably ate more low quality cookies, simply out of love and affection for me. He even ate them if I burned them. I have a fantasy
- [Sneezing](https://www.realisa.org/sneezing/) - I like sneezing. Lately, I have been sneezing alot because my town is cloaked in smoke from a forest fire. Plus, it is the height of pollen season. I usually sneeze in triplets. Three sneezes. I feel them coming. Sneezing make my nose tingle, I have to hold my breathe. Then when I sneeze I get goose
- [Pajamas](https://www.realisa.org/pajamas/) - Who invented pajamas? Historically, people have had night clothes or bed clothes. The Victorians refined the art of clothes, having a different article of clothing for most things. The clothes they changed into to sleep were elaborate and spectacular. Today, we have less high brow taste, but sleep wear is in fashion again. I am
- [My music](https://www.realisa.org/my-music/) - Have humans always made music? Did women in ancient times sing lullabyes to their babies? I am not a great singer, I would never do karaoke and I play no instruments. I love music. All kinds of music. I love classical symphonies. I can listen to all the different sections in an orchestra. I love jazz
- [Is there value in adversity?](https://www.realisa.org/is-there-value-in-adversity/) - Most people today flee adversity. They hate being uncomfortable. We hate inconvenience. Many people feel that they are being punished if they have misfortune, as if the universe seeks retribution from them personally. Now, I am no martyr. I dislike pain. I do not want to suffer. I dread bad news. But, I have come
- [Forgiveness](https://www.realisa.org/forgiveness/) - To forgive. To be forgiven. From where does forgiveness arise? Why do we seek forgiveness? If I act in a way that harms myself or harms another, I feel compelled to ask for forgiveness. Asking requires humility. I set aside my pride. I admit my mistakes. I admit my errors. I admit my omissions. I feel contrite.
- [Sleep](https://www.realisa.org/sleep/) - Oh, to fall asleep. Sleeping is a total luxury and an ultimate pleasure. Sleep can be elusive, though. I am a good sleeper. I fall asleep fast. I sleep very hard. I dream. I have very lucid dreams and only rarely have disturbing nightmares. My dream life is complex and vivid. I can have a
- [Mother's Day](https://www.realisa.org/mothers-day/) - Today is Mother's Day. I love my mother. This is the day that we honor her, but I think the day that is most sinificant for her is my oldest sister's birthday. December 18th. I know that on the day of my first son's birth I am very reflective about motherhood. I feel overwhelmed by
- [Great Mothers](https://www.realisa.org/great-mothers/) - Motherhood is a unique path. My family is filled with remarkable women. Each has had her own path to walk, her own rewards, obstacles and blessings. I thank the Lord for all of their energy, love, affirmation, faith and courage. My Momma with my youngest Evan. The Creek behind my Memaw's house off Dog River
- [Slow and Steady](https://www.realisa.org/slow-and-steady/) - I want to live in Leisure World. I think it is hilarious that there is a place actually called Leisure World. A whole planned community focused on leisure. Apparently, I have to be retired or wealthy or both to qualify. How do I find a bit of leisure amidst the spinning riot of my day?
- [Connected](https://www.realisa.org/connected/) - How is it that I can be connected to another person, yet feel disconnected? How is it that I know I am tethered to another, yet they feel distant? There are people in my life to whom IÂ belong, people that are a part of me, that feel like strangers. I have the distant recollection
- [Does Time Heal All Wounds?](https://www.realisa.org/does-time-heal-all-wounds/) - Is time the only real tincture for emotional wounds? When another person has hurt my feelings, I can respond in a variety of ways. I can tell them they have hurt me in the most civilized way possible. Sometimes this feels humiliating because I have already felt injured by them. Explaining how they have hurt me
- [Birthdays](https://www.realisa.org/birthdays/) - Today we celebrated my youngest's 7th birthday. We had a pool party and grilled hotdogs. Summer time is all about grills, slip-n-slides, watermelon, swimming pools, sunburns and ice cream. The fact that it doesn't get dark until after 9PM makes it extra special. Our pool will be lit up and glowing like a gem in
- [Surrender](https://www.realisa.org/surrender/) - I have spent the past day on the bus from my town in Florida to Washington, DC. My oldest son is on the safety patrol trip. We left Gainesville at nearly midnight, last night and drove straight through to Springfield, Virginia. Twelve busses. Over 600 kids. It is a lesson in submission. I got on the
- [A working mother](https://www.realisa.org/a-working-mother/) - I am on a school field trip as a chaperone. Of the six chaperones, five are women and four of us work full-time. I struggle with balance as a working mother with two small kids. I worry and fear I am not doing a good job at either my paying job or as a mother.
- [Youth](https://www.realisa.org/youth/) - When was I young? I walked yesterday along the Mall in Washington, DC. I stood on the face of the statue at Haines Point. The day was breezy and sunny and felt of summer. It reminded me of my youth. I had vivid memories of being happy and young as if the world were at
- [Helpfulness](https://www.realisa.org/helpfulness/) - I am grateful to people when they are helpful and kind. It takes so much more energy to be selfish and mean. I am surprised when people are unexpectedly generous. So many in today's society think only of themsleves. I feel blessed when I get assistance when I am not asking. The abundance that some
- [Cats](https://www.realisa.org/cats/) - I have three cats. Domino is my oldest. She is 18 years old this summer. She is the offspring of a cat Paul had in college, Mattie. Sheis a calico and very petite and probably senile. Last May we got 2 new kittens. Both tabbies: one marmalade and one gray. The Orange tabby is Gumbo,
- [Doughnuts](https://www.realisa.org/doughnuts/) - I got up this morning and took my youngest son to get doughnuts. We have pretty decent doughnuts at our local grocery store, Publix. They make cake and raised and jelly filled. In our house, doughnuts usually have to have chocolate on them. We also have a Krispy Kreme. The actually make the doughnuts on
- [Granny](https://www.realisa.org/granny/) - There is a woman not included on my great mothers list. She is not there because I did not have a photograph of her. My Granny, Dorothy Fountain Cody Hall. My mother's mother was a remarkable woman. Her friends called her Dot. She lived at 150 Tuscaloosa Street in Mobile, Alabama. That was the house my
- [Providence](https://www.realisa.org/providence/) - There are days when I simply cannot imagine how I will accomplish even a FRACTION of what needs to get done. Forget anything that I may want to do! But then, the universe hands me a reprieve. I had a task I really had to accomplish today before noon. I knew, that as much as
- [My Daddy](https://www.realisa.org/my-daddy-2/) - I danced at my wedding to the song by Bette Milder, called "You Are My Hero". I danced with my Daddy. My last dance as his little girl. When I was little, he would ask me to dance. He would have me stand on the tops of his feet and he would dance with me.
- [Listening](https://www.realisa.org/listening/) - I downloaded a book this morning to go on my iPod. I use Audible.com. I can download unabridged books. I think there is a difference in how I experience a book when I listen to it as opposed to seeing it. The spoken word goes through a different part of my brain than the written word.
- [My Daddy](https://www.realisa.org/my-daddy/) - I love my Daddy. My relationship with my father in the last few years has been estranged for a variety of reasons. It does not change the fundamental feelings I have towards my father. In fact, the feeling I have for my Daddy makes the last few years all the more difficult. I have chosen
- [Crying](https://www.realisa.org/crying/) - Some people cry at the drop of the hat. Some people never cry. Some people cannot tolerate another person's tears. I have known my husband since we were 12 years old. We are 40 now and I have never seen him crying. I have seen angst and turmoil and sorrow. I have seen him channel
- [Rain](https://www.realisa.org/rain/) - I got caught in the rain this evening. Actually I ran out into the rain on purpose. My oldest son and I had stopped to pick up Chinese food and juice boxes. We walk out of the store and it is POURING. No lightening, just a downpour. Big fat raindrops that pelt you. I leave
- [Escapes](https://www.realisa.org/escapes/) - I am such an escapist. When I was little, I would hide someplace with a book and read. I would get so immersed in reading, I wouldn't hear my Mom calling me. I was a a swimmer in my youth and the solitary act of swimming laps was the kind of repetitive task in which
- [It's the Little Things](https://www.realisa.org/its-the-little-things/) - Happiness is in the little details. Joy resides in the minute details. Passion is revealed in the attention to the smallest of things. Likewise, frustration results from the little offenses. Anger is provoked by the tiny insults. Insecurity or fear can be triggered by a facial expression or noise. Humans are constantly processing data. We
- [Candy](https://www.realisa.org/candy/) - I am now basically a chocolate lover. I love dark chocolate. Why bother with anything else? But, when I was a kid I loved all kinds of candy. Some of them are no longer made. There was a drug store we usually went to to buy our candy, called Neisner's. I would save the quarters
- [Blueberries](https://www.realisa.org/blueberries/) - It is blueberry time here. It has been a dry year and there was a late freeze. I hope that I have found an orchard with berries. I am gonna try to pick today. Tomorrow I will make blueberry jam. The women in my family have always canned. I make a Pear Conserve every September
- [Sight](https://www.realisa.org/sight/) - I am reading Anthony Doerr's book, Four Seasons in Rome. Like Mr. Doerr, I have recognized that life speeds along and we hurtle through space and time without seeing, without contemplating, without feeling most things. When we do slow down enough to look at the bark of a tree, the cowlick of our child's hair,
- [Games](https://www.realisa.org/games/) - When I was younger, games came in cardboard boxes. We had a closet in the hallway that held all the games. Games like Life, Sorry, Clue, Parcheese, Trouble, and the classic Monopoly. Then there were the extravagant games that the neighbor kids had like Mouse Trap and Operation. Operation was super cool because it required
- [Driving Music](https://www.realisa.org/driving-music/) - There are certain songs that I love to drive to. My all time favorite is Boston. LOUD. Some others that make the short list: Bachman Turner Overdrive, Jane's Addiction, U2, Blonde. I have very vivid memories of driving back from the waterslide park in Homestead in Debbie's car. I had to be about 14 or
- [Abundance](https://www.realisa.org/abundance/) - I am blessed with abundance. Abundance is often associated with things and possessions. Indeed, I have an abundance of stuff. I have far more stuff than is necessary or reasonable. I wish to divest myself of many of my possessions. Why do we accumulate things? The accumulated items are usually not very important, special, nostalgic
- [Thinking Happy](https://www.realisa.org/thinking-happy/) - Bobby McFerrin sings a song called Don't Worry, Be Happy. It is a happy tune and when you listen to it you cannot help but feel lighter and silly. Silliness helps us all feel happier. Sometimes though, we don't have the freedon to be silly. So, are there other ways to THINK OURSELVES HAPPY? Happiness
- [Authentication](https://www.realisa.org/authentication/) - When you buy something at a store, our debit cards are verified, our driver's licenses are confirmed, we wait for an approval number. Our data gets entered and doubled checked for accuracy. It is all meant to authenticate that we are who we present ourselves to be. Granted, people can cheat the system occasionally. The imposter
- [Disparity](https://www.realisa.org/disparity/) - Disparity is when two things are different. It is an inequality, a dissimilar state of being. Disparity is not disagreement. There is the freedom to compromise when settling an argument. But disparity cannot be reconciled; it requires the one to become the other, to join ranks. The implication is that for relationships with a disparity, one person must
- [Vows](https://www.realisa.org/vows/) - Earlier today, my niece got married. She and Enoch exchanged vows in front of their families and friends. Enoch's father performed their ceremony. It had to be a special place as a father to preside over the marriage of you first born son. And my sister and her husband, gave away their second child, little
- [Time](https://www.realisa.org/time/) - If enough time passes, things can really change. Time folds back on itself and like an Origami swan, a beautiful thing is formed. I watched my niece marry. I looked at the faces of her siblings and they are all nearly grown. My sister and her husband will have been married 25 years August 7th.
- [Cats](https://www.realisa.org/cats-2/) - I have three cats. The oldest is a petite, frail calico named Domino. She is nearly 19 years old. She sleep alot and always seems cold. The other two cats we got last May as a birthday present for Evan. Domino barely tolerates these new boys. The younger cats are both boys named Luther and
- [Expectation](https://www.realisa.org/expectation/) - It is our nature to have expectations. We expect our birthdays to be remembered. We expect a present at Christmas. We expect coffee to be hot and French fries to be crispy and cookies to be sweet. My kids expect the Tooth Fairy to drop them some cash if they lose a tooth. They expect
- [Lightening and Thunder](https://www.realisa.org/lightening-and-thunder/) - I was sitting at my desk earlier this afternoon working. I usually keep the curtain pulled across the window because of glare. The window in my office faces west and as the sun crosses to the back side of my office the glare affects my ability to see my computer screen. I realized I was
- [Clutter](https://www.realisa.org/clutter/) - Somedays, I want very much to write. I want to think of something clever or poignant or funny. But then I have days like today. My mind is full of clutter. A clutter of thoughts, distractions and lists. I have a continuous list of things I need to do, another list of things I want
- [Basic Instincts](https://www.realisa.org/basic-instincts/) - Some people are always happy and positive. Medical studies on longevity have proven that optimism is associated with long life spans. Can you learn to be optimistic? Is a person born a "Ziggy"? My sister identified with the cartoon Ziggy. She would cut them out of the newspaper and put them on her book covers
- [Entropy](https://www.realisa.org/entropy/) - When I studied physics, Entropy was the law of disorder. Basically, when you leave things alone, they fall into disarray, disorder and eventually chaos. Without energy to maintain order, entropy ensues. So, it seems like a losing battle. If order requires constant energy....who has that? If you dawdle for a brief moment, things start to
- [Fiddling](https://www.realisa.org/fiddling/) - I am a fiddler. I fiddle with things. I roll quarters in my hands. I bend and unbend paper clips. I like finger puzzles like Tangles. When I was little I like string games. A 24 inch long piece of string tied in a circle. Cat's Craddle. Jacob's ladder. The Witch's broom. The farmer's overalls.
- [Staying Up Late](https://www.realisa.org/staying-up-late/) - When I was a kid, it was special to get to stay up late. I remember that our TV shows came on at 7PM. Star Trek. Happy Days. Wonderful World of Disney. We got to stay up late on holidays. New Year's Eve all the grown ups would go to someone's house on the block
- [Friends](https://www.realisa.org/friends/) - Is there a point in life when we stop making friends? Do we reach a certain age when meeting new people and making new friends has past? Are friendships only a thing of childhood? Are we so incapable of that silly, child-like infatuation of making a new friend? I remember the first day of school
- [Sensations](https://www.realisa.org/sensations/) - There are five senses. Sight. Smell. Taste. Hearing. Touch. Touch is the only sensory system that gives two sets of "data" to my brain. If I run my hands through my hair, my scalp feels the hair pull back and I feel the hair run through my fingers. If I smack a mosquito, I feel
- [Speed](https://www.realisa.org/speed/) - Time has a way of speeding away from us. I complain of the sensation that I cannot control things and that life is moving too fast. I made a conscious decision to disconnect and downshift for my birthday. Literally. The past few years have been at a breakneck speed. I know that I don't want
- [Fascination](https://www.realisa.org/fascination/) - I am visiting my friend. She lives in a suburb of one of America's largest cities. She has an amazing marraige and 4 spectacular kids. Her oldest son is my godson and we share the same birthday. I have been given the priviledge of being welcomed into the simple daily life she leads. I have
- [Taking a Seat](https://www.realisa.org/taking-a-seat/) - "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted" Luke 14:7-14 At Mass this morning, the readings were all about humility. We are told to conduct our affairs with humility, to humble ourselves to find favor with God. The greater you are the more He asks of
- [Quiet](https://www.realisa.org/quiet/) - There are different kinds of quiet. At this moment, I am enjoying the most delicate and beautiful form of quietude. I am in a sleeping house. I woke to help Paul get off to his motorcycle class(a source for a different kind of post). After he left, I was fully awake. The A/C is running.
- [A Crown of Roses](https://www.realisa.org/the-rosary/) - I found the most amazing website called 59beads. I love praying the Rosary. I find great solice and peace in the string of beads. I think the mysteries of the Rosary or profound. Indeed, it would seems that the prayer beads in American culture are a predominantly Catholic article. Around the world, prayer beads are
- [Precious](https://www.realisa.org/140/) - There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. ~Thomas Merton Today is for many a somber day. I think today is my generation's equivalent to Pearl Harbor or the day JFK was shot. I remember exactly where I was. I feel that feeling of shock and
- [Bouncing Balls](https://www.realisa.org/juggling-rocks/) - "God has a task for you. He has handed you a stone. It is smaller than a loaf of bread and easy to carry. He asks you if you can carry it. He asks you to carry it up to the top of this mountain. You can take your time. He asks you to affirm
- [These are a few of my favorite things](https://www.realisa.org/these-are-a-few-of-my-favorite-things/) - I was recently asked what I like. What do I like to do? I had realized that while there are some things I like but I rarely ever do them now. I really love to cook. I love to search for recipes. I like to read about ingredients. I like to plan menus. I absolutely
- [Jokes](https://www.realisa.org/jokes/) - Do you ever wonder who told the first joke? How long ago in human existence did man start telling jokes? Humor is a particularly human trait. Maybe apes and orangutans are tricksters and playful, but the art of telling a joke is unique. It is divine. I believe God has a spectacular sense of humor.Â
- [Serendipity](https://www.realisa.org/serendipity/) - Serendipity often brings the unexpected. It is amazing that when she arrives because she often brings something you desire or need. She is not fate. She is not coincidence. She is kin to providence and therefore expects us to pause and acknowledge her. Serendipity is more than good fortune or bad luck. I think it
- [Grief](https://www.realisa.org/grief/) - Grief is one of the most powerful emotions we can ever experience. In our society, grief is neat and tidy. It is compartmentalized and orderly. When someone dies, we call the phone tree of relatives, we call the funeral director, we pick a box, we call the church, we call the caterer, we call the
- [Re-Runs](https://www.realisa.org/re-runs/) - T.V. has changed. besides the 3000 cable channels, there is programming aimed directly at our children. Some of it is actaully really funny. While I loathe Barney and Sponge Bob, most of the shows are actually quite good. When I was young, the only T.V. geared directly towards children was Saturday morning cartoons, "Creature feature",
- [What are you thinking?](https://www.realisa.org/what-are-you-thinking/) - I was once quite curious and I would ask people, "What are you thinking?" It was a naive and impulsive thing to ask. I remember being first married and asking Paul at random moments, "What are you thinking?" I am sure it feels like a trick question. I asked it alot. I really wanted to
- [Anonymity](https://www.realisa.org/anonymity/) - I never kept a journal or a diary. I had this envy for girls that had the 5x5 inch lockable diaries. One of my sisters got one every year for Christmas. She kept it hidden. Now, I have STARTED countless diaries. Occasionally, I will come across some binder with 6-8 pages of writing that I
- [Apples](https://www.realisa.org/apples/) - I live in a state that apples do not grow. We have oranges, loquats, blueberries, strawberries, grapefruit, papaya, guava, mangoes, raspberries, grapes (muscadines, really) and sadn pears. We don't grow apples. I love apples. I walked into The Fresh Market and there was a display of a new variety of apples, called Honeycrisps. I have
- [Obstinate](https://www.realisa.org/obstinate/) - There are mornings when I resist adulthood, refuse responsibility like a whining, tantrum throwing four-year-old willful child. I don't want to! I thrash about in my bed literally, defiantly avoiding the floor and verticality. I don't want to! Get up. Go exercise. Feed the cat. make the lunch. Get dress for work. I don't want
- [Lumen](https://www.realisa.org/lumen/) - Absenteeism needs explanation. Sometimes its illness. You can get a note from your doctor for that. Sometimes its a family emergency. You place a call to your confidantes and get on a prayer request chain or an obituary gets printed. Understandable reason for being out of the loop. Sometimes its not an absence but rather
- [Wake me up](https://www.realisa.org/7088/) - I find this note left in front of the coffee maker. Waking to such a sweet note thoroughly makes my day and re-orders whatever might be misaligned in my life. While I get lonely and occasionally feel marginalized - for it is not the natural order of things for my children to serve as my
- [Bits](https://www.realisa.org/bits/) - Ash Wednesday shared with Valentine's Day. There is resonance with that pairing. Like siblings that share the same cleft in the chin or a widow's peak, Ash and Valentine share love and sacrifice. Two days later, it is the first Friday of the Lenten season, and I am reminded about my call to sacrifice. What
- [Dust to dust](https://www.realisa.org/dust-to-dust/) - Stillness is elusive. To still your body or your mind requires a will that is counterintuitive. Why should being still demand force. Maybe for others, this is different. They may have the skill to drift passively into quietude, even master the knack to sit down and be instantly still, present and calm. For me, I'd
- [Ingredients](https://www.realisa.org/ingredients-2/) - Sitting in a restaurant on Mother's Day, a discourse ensued between my adult sons who offered commentary on their peers. We'd been talking about the iniquitousness of Uber Eat and Bite Squad. "Aren't they expensive?" I asked. (Apparently not if you are a frequent flyer.) There is no much waster! Doesn't your generation care about
- [Promise](https://www.realisa.org/promise/) - Do you keep the promises to make to yourself? The little ones and the big ones? Drink less. Sleep more. Floss. Declutter. Try to stop cursing. Climb the mountain. Plant the garden. Go on that trip. Fall in love. It is too easy to procrastinate or forget or neglect. And time slips away. Be careful.
- [Don't miss your moment](https://www.realisa.org/dont-miss-your-moment/) - Three days ago Spain won the Women's World Cup in football (soccer). And in the celebration and elation, the president of Spain's soccer federation kissed Jennifer Hermosa. And this wasn't a kiss-kiss-kiss triple action cheek kiss of the Europeans. This was a full-on lip-to-lip, mouth-to-mouth of a stranger man on a woman-not-his-partner. And it seems
- [Food memories](https://www.realisa.org/food-memories/) - Wednesday. Apex of the curve that is the work week. I was to have Friday off. A short week. Friday. Wife day. The day I do the wifely things - even when I was single. I savored my alternating Fridays off to do those chores and errands that just cannot get done in the slim
- [Snark](https://www.realisa.org/snark-2/) - It is impossible to be grateful and grumble at the same time. Lesson: focus on the gratitude and inoculate yourself against the snark. Except, sometimes, the snarky, disgruntled mumblings are the only thing that combats a feeling of utter impotence. Maybe that's why the pitch of societal discord and dissatisfaction seems so extreme. We all
- [Market waste](https://www.realisa.org/market-waste/) - Saturday morning in Boston, we took the subway to Haymarket. We went early because our local farmers market starts promptly at 8 am and its busy. Our local farmers and vendors pick the previous day or very early the morning of market. So, its FRESH and LOCAL. Haymarket touted as a farmers market was nothing
- [Everything](https://www.realisa.org/everything/) - Google says that the word everything appears in the Bible 83 times. Aside, I love that its a prime number. 83. Do everything with love. There is time for everything. You have nothing but possess everything. Let everything that has breath give praise to the Lord. You can do anything but not everything is beneficial.
- [Time tables](https://www.realisa.org/time-tables/) - Where does time go? Time is fleeting. What is the adage? When your ten years old, a year is 10% of your life. It is a significant allotment. But when you're 57 (my best friend insists we are 56), a year is 1/56th of your life. When I was thirty, I was a third year
- [Attention](https://www.realisa.org/attention/) - Sit down. Breathe. Stop thinking so you can start thinking. The mind gets cluttered. With everything. So much of everything it ends up being nothing. How do we latch onto our creativity when our minds cannot access that reservoir? For the creatives, we are persistently and perpetually aware of that well. We are as aware
- [Frugal](https://www.realisa.org/frugal-2/) - Frugality is a practice, a habit, a principle. While I can be extravagant and impulsive, in many ways, I am frugal. I like to use what I have. And, if I am honest, I often have plenty. Plenty is the preparedness of the frugal person. I have a well stocked pantry, I plan to have
- [Determined](https://www.realisa.org/determined/) - Sitting at the outdoor patio at SuperetteGNV, a lovely wine bar on the east side of town, he asks me the definition of determined. He'd written a business proposal and wanted to confirmed he'd used the word in proper context. The root word - determine - indeed has five definitions. The origin of the word
- [Akilter](https://www.realisa.org/akilter/) - Do you ever feel off? Akilter. Not like vertigo. Or ill-fitted shoes. Or a sunburn. Or that vague prodrome before a cold. I mean that feeling of not fitting in your skin or like your persona is askew. You just don't feel right, or think right. It's not that your wrong or in error but
- [Choice](https://www.realisa.org/choice-2/) - A new season of the podcast Serial dropped last week. I listened to the inaugural season years ago while waiting to pick up my not-yet-driving younger son from high school. The new three-part season is lovely and heart-breaking. And while is pitches itself as a story about an already bent family being permanently and irrevocably
- [Reckless](https://www.realisa.org/reckless/) - Think of what you were when you were called, the scripture quotes Jesus. You weren't wise or influential or of noble birth. You were ordinary. Maybe less than ordinary. But the lesson is that God choses, selects, seeks, bestows upon the ordinary the role of becoming extraordinary to teach and be an example to the
- [Molasses Reef](https://www.realisa.org/molasses-reef/)
- [BOLD](https://www.realisa.org/bold/) - The whole point was the silver lining, find the goodness. Turn it over and change your perspective. If you can shift your perspective, you can change your state of mind, your attitude. That was the theory. And statistically speaking, it works. It is a conscious exercise, practiced mindfulness. I recall childhood and the wonderment of
- [Linkin Park and The Hunting Party](https://www.realisa.org/linkin-park-and-the-hunting-party/) - I've been to some great concerts in my life. I stood in line with my sons yesterday waiting to get into the GENERAL ADMISSION area at George Steinbrenner Field in Tampa. Those cheap, seatless tickets cost $89 before taxes and tack-ons. We talked about other concerts I've attended and the people around us chimed in
- [Day 1](https://www.realisa.org/day-1/) - Last night I was challenged by a sorority sister, Deb Shapiro, to do a "3 Positive Thoughts" project. I am supposed to write each day for five days three things for which I am thankful. She picked me to be one of her challengees because I had posted pictures and personal lamentations about taking my
- [Day 2](https://www.realisa.org/day-2/) - Day two of this gratitude project: list 3 things every day for a total of five days. The ability to name things specifically is directly proportional to the positive (or negative) state of my mind. Generally, I am always grateful. Generally, I can always place myself in the hierarchy of woes and lamentations. My children
- [The List](https://www.realisa.org/7297/) - The universe hands me things I need. I may not know I need them....yet. The universe sends me things, puts things (or people) in my path that provoke me, challenge me, inspire me and generally offer the bricks (or mortar) to build whatever it is I need. Sometimes I don't know what I need. These
- [The Northwest](https://www.realisa.org/the-northwest/) - I am in Seattle to take board re-certifications. I've never been to Seattle or anywhere in the far northwest. I am about as far from Florida as I can get in the continental United States. I live in a very FLAT state. Seattle sits on the eastern side of Puget Sound, a large inlet. The
- [Seattle discoveries](https://www.realisa.org/seattle-discoveries/) - Time for exploring in Seattle was limited. My conference lectures ran from 6 am until after a normal dinner time. I had Friday to walk around downtown but otherwise it was limited. These are some of the places I found or visited. Metsker Maps: a true map store with those old fashioned maps that unfold
- [Halloween in the Ridge](https://www.realisa.org/halloween-in-the-ridge/) - The aerial view of my childhood neighborhood belies a stillness that never existed. Cutler Ridge or The Ridge as we all now affectionately call it, was a swarm of activity. This was my home. It's impossible to accurately account for the number of children in the area east of US1 and ranged from Galloway Road
- [Lose a leg](https://www.realisa.org/lose-a-leg/) - One of the blessings of owning my own business is being connected with my employees. After so many years, you can't help but be involved and concerned about each others families and children. It's what make is especially hard when someone is sick, when a child is gravely ill. This past summer, one of our
- [Laugh](https://www.realisa.org/laugh/) - I saw Wild today, the new Reese Witherspoon movie. I also happened to watch the latest episode of Mario Batali's High Road, the mini vignettes on Hulu. The same sentiment appears in both pieces. You can chose to laugh or cry. It all boils down to that. Do you want to laugh or cry? It
- [Monday Monday](https://www.realisa.org/monday-monday/) - It's been eons since I had a random Monday off work. This whole week I escape work to spend Christmas week with my sons. Next week, they shift to the father and I return to work. My Oldest went off to college in August and the house has been only The Youngest and I -
- [Seeds](https://www.realisa.org/seeds-2/) - Having a hiatus from work restores - or should restore - faith in those endeavors. If the sabbatical fails to rejuvenate one's passion for their chosen work, then the possibility of being vocationally misguided exists. And it should be a vocation. Most people think of vocation as a divine call to serve God behind a
- [Wind](https://www.realisa.org/wind/) - The cold is coming tonight. While 'cold' is relative for Floridians, having temperatures below 30F with wind chills down into the teens is truly rare. The oddity of this front is the wind. Wind is a summer phenomena. Wind is a tropical storm-hurricane characteristic. Wind in the winter is frankly disturbing. I sat trying to
- [Good Medicine](https://www.realisa.org/good-medicine/) - What responsibility life lays at our feet! Each of us given a bundle to bare. My vocation - at times - hands me a large portion. It is a blessing, a true honor to be asked to serve. I fret about my business and if we are doing enough "business" which feels quite tacky given
- [Safe Harbor](https://www.realisa.org/safe-harbor/) - Yesterday, my mom got bit by some fire ants. In my neck of the woods, fire ants are a plague and invasive. All she did was pull-up a volunteer fern in one of her flower beds. She has a 'yard man' who does her yard. He was there working. She got bit by a tiny
- [Be Still](https://www.realisa.org/be-still/) - "If today you hear God's voice, harden not your heart." Ps 95:8 At Mass this morning, deacon mentioned Fr. Meninger's upcoming visit to Gainesville. He is a Trappist monk that teaches contemplative prayer. "Be still and know that I am God." An epiphany opened before me. Some problems have no answer. Some worries cannot be
- [Blue Books](https://www.realisa.org/blue-books/) - I recall an exam in college where I answered the wrong question. In the days that predated multiple choice bubble-in, examinations were written long hand in blue books. For an hour, I wrote out my response for the exam except I was answering the wrong question. I misread the question and off I went like
- [It's my birthday](https://www.realisa.org/its-my-birthday/) - I'm a gadget girl. I love gizmos and gadgets and trinkets and contraptions. But they need to be functional. I especially like the upgrade. I loved Teacake, my super sexy Lexus IS250, which I drove for 11 years. But I love Omar Little, my (now 1 year old) Lexus Ux hybrid. He gets 42 miles
- [Clean](https://www.realisa.org/clean/) - I have a cold, a simple, common cold: adenovirus or rhinovirus. It started with a spastic coughing episode at work, like I'd inhaled wrong. I never catch anything from patients. Rather, I think this virus is a species always lurking around our airways but that rarely gets introduced deep enough into our airways to cause
- [Trifecta](https://www.realisa.org/7370/) - In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Three is my favorite number for a multitude of reason. I fiddle with numbers in my head, reducing number combinations down to the prime number 3. I do it with receipts and phone numbers. I also prefer three in other groupings. I plant
- [Lenten Sacrifice](https://www.realisa.org/lenten-sacrifice/) - Ash Wednesday begins the Lenten season, when I elect to sacrifice a behavior or trait or habit. I consider repeating sacrifices I've made in previous years: pessimism, criticism, doubt, anxiety. These are behaviors that diminish me and separate me from God - or the whole person He planned. Some people give up Facebook to devote
- [Fearfully Made](https://www.realisa.org/fearfully-made/) - There are only a few times in my life when I have been afraid. As an adult to be fearful is unusual - at least for me. I do not confuse nervousness like you have before getting on a rollercoaster with fear. I don't misconstrue trepidation like you might have before loading your family onto
- [Hope Springs Eternal](https://www.realisa.org/hope-springs-eternal/) - Once I was clueless about how to pray. Prayer was mostly a petition for rescue or a wish list like a child would give to Santa Claus. Then I learned to pray from a tiny book called the Miracle Hour. My prayers became platitudes and gratitudes. I gave thanks for everything from paper clips to
- [Sound and fury](https://www.realisa.org/sound-and-fury/) - "Calm down", he says. "Just you calm down." He says it in a calm but stern voice. It makes me everything but calm. It incites me. In the moment, when he says it, I am instantly anything but calm. I hurl away from Planet Calm at warp speed. It wasn't even an argument. Or a
- [Again](https://www.realisa.org/again/) - I am gearing up to write again. The first step is to write on the blog. The second step is to stop pouring other fiction into my head so I can pour out the fiction inside my head. This means no reading novels. No listening to Audible. No pod casts. No binge watching TV, Hulu
- [Share](https://www.realisa.org/share/) - I've said it repeatedly. I learn more from my patients than they learn from me. This week, a patient shared how to make my own laundry detergent. Yes, my patients know me well enough to know I am the kind of person that would make my own laundry detergent. They bring me jars of homemade
- [Time](https://www.realisa.org/time-3/) - Time presses forward, marching perpetually into the future and trailing behind like the phosphorous tail of a comet. Time flows, deceptively slow and almost undetectable like a calm river current, barely any motion upon the surface. Other times, it crashes through like a colossal tsunami pulverizing a path, merciless. It will not be limited or
- [The Orchardist](https://www.realisa.org/the-orchardist/) - I recently listened to this novel. I downloaded from Audible. I always listen to the unabridged versions and while I can read faster than I can listen to the spoken novel, I enjoy being able to sew or garden while reading. This novel is the most beautiful, lyrical, breathtaking work that I have read
- [Magic lilies](https://www.realisa.org/magic-lilies/) - In the late spring and early summer, after the heavy thunderstorms roll through and lightening has struck the ground, causing lights to flicker and computer hard drives to whir and crash, the rain lilies arrive. Some people call them fairy lilies or Zephyr lilies. They are a flower of my childhood, a flower I
- [Ranting and calmness](https://www.realisa.org/ranting-and-calmness/) - There have been a few things in the news lately that tumble about in my brain. Often, it is not the big news, it's not the bombing or the tsunami or a(nother) police shooting. Human stories catch me, the ones that bring out the trolls who are more interested in spewing their hate and fomenting
- [Love. Period.](https://www.realisa.org/love-period/) - The whole Rachel Dolezal stuff evaporates instantly when a 21 year old white man gets himself invited to Wednesday night scripture study at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC. After sitting for an hour beside the pastor and among a group of God-fearing folks, he stands up and shoots them. In church. With the
- [Ticker Tape](https://www.realisa.org/ticker-tape/) - Once criticized for always doing 'too much', I've learned to be still. On days like today, and especially on Sundays, I struggle with that ancient drive to DO. There is always something to do. Doing things keeps me busy and distracted. Being still demands discipline. Being still is not easy. Being still is different than
- [Smile](https://www.realisa.org/smile-2/) - The yoga instructor started the practice with a guided meditation. Close your eyes, she said, and imagine a warm pool of water at the center of your brain. Then she said, smile on the inside at all the cells in your body and feel the warmth flow from that pool of water. Smile on the
- [Solutions](https://www.realisa.org/solutions/) - Some days just suck. Like epic suckage. You leave work and trudge through the grocery store getting.....what was it you needed from the store? Often, you get halfway home and realize that you just spent $41.97 at Publix and DID NOT GET DEODORANT! Like I said...suckage. I will smell like a 17 year old boy
- [No doze](https://www.realisa.org/no-doze/) - Sleep comes easily. Usually. I can sleep anywhere. I love naps. I even take little power naps at work: 20 minutes in a dark exam room at lunch. I even squeeze in a quick dream. But lately, sleep has been problematic. I follow all the rules. No caffeine in the afternoon. No late eating. No
- [Music Lessons](https://www.realisa.org/music-lessons/) - Why write? The bane and joy of any person with a ticker tape running through their head if to get it down on paper. Do I write the fiction, threading together all the beads of novel ideas and clever plot twists? Do I wax poetic about the beauty (and even horror) of my daily world,
- [Audacity](https://www.realisa.org/audacity-2/) - Some days, life is full of friction. Some days, every step, every thought, is a push, requires energy. Some days, nothing is ease. Some days there is no choice but to be still. Doing is nigh impossible. For all I do, these days are painful. For I must DO. I am a Doer. I do
- [Keep living](https://www.realisa.org/keep-living/) - I've tried to imagine the fear in Paris after Friday's terror attack. The bombing of the WTC and the Pentagon were horrific on such a grand scale it is hard to fathom. Those attacks, especially for those of us who do not live in NYC or DC (or in Pennsylvania) watched the planes and the
- [Bravely](https://www.realisa.org/bravely/) - How significant is a new year? Each day is a new day, right? The fog of sleep lifts and the conscious mind focuses. Everyday, we must engage the day, choosing to be and do the day. Sometimes, when we are wounded or reticent, we avoid the day. We shelter at home, protecting ourselves from the
- [Gifts](https://www.realisa.org/gifts-3/) - Epiphany celebrates the giving of gifts, it is the Little Christmas long supplanted by December 25th, which is really about Santa Claus and the secular notion of christmas (note the lower case). You have to work hard at centering December 25th of the Nativity and the birth of Our Lord. But Epiphany has no rivals.
- [Arriving](https://www.realisa.org/arriving/) - My intention at yoga and when I pray my rosary is to be open. Help me be open. Open to new things. New relationships. Open to new experiences. Open to forgiveness. Open for the new year and whatever it may bring. Open to love. Open to remembering the good things about the past. I envision
- [Let](https://www.realisa.org/let/) - There is something about LETTING. Letting another person do something for you. Their offer is a gift and not an indication of your weakness or dependency. But it sure does feel like that some times. These are the conditioned responses of the adult world - learned over the course of a lifetime of interactions and
- [Friday Eve](https://www.realisa.org/friday-eve/) - Friday Eve is the best week night, especially when I have Friday off work. It is cause for celebration. Often, when I get off work, I hit the wall pretty hard. Exhausted. Like any marathon runner, you pace yourself for the distance you know must be traveled. And only that distance. And when the race
- [Anchors and shelters](https://www.realisa.org/anchors-and-shelters/) - Twenty years ago today I gave birth. I know today is his birthday. On my own birthday, I think about how old I am. And my birthday is all about me. And I am sure, to him, today is all about his birthday. But twenty years ago, I gave birth. Of all the things in
- [Enough](https://www.realisa.org/enough/) - I should write even if I feel like no one is listening. I read a blog post shared on a friend's Facebook page and the blogger listed out the reasons to write. I fall away from writing for a multitude of reasons that boil down into not having enough time not having enough energy not
- [Small Objects](https://www.realisa.org/small-objects/) - I love the sound of vinyl records. I wish I still had all my vinyl records. I loved sitting on the floor of my bedroom with a stack of 45 records. I shaved several years of sanity off my mother by playing "Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree" over and over and
- [Pick one](https://www.realisa.org/pick-one/) - Have the Fates written our stories already? At creation, when we were woven in the womb, was our destiny also constructed? Do our choices matter? I believe they do. I think it is the seat of our soul, the vital and integral component that transforms a brain into a mind. To think and to know
- [Good](https://www.realisa.org/good/) - I prefer a solid night of sleep before starting a new week. It's kind of like eating a good breakfast and setting off the day well. I did not sleep well last night. I woke at 4 am in a sweat. It wasn't a hot flash or anything hormonal. It felt like hypoglycemia. Cause? I
- [Forces](https://www.realisa.org/forces-2/) - STAR WARS: The Journey of a Lightsaber If this video doesn't give you chills, you're not a true STAR WARS fan. Posted by Jake Hamilton Fox 32 Chicago on Thursday, March 31, 2016 Beware of the Dark Side! Do not give into the darkness: anger, resentment and fear. The modern, universal story about the battle
- [Join](https://www.realisa.org/join/) - Occasionally I hear something that pings in my brain, making a connection and revealing something I recognize as TRUTH. On NPR this morning, Shankar Vedantam, the host of the Hidden Brain podcast spoke to David Green about new research about dancing. Well, the study used dancing to measure something else: pain. Listen to the segment
- [Pick one](https://www.realisa.org/pick-one-2/) - When you feel and think that life opens up and the flow smooths out a new event merges into your path forcing you to speed up, slow down, brake abruptly, catch your breath maybe swerve to avoid collision. At the beginning of my 40s, I lamented the breakneck speed of my 30s. I felt as
- [Doors](https://www.realisa.org/doors/) - Remember that daytime game show The Price is Right? At the end, the winner got to select a door. What was behind the door? The contestant knew that behind one door was a new car (!) or a fabulous vacation or a year's worth of Alpo dog food :(. It was random and luck and
- [Do the Proof](https://www.realisa.org/do-the-proof/) - Focus on the problem or focus on the solution? Is it the math equation or the answer, the theorem or the proof? Problems are elegant, captivating, maybe laden with emotional value, bereft with implied burdens or provocative in nature. Often, a problem rings our bells and gets us fired up. We can get distracted by
- [Summit](https://www.realisa.org/summit/) - In two days I will be fifty. Fifty. I'm not "taking it hard" or bothered by it, not in the cliche way. I keep looking at it thinking that fifty is not so bad. It's kind of impressive. I'm crossing a milestone, for sure. This was the ascent. Right? If so, I've paced myself well.
- [Funny Shoes and Tang](https://www.realisa.org/funny-shoes-and-tang/) - I am a Wednesday child. Full of woe. More like full of Whoa! I was a Go Baby, active and hyper. As I look back over fifty years there are some things I must acknowledge. I had a deformed foot at birth. My very smart mother insisted to the doctor that my right foot was
- [Absentia](https://www.realisa.org/8136/) - Each day, driving to and from work, I pass a large parcel of land. New owners bought the acreage and cleared the wooded land, leveled it, reseeded it, put up a three-rail fence and began construction on a house, tucked behind a copse of trees they'd left untouched. The house is not visible from the
- [Reach](https://www.realisa.org/reach/) - We often do for others that which we desire for ourselves. We give praise and offer affirmations to our children because we deeply desire the same kindness. We devote time to bake cupcakes or volunteer for the shelter because we value acts of service. Maybe we pamper our pets with snuggle time because we need
- [The Horror](https://www.realisa.org/the-horror/) - It's Election Day. This election cycle's ugliness exceeds all before. I am reading Amy Voscamp's A Thousand Gifts and the section I sat reading yesterday was about the ugliness in the world. It made me think of Joseph Conrad's book, The Heart of Darkness and the horror. Am I part of the horror? The ugliness?
- [Snark](https://www.realisa.org/snark/) - It was a snarky day. Holy cow. I. Was. Snarky. Bitchy, really. If I am honest. Flat out bitchy. Baking the Strawberry Oatmeal bread with walnuts could not diminish my bitchiness. Granted, I did not bake the bread as an offering or consolation for the bitchitude but I was atrocious, none-the-less. I like that word:
- [Obligatory New Year's blog post](https://www.realisa.org/obligatory-new-years-blog-post/) - Benchmarks, touchstones, watermarks, anniversaries, birthdays, new years. Call it what you will, we mark time. We make resolutions. If we are good at keeping our resolutions, then it is a habit we endorse approaching it with import and reverence. If we make-and-break resolutions, anemically list out the goals and aspirations and then feebly attend to
- [Hound](https://www.realisa.org/hound/) - Heat lightening skittered across the sky. The absence of answering thunder leaves me unsettled. Ginger barks at heat lightening. She wants the distant rolling thunder, too. I stand listening, instead, to her gallop out to the fence line and bark at whomever or whatever has trespassed across the property leaving their scented trails behind to
- [Necessary](https://www.realisa.org/necessary-2/) - I fret. Then I make lists. Then I do. Doing is my thing. Doing keeps me in motion. My slogan, "Do the day." Just do the day. If I am inclined and require encouragement, the motto alters to "Slay the day." Action. There are two kinds of people: lumpers and sorters. I am a sorter.
- [Three Pillars](https://www.realisa.org/three-pillars/) - My friend picks a new word every year. The hope is that the word will embody, encapsulate possibly even project into the new year that which she hope for and from herself. To be courageous or authentic or connected. To have audacity. I love the exercise of searching for the word. Word searching and word
- [Bee Happy](https://www.realisa.org/bee-happy/) - Today, a package of bees arrives in the mail, delivered by the United States Postal Service. Bees. a shoebox sized package with more than 7,000 live bees. These are not aggressive, Africanized bees but they are still LIVE BEES. It is enough to make any human pause. It's a primitive reaction that is hard to
- [Bees](https://www.realisa.org/7627/) - Today was a good day. An all around, on every front, good day. I caught my first bee swarm. I've watched countless videos of people capturing the wild, stumbled-upon swarm of bees. People cut them down from trees or out from under mobile homes and I've wonder how it is that people seem to just
- [Unbanked](https://www.realisa.org/unbanked/) - The choice between optimism and pessimism laid the foundation of Realisa. The whole focus was an exercise in finding the silver lining, seeking the beauty, gratitude for things - all things - even adversity and acknowledging the upside. This wasn't a Pollyanna exercise in willful ignorance or elective ostrichism. It was a cognitive behavior modification
- [Aim high](https://www.realisa.org/aim-high/) - Originally published in 2016 When the intention is to find the silvery lining, the half-full perspective but life deals a hand fundamentally lacking the up-side, how do you find hope? Further, how do you write about hope? If you don't feel hopeful or optimistic, upon what do you grasp to have any measure of joy?
- [Hidden Treasure](https://www.realisa.org/hidden-treasure/) - The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. ~ MT 13:44 The man did not own the field in which he toiled. His work is not the treasure. He
- [The Cycle](https://www.realisa.org/the-cycle/) - I leave the office with a head filled with a litany of ideas and intentions, eager or enthusiastic to be creative. Filled with ideas. Brimming with them. In the mere eight miles between my office and home, all those intentions evaporate, wafting away as swiftly as ether. As I walk into the door, I faintly
- [Rendering](https://www.realisa.org/rendering/) - "People who are different have a shot at being original." ~ Jim Carrey Jim Carrey: I Needed Color from SGG on Vimeo. Find yourself. Know yourself. Artists create, they write or paint, dance or sing. The desire to create pushes and demands. But the vocation, if allowed, creates you. It is a rendering. With time,
- [Revel](https://www.realisa.org/revel/) - Recently, a friend asked me how often I write on the blog and who reads it. At the zenith, I wrote almost every day. It was an exercise, a practice, an intentional effort to find the good and acknowledge those things in my day that gave me inspiration, joy or affirmation. It was the inoculation
- [Making gods](https://www.realisa.org/making-gods/) - My son sends me a text message and asks me to collaborate with him to create deities and religions for his Dungeons and Dragons game. He is the Creator of the World. We discussed what makes a god, what is worthy of worship or reverence. From where does power originate? Is it organic or societal?
- [Home](https://www.realisa.org/home/) - Defining home simplifies with time or is it wisdom? The cliche is that home is where the heart resides. The implication is that home lies within someone else, only exists in tandem. And yet, I think about home this holiday season. The first Christmas post marriage when my sons are not with me but I
- [Stumbling upon joy](https://www.realisa.org/stumbling-upon-joy/) - With the new year comes resolve. to change, to heal, to amend, to elevate. That our thoughts rise into lighter, happier, more contentedness. That our heartstrings pluck merry tunes, lifting melodies that bring joy and hope. And yet, how? How to shrug off the heavy coat of the previous year? To close the book and
- [Be quiet](https://www.realisa.org/be-quiet/) - There is a time to speak and a time to be quiet. Without peace and quiet, there is no rest from turmoil. Yet, how to find quiet? Where is peace? So often, the perspective is that I cannot find peace because it is chaotic. Yet, the verse says "without peace and quiet, there is no
- [People](https://www.realisa.org/people/) - We are what we carry. How lovely and privileged to have the ability to set down what we carry. Or to get help with the load. Carrying in groceries. Stacking firewood. Tackling a fallen water oak blocking the driveway. But what if what we carry is the cultural and ancestral weight of history. I realized
- [Diamonds and Pearls](https://www.realisa.org/diamonds-and-pearls/) - I am a great believer in the value of adversity. I believe because it is the way I have learned the hardest but most important lessons of my life. I know and accept that some of Creation's most precious things arise from colossal pressure and perpetual friction. A single grain of sand triggers a reaction,
- [Yaw](https://www.realisa.org/yaw/) - My wanderings you have counted; my tears are stored in your flask. In God I trust without fear. Psalms 56:9,12 Trust without fear? Me? When have I ever trusted anything or anyone without fear? What do I trust? While I might trust The Father....He is not in this tangible world. He isn't going to manifest
- [Unlikely](https://www.realisa.org/unlikely/) - Tomorrow, an unlikely American woman will marry a prince. While he is never likely to sit upon the throne, there is no dispute that he is in line to be king. The bit I heard that made the Fairy Tale far more spectacular is that the father of that prince, the man truly in line
- [Flourish](https://www.realisa.org/flourish/) - How much of life is planned? How much is happenstance? And for all the best projections, it's the chaos and unexpected that gives the flourish. We might think we know where we are going. We think we've got it all planned out. There is the daily To Do list. There is the Month-at-a-Glance. People make
- [Am or Be](https://www.realisa.org/am-or-be/) - I want to be happy. Be happy. There is a Catch-22 in this phrase. Be happy puts happy somewhere out there in the future. Most other feelings we ARE. I am sad. I am angry. I am afraid. We don't phrase it, "I want to be angry." Nope. The negative emotions, those associated with bad
- [Rebel Rebel](https://www.realisa.org/rebel-rebel/) - Lightening dances in my head. I may never get to sleep. I need you to press me down before my body flies away from me.
- [The Flow](https://www.realisa.org/the-flow/) - Days are chopped up into tasks, oriented to doing: make the coffee, make the lunch, make the bed, get to work, see the schedule, do all the messages. What's for lunch? What's for dinner? And in that ever-draining hourglass, where is the flow? The externalized focus addresses all that needs to get done but how
- [Glory and the gloriosa lily](https://www.realisa.org/glory-and-the-gloriosa-lily/) - Do you know where you are going? Are you certain? How certain can you be? You hear these stories about people who let Google give them directions and they end up out in the desert stranded. They place trust is a fallible thing. My own house often does not map on Google, so people must
- [Walking and Sitting](https://www.realisa.org/walking-and-sitting/) - Motivation requires a vision. To know where one is going and why. Why do this thing? Why keep pushing? Are you pushing towards something or trying to get away? Is the momentum generated by a desire to flee someplace or someone? To get out, you might do anything. When idealistic, we are driven to grasp
- [Waking up](https://www.realisa.org/waking-up-2/) - The city wakes, traffic passes by on the street outside, their tires on the wet street adding to the tinkling of light rain coming down the metal downspout. A noreaster, the first of the year arrived on the last day of my honeymoon bringing the urge to write. I left the dream and stepped into
- [True](https://www.realisa.org/true/) - The pastor at church frequently says, "Either Jesus is the truth (and speaks the truth) or he is a liar!" This offers a fundamental, a foundation, a tenant, a belief which I share: there is a TRUTH. Truth exists. Truth is not relative. Truth is not an absolute paradigm shift, a clean, sterile, detached reality
- [Elusive](https://www.realisa.org/elusive/) - Finding a needle in a haystack. Plucking your eyebrows when they are blond and you wear bifocals. Perfectly crispy French fries. A winning lotto ticket. Happiness and joy. Elusive. Desired. Confounding. Fantasy. You find them by learning better skills. You find it by trial and error. You find it by developing better tools. Tenacity. Audacity.
- [Unfolding anew](https://www.realisa.org/unfolding-anew/) - The first day of the newest year begins. Begin how? Begin with what? Will time change? Decide if you want time to change. Change is life. Nothing vibrant or vital stays static. Even mountains dance. Change arrives without invitation, without welcome, without notice. Change holds hostage, demanding ransom or leaving regret. So, surrender to change.
- [Dum spiro spero](https://www.realisa.org/dum-spiro-spero/) - While I breathe, I hope. It's like a math problem: while I breathe, I hope. And I am breathing. Therefore, I must have hope. To breathe is to be hopeful. Breathe is life. What is hope but for time ahead, things ahead, all that lies before. Hope never relates to the past. Hope is always
- [Prodigal](https://www.realisa.org/prodigal/) - See Aquaman because it's fun. Jason Momoa. Nuf said. But see Aquaman and think about the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the third parable of redemption. They tinker with the boundless and ever-merciful love, not of a father but of a mother. Even being entrapped in the core of the earth with the Kraken cannot
- [Breathe](https://www.realisa.org/breathe-2/) - Start here. Starting lines have demarcation. Stand behind this line and wait for the buzzer. Most major endeavors have a starting point. The first day of kindergarten. College applications. Proposals and wedding planning. The arrival of a newborn. Moving to a new city. Building a house. You have an idea. You come up with a
- [React](https://www.realisa.org/react/) - Call now! Will anyone respond to you? ~Job 5:1. Ash Wednesday begins the Lenten season. The season of the sacrifice. No sacrifice greater that the sacrifice made on the Cross. What paltry, minuscule sacrifice might I make in offering? And what do offerings matter? To whom? Certainly, the Lord my God cares not for sacrifices.
- [Miss Creative](https://www.realisa.org/miss-creative/) - I say, "I'm gonna write this weekend." "Great!" he says. "While you do that, I'll do my taxes." It sounds odd. And funny. Is this balanced? Does it seem fair? But, in reality. Balance is leaving enough room for the other person that they feel at ease to do that thing that most serves them.
- [Grace](https://www.realisa.org/grace/) - Define grace. Grace with the capital G. I don't mean the elegant, suave ambulation of the prima ballerina, well-trained for years in proper posture and comportment. I mean the divine grace bestowed upon us by God (if you are a believer). I am not sure how to explain Grace to those who do not believe
- [Muster](https://www.realisa.org/muster/) - Dancing in a full suit of armor is impossible. Throwing clay with your hands bound or painting when your eyes are covered are both equally unlikely. Sure, an elephant can paint. What we can't know is if the elephant had a specific vision that their trunk-brush limited. We've all had dreams, visions of hope. We
- [Imagineering](https://www.realisa.org/imagineering/) - I circle back to the House of Percy. Imagination's derision, derailment and debacle by the fates: depression, shame and anxiety. Albeit odd coincidence that the author of this book, which I stumbled upon in 1994 in Charleston, SC while in my residency (and as far afield from an imaginative space as a profession might take
- [Synapse](https://www.realisa.org/synapse/) - Write the perfect sentence. If perfection eludes, write nothing. Right? No! And when I say No! in my head, it is with a decidedly Quebec-qua accent....not quite French. No! Simply. Honestly. Write. No one is reading. There is no Google search engine pulling your wee little online diary into the internet stratosphere. No one sees
- [Ashes to ashes](https://www.realisa.org/ashes-to-ashes-2/) - Ash Wednesday. The first day of Lent. The season of sacrifice. What to *give up*? What to set down? What do you love (possibly more than God) that separates you from Him? Or separates you from the full and total person you were meant to be? The season of holistic mindfulness. It starts with letting
- [Haurio](https://www.realisa.org/haurio/) - I'm tired. Mentally tired. Physically tired. Bone dead tired. Weary. Depleted. Exhausted. We all report being EXhausted. Does the word hausted exist? Sometime in the early 1500's, some priest-scribe first used the Latin form exhaustus: to empty out. Delve deeper and the word probably started as exhaurire, which means to draw out or to scoop
- [A surge of joy](https://www.realisa.org/a-surge-of-joy/) - Sundays have long been squirrelly days for me. The impending week, the to-do list, the world. This is only made worse by a global pandemic. Seriously, in my lifetime, a pandemic. The polar ice caps are melting. Species have gone extinct. The city of my birth now has King Tides. Biblical plagues manifest: locust in
- [Return](https://www.realisa.org/return-2/) - It is the month of November. The month of Thanksgiving and gratitude. At the soul of this blog, over a decade ago, that is how I started. And so, I return. I seek to practice that act of gratitude. I wish to find the silver lining. I want to see the wonder and beauty in
- [Finding the lovely](https://www.realisa.org/finding-the-lovely/) - When the world is ugly and crammed with friction, when the inside of your brain feels itchy and whelps rise along the filaments of your soul, finding something beautiful is imperative. It's medicinal. Beauty serves as balm and salve for the hives welting up in the psyche. Loveliness is the antidote to the abrasiveness of
- [Embrace](https://www.realisa.org/embrace/) - There is a lightness to the world today. A heavy shroud lifted away yesterday. I was standing on a back aisle at Total Wine when I heard two women talking about looking for something special because they were celebrating. The stork clerk asked them what they were celebrating. One woman whispered, "They called the election.
- [Time as an ingredient](https://www.realisa.org/time-as-an-ingredient/) - There is no avoiding it. It cannot be wished away. Certainly, if we elect to simply not think about it, that doesn't make it disappear. There is a global pandemic. There is a new surge. We are in month 10. At the beginning they said 1-2 million dead. We locked down. We wore masks. We
- [Not normal](https://www.realisa.org/not-normal/) - How to be normal when nothing is normal. It is the title of someone's future book. How to create normalcy when nothing is normal. It is Thanksgiving week. I took vacation time. I am off. With nowhere to go. I am not whining or whinging (as the Brits say). But this is not a normal
- [Sage](https://www.realisa.org/sage/) - A European perennial mint in the salvia family (Salvia officialis) with aromatic leaves. Or a person who is wise, prudent and offers good judgement. Their wisdom gained through experience and reflection. It's the reflection that leads to wisdom. One can live a lifetime of experiences and be unwise. It is the time spent in reflection
- [Cleaning](https://www.realisa.org/cleaning/) - Cleaning and organizing have always been personal methods of managing my anxiety. My anxiety plays in the background like an ill-tuned radio, static that overlays everything else. It doesn't prevent me from feeling joy or disappointment, it's like a parallel rail of emotion that's always running. Like a central station for a subway, that rail
- [Proxy](https://www.realisa.org/proxy/) - My oldest son asked me to cat sit. He adopted a six-toed Hemingway Tabico from the shelter in early spring. He had an optimistic attitude that he could socialize the cat like others socialize a dog, nevermind that he lives alone and is a hard introvert. But, he bought a luxury cat carrier that could
- [Step In](https://www.realisa.org/step-in/) - [Post written in late 2019 - just before the world tilted sideways] Nothing requires more courage than to marry. Choosing to vow a bound life to another soul takes courage. It is the riskiest most vulnerable endeavor on the planet. One can be deeply in love with another person an not marry. And I argue,
- [Grounding](https://www.realisa.org/grounding/) - Over a year since the last post. Realisa triggers nostalgia like a place I once lived but can't return. And yet, I seek that home coming. It has been a year of the pandemic tinting and tainting most of life. It is like a faint whiff of cigarette smoke or a potato that has gone
- [Relative and absolute](https://www.realisa.org/relative-and-absolute/) - Walking into the room of white blocks arranged with precision, I was immediately unimpressed. In a vacuous room the size of soccer pitch, wooden pentagons, hexagons and octagons rick rack in a herringbone pattern. It felt static and finite. Until I walked around the perimeter. What was initially absolutely stationary and concrete shifted. The chevron
- [Right track](https://www.realisa.org/right-track/) - Realisa started as an exercise in gratitude, optimism building and practiced perspective shifting. How else might one change their state of mind? If one wants to change their physique, they exercise, using their muscles. Its repetitive and structured. Changing the mind requires similar efforts. It is a practice of repetitive processes. But change also requires
- [Buckets](https://www.realisa.org/buckets/) - Some days are just hard. Some days just cost more. The cost is the currency of emotions, or rather the energy required to have emotions. When I have one of these days, I burn through all my reserves for feeling anything. I cannot muster anger or joy or bliss or concern or outrage or thrill.
- [Oath](https://www.realisa.org/oath/) - An oath is not a pledge. It is not simply spoken. An oath is made. This implies that an oath is a tangible object. It is a solemn promise, often invoking a divine witness, regarding one's future action or behavior. We call God (or our god) to bear witness to the oath and in making
- [Courage to ask](https://www.realisa.org/courage-to-ask/) - On my drive to work, I pass a home built up on a ridge, off the two-lane road, behind a chain link fence. The driveway is secured by a motorized gate which I've never seen open. In the ten years I've been driving to work, I've never seen anyone pull into the drive our come
- [New Year](https://www.realisa.org/new-year/) - May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some good books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art. And, I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself. ~ Neil Gaiman I am happy with the last year.
- [Kudzu](https://www.realisa.org/kudzu/) - I've been so blue lately, beyond blue. Melancholy is a distinct affliction unlike actual depression. There is a passive morbidity to melancholia. You have no desire or intention to harm yourself. You can't even muster the energy for that but if you failed to wake in the morning or if lightening struck, it might be
- [Petulant protest](https://www.realisa.org/petulant-protest/) - I commented yesterday about my panache for avoiding things. Usually it is one particular task that needs to get done, it rarely has a hard deadline and the consequences of failing to complete the task is essentially to be given more time to complete it. This allows for this perpetual psychological nagging to Just Do
- [Restore](https://www.realisa.org/restore/) - It's still sinking in that I was away on vacation for a week. Add the July 4th holiday and I was away from the office for 10 days. I haven't been away from the office for so long in a decade. Let's say that again. It has been 10 YEARS since I took 10 days
- [Campaign](https://www.realisa.org/campaign/) - The best way to appreciate home is to go away from home. The best way to discover yourself is to lose yourself for a bit. Leaving the day-to-day and pushing yourself into a place in which your daily routine cannot be maintained, in which you are forced to adjust and accommodate, helps you learn, grow
- [Fearsome](https://www.realisa.org/fearsome-2/) - Life is fearsome. Living is a fearsome thing. Living this life means we must face our fears otherwise, are we really living? One can be alive but not living? One can be alive and simply surviving. Sometimes this is necessity as with one who is captive or incarcerated. But even the captive can live, thrive.
- [Get in line](https://www.realisa.org/get-in-line/) - A saturation point arrives and the consequence is that I shift out of my usual, finessed, perfectly choreographed ballet of multi-tasking that is the epitome of all intelligent adults with attention deficit disorder. I drop into linear mode. Linear mode is how non-ADDers function. It is rather precise, efficient and soothes the list-done-check tendencies of
- [Space](https://www.realisa.org/space-4/) - I read this article in Slate by Nicodemus and Millburn about their minimalist philosophy and their evangelizing divestiture from material things. Pish posh, I say! I think of myself as neither hoarder or collector. But I like my stuff. I really like my stuff. The stuff I like the most is the stuff that has
- [Rain](https://www.realisa.org/rain-2/) - Quilting, for me, is like improvisational cooking. I will sometimes build a whole meal around a particular ingredient or a single dish, like sun dried tomatoes or roasted tomato soup. In quilting, I will build a whole quilt around a single piece of fabric, a color or a rhythm. Every quilt has a rhythm and
- [Solo Act](https://www.realisa.org/7236/) - I thought I was going to be away the entire Memorial weekend but came home today. it was good to be away albeit briefly. It always helps to be reminded where home is and sometimes you have to leave home to restore your sense of balance. It's like returning to your factory, default settings. I
- [A few new discoveries](https://www.realisa.org/a-few-new-discoveries/) - It's been a long time since I did a Friday Favorites post. Since it is Saturday night and I am closing down one of the hardest weeks I have traversed in many years maybe I should take the time to offer up a few of my new discoveries and favorites. The postcard I filled out
- [](https://www.realisa.org/7229/) - I left the office Wednesday after slipping a handwritten note under the door of my office manager. "I'm not coming to work tomorrow." I walked off the job. Not because I dislike my job. My job, my patients and the interaction I have with each patient is possibly the only thing that keeps me anchored.
- [Mother's Day](https://www.realisa.org/mothers-day-2/) - Mother's Day is filled with blessings. This mother's day was filled to the rim. My sons surprised me by coming home last night. They did 83% of the dishes and clean up from my small dinner party and promised to make me breakfast. This translates into me making breakfast and them actually being awake to
- [The Blend](https://www.realisa.org/the-blend/) - I have a strange, observational fascination with Neil Gaiman and his wife, Amanda Fucking Palmer. That's her legal name. Cuz she is kickass and outrageous and provocative and vulnerable. I love her willfulness and her fearless treading into terrifying places. She just pushes in and demands to be seen and she is (painfully) aware of
- [Roses are yellow](https://www.realisa.org/roses-are-yellow/) - Patience is a virtue. Holding onto hope when experience and statistics insist the odds weigh heavily against you might seem silly, even foolish. Call me a fool. I planted a rose garden. I have acquired different roses for their colors, scents and even their names. My mother gave me a 'Mother's Day' rose bush and
- [Adapt](https://www.realisa.org/adapt/) - Sometimes things happen that demand you reorder your life. Sometimes those things happen to other people but it still effects you. It's like standing in an open field watching a kids soccer game and lightening strikes 15 ft away and kills someone. Why them? Why not you? You were standing over in that exact spot
- [Feedback](https://www.realisa.org/feedback/) - On the way to Easter Sunday mass, the boys and I caught a part of a segment on NPR, actually Bob Edward's weekend on feedback. Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, law professors at Harvard, were being interviewed about their new book called Thanks for the Feedback. Their book is not about GIVING feedback but rather
- [Macaroona](https://www.realisa.org/macaroona/) - The kitchen was a half mess from last night's late salad/dinner after the gym. I went to my first yoga class tonight and came home to an encore salad/dinner tonight. After unloading and loading the dishwasher, I had a craving for macaroons, the proper Passover kind sans flour. Why? Cuz it's Tuesday and I went
- [Easter](https://www.realisa.org/easter/) - Easter morning brought me a minor miracle. I woke with a profoundly moribund mood. I was quite miserable. I couldn't image getting up, much less making ready for Easter Sunday mass. I just didn't have an ounce of energy (physical or emotional) to face the smallest task. I managed to get myself onto the back
- [](https://www.realisa.org/7193/) - It was so dreary this morning. I geared up to go outside and work in the yard and it started raining but not rain drops but rain haze. It was a fine mist on a stiff breeze. I wanted to open the bee hive and inspect the work of my new queen and her brood
- [Tracking](https://www.realisa.org/tracking/) - I think it is fascinating what goes into delivering a simple package, especially when it is getting shipped from one side of the country to the other, stem to stern literally. One more time zone to go..... Nashville, TN, United States 04/18/2014 4:30 P.M. Arrival Scan Earth City, MO, United States 04/18/2014 11:51 A.M. Departure
- [Good Friday](https://www.realisa.org/good-friday/) - This has been a long week for all the usual reasons: work schedules super full, unable to spend spring break with the Younger and burdened with Mommy Guilt and generally struggling with my whole Lenten sacrifice this year, giving up the Critic. Why can't I give up simple things like chocolate or coffee? Coffee and
- [Alchemy](https://www.realisa.org/alchemy/) - Facebook is saturated with trite quotations and pithy sayings that we all share. They seem poignant and significant. How much do we really sit and ponder upon that quote of Beethoven or Einstein or Plath? I'm as guilty as the next person, cutting out the snippet and posting it to my Facebook page like it
- [](https://www.realisa.org/7183/) - The initial jar of sugar water was gone. I'd planned on moving the bees tomorrow afternoon but I needed to get into that box and make sure they were still there. The hive seemed quiet, too quiet. I suited up and brought the larger box out to the elevated rack and set about moving the
- [](https://www.realisa.org/7180/) - One of the great things abut gardening is when people share something from their own gardens. I received a box of rhizomes more than a year ago from a long time friend in Texas. I must admit they sat in their box for a long time, unplanted. But I finally planted them last fall and
- [Quality control](https://www.realisa.org/quality-control/) - How are you ever certain of something? There are somethings in life that are absolutes. You know how much money you have after you balance your check book. It's not an arbitrary number. You know the grade you get on a test after it's scored, especially if it is a scan-tron test. You know the
- [Connection](https://www.realisa.org/connection/) - With my best friend moving away, I've spent a great deal of time thinking about connections. With whom do you feel connected? When do you decide to be connected? Sometimes connections are instantaneous but a true connection cannot be mistaken for a simple infatuation. Other connections take a long time to create, like weaving a
- [Boldly go](https://www.realisa.org/boldly-go/) - You know you're not done living when you wake in the morning with crystalline thoughts like "I should open a bakery" or "I am going back to college and getting my MFA" or "I want to have an orchard of pecan and olive trees". And then you do level two scouting: driving around and looking
- [Seeking](https://www.realisa.org/seeking/) - Just because I manage change doesn't mean I like it. In the span of few weeks, it has been finalized that my son is going away to college and my best friend is moving away. They are really both good things, necessary things and as a mother and a friend, I am excited to send
- [Imperfections](https://www.realisa.org/imperfections/) - http://youtu.be/450p7goxZqg There is a line in this song, "....I love your perfect imperfections." It shouts to me. Screams at me. It is one of the most fundamental, utterly primal components of my core. Humanity is imperfect. We are broken. And the flaws are what make us unique, beautiful, perfect. Mona Lisa's lop sided, closed
- [Today](https://www.realisa.org/today/) - One stumbles upon things, messages arrive in the oddest of pathways and in the most unexpected venues. Often, it is Facebook that we find some hyperlink or post by a friend that delivers that EXACT message we needed to hear, the message meant JUST for us, like the universe knew our heart's desire and made
- [](https://www.realisa.org/7147/) - As I stand on the precipice of the week, it appears to be a long and packed week filled with work (I have a doctor out for vacation), night time meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Wednesday meeting has a subcommittee meeting for which I need to do the credentialing work which means reviewing eight
- [Fairy tales](https://www.realisa.org/fairy-tales/) - Archetypes exists for illogical reasons. Their mere existence challenges reason and logic. I believe in free will; I am not a believer in predestination but I think embedded within the recesses of our primordial DNA is the mapping of these archetypes. What it means to be a woman or a man. Cinderella, the warrior queen,
- [Give me your hand](https://www.realisa.org/give-me-your-hand/) - Thomas walks into the room and cannot believe his eyes; he might KNOW the truth, he has heard the prophesy but he still doubts. Doubt is an emotion; it's not rational or cognitive. No matter how much someone tries to talk you out of your doubt, doubt persists. I imagine the other disciples chastising Thomas,
- [My hands serve Him](https://www.realisa.org/my-hands-serve-him/) - Some days I must do something that fills my heart and lifts my soul AND serves God. I feel like much of my day to day serves God (or at least should) and when I become aware I am not aligned with His plans for my day, I try to refocus. If I am off
- [Talk to the wind](https://www.realisa.org/talk-to-the-wind/) - When I was in 10th grade (a long time ago) we were required to take a computer class. We learned to write the basics of code. Each line was number in base 10. It was structured in the classic "If this, then go to....." Whether is was that class or some other fundamental processing feature
- [Check In](https://www.realisa.org/check-in/) - The Check-in is a good thing. It is a simple act, a common courtesy but it has power. When my kids text me out of the blue and say, "Good Night Mom, I love you" there is more power in that than the obligatory phone call around dinner time that always interrupts their dinner with
- [Lenten Sacrifices](https://www.realisa.org/lenten-sacrifices/) - Today is the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday. The Lenten season has become a very serious part of my yearly faith journey, that engrained Catholic cycle: Christmas, Lent and the Off-Season. The Lenten season was once brutal: fasting, scourging, sacrifice, silence and penance. Now, we fry fish on Fridays. Shoot, I didn't even make
- [It's a Big Deal](https://www.realisa.org/its-a-big-deal/) - Ever have someone say to you in an effort to be reassuring, "It's not a big thing."? And when they say it, you hear their efforts to be reassuring and not the meaning of their words? Only later, when you are thinking about things - on in my case, rethinking things - do you REALLY
- [Little Words](https://www.realisa.org/little-words/) - The potency of another person's words is astonishing. We all accept the power of a critic to crush a play on opening night. With a few derogatory comments, a whole production can shut down after months of planning and millions of dollars. A flop. It breaks hearts, ends careers, damages reputations. But the opposite can
- [Friday Favorites](https://www.realisa.org/friday-favorites/) - I haven't done a favorites post in forever. Maybe it should become a new habit of making Friday all about new favorites. Here are some of my recent discoveries and loveluvlerve-ables. Jerry Seinfeld has a web series called Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Seriously. If you love comedy and love the intimate inside peek into
- [Stubborn](https://www.realisa.org/stubborn/) - I am a proud and stubborn person. I am determined to carry my own weight and responsibilities. And I do. I loathe asking for help or depending (even figuratively) on anyone else. It isn't always a healthy construct, for who can be always independent and singular? Plus, who wants to be? I suppose it originates
- [Awareness](https://www.realisa.org/awareness/) - I love moment in a movie when the perspective shifts from one protagonist to another but both are observing the same event. There is also that game we played as children called the Telephone Game. At Shorty girls during summer recreation, they'd sit us all down in a large circle, easily 50 or more kids
- [Listening](https://www.realisa.org/listening-2/) - Every day is a chance to make a new effort. Every day is a chance to try again. Successful people are often the biggest failures or at least they have the highest failure rates simply as a consequence of making an effort. People who never fail are often people who never try. I have no
- [Walter Mitty](https://www.realisa.org/walter-mitty/) - As children, we dreamed. I dreamed. I lay on my back in the middle of the soccer field and watched the clouds roll over head and imagined Peter Pan's ship. The jets from Homestead Air Force base would fly over on maneuvers and I'd imagine being a fighter pilot. I jumped off bridges into canals
- [Scoop](https://www.realisa.org/scoop/) - The year draws to an end. 2013 is nearly over. And I think 2014 will be a fantastic year. I am usually guarded about my predictions, even though I am a natural (albeit private) optimist. I secretly will believe to my innermost core that something will go right, but I am reluctant to speak my
- [Merry Christmas](https://www.realisa.org/merry-christmas-2/) - I've finally celebrated Christmas. It was delayed this year because The Boys didn't come back until the 27th. This is the same every-other-year custody arrangement than has been in place for five years but this year was unexpectedly and exceptionally hard. I felt like I was holding my breath, lashed up in a rigid corset.
- [Feelings](https://www.realisa.org/feelings/) - You kinda know I am upset when I can't talk, when I can't explain things, when words escape me. Usually, I can manage by focusing on other things. I can deal by simply not attempting to talk about "The THING that's bothering me". But it's really bad when I simply can't talk at all. I
- [Hang](https://www.realisa.org/hang/) - I came home from the mini reunion and pulled out my yearbooks. I didn't remember people or rather I couldn't place their now face with anything in my past. Indeed, men who once had full heads of hair pose a particular challenge simply because the brain's creative process struggles with removing hair from the head.
- [Mr. Kaplan](https://www.realisa.org/mr-kaplan/) - I had a mini reunion this weekend. It was for Mr. Kaplan. Mr. Kaplan, aka Mitchell Kaplan, who is now the owner of the multiple Books & Books stores (a flagship independent bookstore) and the instigation behind the Miami Book Fair. Mitch Kaplan taught two years of high school English at Miami Southridge High School
- [Riches](https://www.realisa.org/riches/) - I realized the other day my oldest son doesn't have anything approaching the same goals for his "future" that I had when I was 17. He said he wanted a career where he would have to wear a tie, maybe a suit and really good shoes. He didn't want to go to work like a
- [On Track](https://www.realisa.org/on-track/) - I tried doing the whole 30 Days of Gratitude for November but I reached a point when it felt fraudulent. I am simply incapable of "faking it until I make it". I have friends whom come from the 12-step genre that says one should slog through the motions until you get your movement back. I
- [Forces](https://www.realisa.org/forces/) - For those light and airy souls who have escaped the desolation of depression, this may seem for naught but for those souls who have felt the stalking beast, seen the creeping shadows and heard the beast gnashing his teeth, you will understand. It can be paralyzing in a way fear can induce a near state
- [Lie down](https://www.realisa.org/lie-down/) - I find myself walking in circles, wandering from room to room. I sit down and stare out the window; I lie back down in bed. I eat a bowl of cereal. I browse on Etsy. I run a load of laundry. I sit back down and rearrange the clutter on my desk into more neatly
- [Gratitude Project: Day 14](https://www.realisa.org/gratitude-project-day-14/) - I've missed a few days of writing but the gratitude still abounds. We had our first dip of cold weather which cannot compare to northern winter but for us, can damage potted plants, tender perennials and my vegetable garden. The wind has laid down and that helps. And last night the boys came home. We
- [12 Years A Slave](https://www.realisa.org/12-years-a-slave/) - I was an hour early to the theater, entering behind a family of four. I had passed two young black women leaving the prior showing and they were both crying. I overheard one say, "That was the saddest story I've ever heard." I debated sneaking into Last Vegas instead. But I felt compelled to see
- [Gratitude Project: Day 9](https://www.realisa.org/gratitude-project-day-9/) - Maybe things are getting back to normal which makes a supposition about normalcy. Other than the farmers market selling all eggs within 15 minutes of the opening bell BEFORE I purchased my weekly dozen, it was a truly beautiful and fulfilling day. I went back to Alachua Feed & Seed and bought more onions starts,
- [Gratitude Project: Day 7](https://www.realisa.org/gratitude-project-day-7/) - I have a variety of thanks to give today. I am thankful for having health insurance. It is not a political statement; it's a simple fact. I have health insurance. I've had continuous coverage my whole life and today I used my health insurance. Other than the brief prior as I waited to learn if
- [Gratitude Project: Day 6](https://www.realisa.org/gratitude-project-day-6/) - A primary school in British Columbia, Canada sent letters home last week informing parents that children could no longer play tag or hold hands or essentially......TOUCH EACH OTHER. Do we now live in a world in which all touch is unwanted, harassment or assault; that all negative words (or silence) is bullying. It made me
- [Gratitude Project: Day 5](https://www.realisa.org/gratitude-project-day-5/) - I didn't write yesterday because I went to bed early, debating if I'd tempt the Fates and possibly wake in the middle of the night in such excruciating pain that I'd have to call 911. Somehow, yesterday afternoon, I started having pain in my right side. It started on the backside of my pelvis, like
- [Gratitude Project: Day 3](https://www.realisa.org/gratitude-project-day-3/) - To be known and to be seen are my blessings today. I am grateful for those people in my life who see me, who know me, who GET me and still really like me. They also know that they can shed their fabrications when they are with me. My exchange is safety. People are safe
- [Gratitude Project: Day 2](https://www.realisa.org/gratitude-project-day-2/) - I am grateful today for MUSIC. I awoke to The Talking Heads on World Cafe singing This Must be the Place. Somewhere in the dredges of my musicology archives I place that song into the chronology of college. I did some research. The Stop Making Sense album came out in 1983, the year before I
- [Gratitude Project](https://www.realisa.org/gratitude-project/) - November is the month of Thanksgiving. I've decided to participate in the Gratitude Project and to write each day about something for which (or someone for whom) I am grateful. I once heard an interview on NPR many, many, many years ago about giving thanks. I have searched through the NPR archives trying to find
- [Smack](https://www.realisa.org/smack/) - Some days, I am certain I disappoint my children. They have expectations or hopes that they think I can assure or assist in making reality. Sometimes, it's easy. One of them needs clothes for Color Wars at school for Halloween, or football equipment or a shirt ironed or an album off iTunes. Simple things. Little
- [Feel it](https://www.realisa.org/feel-it/) - There is pleasure in the simple, every day things. Don't be mistake, I didn't say 'simple pleasures', In fact, pleasure is not simple. Pleasure is complex and mysterious and to be fully appreciated and experienced requires hesitation, pause, mindfulness. Genuine pleasure isn't quick. Even the quickie drive-thru Frosty (or quickie in the shower) reveals its
- [Poison Ivy](https://www.realisa.org/poison-ivy/) - So, if you are allergic to poison ivy you avoid it. The reason you avoid it is because you'll end up with an itchy, painful blistering rash that will torment you for weeks. It's not the poison ivy's fault. It's just a plant. The problem is your REACTION to the urushinol, the oil in the
- [](https://www.realisa.org/7023/) - While I drove I listened to Ray LaMontagne's Gossip in the Grains and Alabama Shakes. The hotel was noisy so I fell asleep listening to Polica. The lengthened shadows indicate it's fall even more than the cooler air and the easterly breeze. The day was glorious with a bright sun and brilliant blue sky. The
- [Rehoming](https://www.realisa.org/rehoming/) - Rehoming: [ree-hohm-ing] - verb to intentionally, voluntarily even gleefully cancel a vacation or excursion early to return home, the choice is made with intention because who would choose to sleep more than 2 nights in a strange bed when they have an awesome bed and home with a kickass kitchen and cool cats. People will
- [Runaway](https://www.realisa.org/runaway/) - While I never ran away from home as a child, I had runaway fantasies. I'd pack snacks, a book and a few toys in a bandana and tie it to a stick and go off to the concrete pipes behind Pinelands Presbyterian Church or to the hide out underneath the footbridge at the end of
- [Adventure Time](https://www.realisa.org/adventure-time-2/) - They asked, "Are you okay? Are you done?" She answered, "Done? I'm not done; I'm charbroiled." I am so far past being done it's absurd. I paced myself for the marathon, setting the finish line to make it to this moment. This weekend I have a small escape weekend many months in the planning. Last
- [Validation](https://www.realisa.org/validation/) - How valuable is something and how is it's value or worth determined? I watch the Antiques Roadshow and my son likes the American Pickers on the History Channel. I am no collector although I have somethings I love but I love them for their aesthetic and don't really care if they have value. Would I
- [Quiet](https://www.realisa.org/quiet-4/) - Quiet and silence can be filled with radio, television, dinner guests, reading, chores like cleaning or gardening. Exercise fills the emptiness. Sleeping provides an escape. Eventually, you have to turn it all off and the quiet and silence remain. It would be fine it it were truly quiet and silent but it's not. The world
- [A walk in the woods](https://www.realisa.org/a-walk-in-the-woods/) - The best metaphor is hiking through the woods, through a large forest. After you've been in the woods for a while, you learn the patterns and the rhythms of the ecosystem. You can tell when the forest starts to thin and you anticipate coming into a clearing, or maybe coming out of the forest completely.
- [Monkey grass](https://www.realisa.org/6988/) - It is a horrible thing to give a child a fact and make him custodian of that truth. Doing so puts him between withholding that fact thus creating a secret or revealing the truth and causing distress. My very brave first born son shared a fact with me tonight. He has held this sliver of
- [Telling and Hearing](https://www.realisa.org/telling-and-hearing/) - Sometimes, what stops me from writing is the feeling of being small and insignificant. I read posts and captions from "real" writers. Friends link their columns from national newspapers or syndicated blogs and I feel fraudulent. I think, "I am not a real writer." Those people are professionals, trained with highly refined skills and full
- [Piddle](https://www.realisa.org/piddle/) - I know I am content when I want to stay home. When my heart and mind aren't running off to airport fantasies and hotel excursions, when I am not buried inside a fiction novel or sleeping excessively, I know I am content. Work has been extraordinarily busy but in a good and fulfilling way although
- [Priceless](https://www.realisa.org/priceless/) - I walked up to the folding banquet table set up outside the school office to the line marked 12th Grade and the cute young girl smiles widely and asks, "And who is your student?" I instantly thought, "Clever girl." It avoids the mom vs step mom vs bonus mom vs legal guardian vs court appointed
- [Leisure by Lisa](https://www.realisa.org/leisure-by-lisa/) - With changes at the office, my schedule had to change. Whereas, in the past, I usually had two Fridays off a month, I now only have one. Wah! Life is SO rough, right? But, it takes an adjustment period especially when the Friday off in September was this past Friday and my October Friday is
- [Restoration](https://www.realisa.org/restoration/) - Work has been stressful. Not the patients, never the patients. In fact, the exam room has always been a refuge of sorts. Once I am at work, once I am in a room with a patient focusing on their complaints, all that is bad and stressful in my world falls away. It orients my world
- [Headache remedy](https://www.realisa.org/headache-remedy/) - Slowly the migraine started, initially triggered by sun glare while driving into work. Add the tension of two auto accidents at the east bound side of the I-75 & 39th Avenue area and I had muscle tension. Then add the persistent psychological stress in the office and the perfect prerequisites for a monstrous migraine have
- [One year](https://www.realisa.org/one-year/) - One year ago this week, my builder handed me the keys to my new home. She managed to build my home, a structure that took nearly three years to obtain bank financing, in just over five months. She handed me the keys to my dream home, a dream made tangible and concrete, on my birthday.
- [Time](https://www.realisa.org/time-2/) - Occasionally and thankfully rarely, my kids do something that makes me worry. They say something (or a string of somethings) that piques my concern. I am not a helicopter parent. In 17 years, my oldest child has been on antibiotics once in addition to the dose he got when his appendix was removed. We went
- [Phenomenal](https://www.realisa.org/phenomenal/) - What makes a man? How does a boy become a man? When a boy's parents are divorced and he lives in two homes, which parent leads? When the parents aren't a unified front, when they are in a Cold War stance, to which parent does a son turn for guidance on strength, decisiveness, fortitude? How
- [Bundles and burdens](https://www.realisa.org/bundles-and-burdens/) - I'm not stuck anymore. Getting a proverbial smack upside the head helps. He said, "You are far too self-critical and self aware." Being that it was a bull's eye shot, I spent part of my unconscious time while sleeping and a few hours this morning upon waking being far too self critical. From the post
- [Stuck](https://www.realisa.org/stuck/) - It once was that Realisa was a space to contemplate the half full glass, the silver lining or the good outcome from an adverse situation. I'm stuck, stuck in a place in which it feels like looking up is prevented, hindered and obstructed. I've been stuck before. I get unstuck and certainly from the stuck
- [I hear, I see](https://www.realisa.org/i-hear-i-see/) - I should never write when I am emotional or maybe I should only write when I am emotional. Stop thinking, focus on how I feel and write. That is a type of analysis of my feelings, which is still thinking. My purest moment is when the feelings just flow. My most raw moments are when
- [Pangaea](https://www.realisa.org/pangaea/) - "I'm damaged," he said. I said, "I know. We're all damaged." I've written about this several times and if I were an efficient blogger, I'd link back to those earlier posts, but I find little value in going back and rereading earlier posts. I've been built and rebuilt upon words and thoughts of the past
- [Content](https://www.realisa.org/content/) - con-TENT vs. CON-tent Someone told me yesterday that their observation of me was that I am "exceedingly happy". I laughed aloud. Partially because it's untrue and partially because I seriously doubt I project an affectation that I am exceedingly happy. I felt defensive and explanatory. I needed to correct this notion that I am exceedingly
- [Sound the Bell](https://www.realisa.org/sound-the-bell/) - Having two other souls under the roof changes the dynamic of my heart. Just reading his text, "I'll pass you on the road. I want to come out and drop off my stuff first." I had an after work board meeting and didn't get home until after 8pm only to arrive to the boys piled
- [Baby steps](https://www.realisa.org/baby-steps/) - Success depends on tenacity. It's measured in increments, small steps, fractional progress, often accompanied by regression or stalled waiting. Success requires patience. Hastiness never leads to success. I am an eager soul but I am not hasty. I plan, I plot, I run projections. Granted, I process faster than lots of other people that is
- [Something new](https://www.realisa.org/something-new-2/) - I am courageously updating my personal - and professional - websites. I started on my personal just to iron out my jitters and overcome my trepidation. I've stumbled along well enough. You can check out the other personal site here. I am going to take a break because I have hit a lag issue with
- [Family time](https://www.realisa.org/family-time/) - What a special night. While I missed my Evie baby, who was at a sleepover with his friend Garrett and Luke, I really enjoyed a simple night with my older son. He had originally wanted to go see a move but we both agreed that there is nothing worth seeing. So, we watched Lawless, last
- [Happy Saturday](https://www.realisa.org/happy-saturday/) - Deep into summer, I think about the concept of settling and settling in. I have imaged and envisioned this home for many years. Now that the dream has become a reality, it takes regular reminders that it is reality and not a dream. I easily forget. The beauty is overwhelming. When my sons do something
- [Jetstream](https://www.realisa.org/jetstream/) - One day, sooner than I anticipate, my sons will cease being boys and will be men. Just yesterday, they were toddlers, taking orders and delivering pretend pizzas in their Lil' Tykes car. They were little boys building massive Bionicles. But in a blink of the eye, they will be standing in a church waiting for
- [The Wedding](https://www.realisa.org/the-wedding/) - On a sweet, rolling Tennessee hillside, on the family farm, Samuel married Valerie. They exchanged their vows before kin and loved ones and God. They seem very well matched and truly betrothed. The wedding venue, ceremony and reception was Pinterest worthy. It was a poignant day. The moment that finally caught me, took my breath
- [Saturday ](https://www.realisa.org/saturday-2/) - While much remains left to share about the Bon Appetit Grub Crawl, I instead want to write about the current. My nephew Samuel is getting married today. He is my sister's 5th of six. He is marrying a sweet and sassy girl named Valerie. We've driven from Florida to Tennessee for the wedding, dividing the
- [Grub Crawl Part 1](https://www.realisa.org/grub-crawl-part-1/) - I spent the weekend traipsing around Charleston, South Carolina at the Bon Appetit Grub Crawl. With so many fine and enticing choices on the afternoon vs the evening Crawl, we elected to make the whole weekend a Grub Crawl of sorts. The biggest difference between our weekend personal event and the magazine sponsored evening event
- [Think think think](https://www.realisa.org/think-think-think/) - I must give thanks to a new friend who helped scrub my website of a virus. While the blog has been visible from the web, I have been unable to get into the site to post. A new variation on my life lesson of impotence and powerlessness. But, as with all things, I am continuing
- [Itch, Scratch and Rash](https://www.realisa.org/itch-scratch-and-rash/) - Sometimes the messages are subtle and I am hard of hearing. I'm distracted and busy. I also don't put myself first. I have spent my entire life taking care of other people. As a child in a privately unhappy household that spent great energy projecting and broadcasting a "happy family" image, I spent my formative
- [Courage](https://www.realisa.org/courage/) - Last night I shared a few hours with (mostly) women whom I have known since my oldest child stared Catholic school. Our shared children will be seniors in high school next year. We gathered last night to remember one of the boy's older brother who died last year from an accidental gun shot wound. The
- [Sunday May](https://www.realisa.org/sunday-may/) - What a truly lovely day! My lamentation yesterday was that the dreary weather needed to move on because after two days of gloom and drizzle, I'm done. I want my Florida days sunny with maybe a wicked thunderstorm in the late afternoon or the middle of the night. They blow in, crack and down pour
- [The Dance](https://www.realisa.org/the-dance/) - I once believed my angst originated in my natural (albeit frustrating) tendency to plan the board. In chess, you play the board. Yes, you are playing an opponent, but while waiting for your opponent to make their move, you play all the possible moves. The longer it takes the other player to move, the more
- [A fine day](https://www.realisa.org/a-fine-day/) - It is a rainy day here, drizzling and grey. I love these kinds of days if I am able to stay home. I spend the day first cleaning the house and doing a few of those less frequent chores like cleaning the fridge or the ceiling fan blades. I might then set a loaf of
- [New](https://www.realisa.org/new-2/) - This is my newest quilt project.
- [Up](https://www.realisa.org/up/) - The glass is half full, right? If I focus on the positive and ignore the negative, I can change my attitude. Right? Thankfulness and gratitude are contagious and having a mindfulness of life's blessings increases the blessings, right? Well, don't tell my droopy dog self. My droopy dog self has a bury under the covers,
- [Leisure City](https://www.realisa.org/leisure-city/) - What a productive weekend. I must admit, it;s easy to be super productive, when the weekend includes a full Friday off from work. I did some really hard work in the yard and with the exception of getting the lawn mowed (I have a lawn guy who couldn't mow due to rain) and painting the
- [Choice](https://www.realisa.org/choice/) - Soft raindrops pelt the skylights as I sit typing and my sons sleep. Blessed. An aromatic cup of coffee at my right, cats munching away on their food and the windows still dark, no rays of sun fading them to day. The sun likely will hide today behind clouds and rain showers. I cleaned the
- [Guts](https://www.realisa.org/guts-2/) - The hollow house houses voices and breathing and noise again. The boys arrive home and bring their noise. I love their noise. They leave their clutter and hand prints on the granite counter-tops and stainless steel fridge front. I love it. I miss it when they are gone. While I clean and wipe up their
- [Sprung](https://www.realisa.org/sprung/) - Spring has started. The replacement seeds from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange arrived yesterday. This weekend I will set about starting the new basil varieties and the tomatoes. My cheater toms, purchased at Garden Gate Nursery have recovered from being frozen and trimmed back. I laid the new low rider garden beds and the onions, carrots,
- [The golden hour](https://www.realisa.org/the-golden-hour/) - Silence is golden, so they say. I am wondering who are 'they'? I live a really quiet day-to-day. Even when working, there is noise from the office and the electronics and people talking about their complaint of the day, but for me specifically, my work day is quiet, silent. That's how it must be because
- [Guts](https://www.realisa.org/guts/) - Much lately in the news and in my dialogues about what it means to be a woman, to Lean In, to think (I frame as male) and to feel (I frame as female). There is a balance between how we think about something and how we feel about it. Sometimes when asked about an issue,
- [Pithy](https://www.realisa.org/pithy/) - I start to feel like an old curmudgeon. Time and technology move too swiftly and now encroach on my sense of privacy. I register for my board recertification and the academy asks that you sign in online and select a test center. Before you can select the center or even review the various options and
- [Son Rise](https://www.realisa.org/son-rise/) - This started as a simple status update on Facebook but then I realized there was more to say and I hate the [more....] click through on Facebook. I watched the sun rise on this day the Son rose. I have a fresh pot of great coffee. There is a ham and Gruyere cheese quiche baking
- [Week-ling](https://www.realisa.org/week-ling/) - Taking a week from work to technically do nothing and go no where seemed very extravagant and wasteful. There is always work to be done. And if I don't work, I don't bill and the business has no revenue. Even when other people cover you at work, they really cannot do the work of two.
- [Easter is coming](https://www.realisa.org/easter-is-coming/) - Being off from work has never been easy for me. It takes three days just to relax, thus why a usual weekend never hits this boundary. Usually on day three or four, I smack flat into a wall of "What am I good for other than work?" This is compounded by an absurdly organized house
- [Locate the Loquat](https://www.realisa.org/locate-the-loquat/) - On Saturday I stopped at TNT Nursery and bought 30 bales of straw and their largest loquat tree. Prior to delivering them today, they called and asked where to put everything. I specifically said ON THE DRIVEWAY, at the end in front of the red bud trees. I figured that the guys that work at
- [Weekend Wrap Up](https://www.realisa.org/weekend-wrap-up/) - What a lovely weekend! Having Friday off to tack onto the weekend was a tremendous bonus. I got so much done! The UPS man delivered a tidy little box with this olive oil. My own olive trees have been severely stressed by the cold and have dropped all their leaves. The cambrias are still green
- [Breakfast](https://www.realisa.org/breakfast-2/) - My favorite meal of the day is breakfast. As far back as I can remember it has been breakfast. Maybe that is because as a pre-teen without breakfast, I frequently had a fainting episode. Hypoglygemia and vasovagal events were common place and easily staved off with breakfast. I am a Seinfeld worthy cereal connoisseur but
- [Castle Grounds](https://www.realisa.org/castle-grounds/) - Recently someone commented that I might have a difficult time finding my Prince Charming because part of what Prince Charming hopes to do is to find his Princess and take her back to his castle. The comment referenced the fact that I already have my castle....and I built it myself. Somehow this makes me unattractive
- [Blessed Saturday](https://www.realisa.org/blessed-saturday/) - The last few weeks have been a rush and jammed packed with chores, tasks and even a wee bit of fun. I really enjoyed Quiltcon and enjoyed time with my friend Ann even more. It was delightful to just walk and talk and have company. Anyone who runs their own company knows that you pay
- [New from Texas](https://www.realisa.org/new-from-texas/) - I just returned from Austin, Texas. I went to Austin for Quiltcon, the inaugural convention for modern quilters and their quilt guilds. I learned a few things while in Texas. Texas is NOT part of the South or the Southwest....it's Texas. Austin likes being WEIRD or WIRED depending if you are dyslexic or punny. The
- [Hear ye, hear ye](https://www.realisa.org/hear-ye-hear-ye/) - My desktop PC is finally home. Anyone who believes the mobile phone or tablet will replace the desktop PC is high. I like the giant 18 inch monitor that attaches to my PC. I like a full sized keyboard for my fat fingers and sloppy typing (un)skills. Being reduced to a smart phone and a
- [Quiet](https://www.realisa.org/quiet-3/) - The day is quiet except for the dishwasher. After getting help from Steve this morning with my bee hive, I spent a few hours weeding the rose bed, watering the pecan trees and the new fruit trees and then doing my bills. I took a small nap, too. It was crisp and sunny this morning
- [Splendid](https://www.realisa.org/splendid/) - I wake at 2:00am and in rushes the fear. This explains the insomnia. I have been focused, determined to live today, live in today, stay in the now and be present. I promised myself that today was all I had and it should be enough, abundantly satisfying, for if I was forever focused on the
- [Inheritance](https://www.realisa.org/inheritance/) - The petals curve inside one another, tightly, waiting, filled with the urge to open the push comes from within, something ingrained, hardwired, that rises with the water through the stems. It must open otherwise its whole purpose is lost, wasted, squandered. It was created to flourish, to bloom, embedded in its DNA is its inherent
- [One thing off the to do list](https://www.realisa.org/6732/) - I am a list maker. I make lists on note pads, on my PC, on my phone. I have shorts lists for a day's tasks. I have long ranged lists aimed at points in the middle and distant future. Maybe these are better labeled goals, but lists demystifies things. A list is easy to tackle.
- [Music of the heart](https://www.realisa.org/music-of-the-heart/) - People thought her confident, strong, bold. It was a ruse. She could be all those things in situations and circumstances that she crafted and controlled. Take her from her natural element and she quickly became distressed, even panicked. It happens quickly and she loses her ability to conceal her fear. On a bus leading farther
- [She's back](https://www.realisa.org/shes-back/) - Ranting always helps....well, it helps me. I was not a tantrum throwing child. If I ever threw a tantrum, I threw only one. My Momma put a swift end to that nonsense. But, more likely, I witnessed an older sister attempt the tantrum; it would have been swiftly aborted. At a keenly young age, I
- [Nuts and bolts](https://www.realisa.org/nuts-and-bolts/) - I leave my blog perpetually open on a tab on my desktop browser. I leave it there so I will do a post. It's a reminder. Somehow, I think if I leave it there it serves as a prompt. Except, I have become adept at ignoring it, behaving indifferently yet all the while it adds
- [A New Day](https://www.realisa.org/a-new-day-2/) - I dislike New Year's Resolutions. They feel too Lenten and sacrificial. "I'm gonna quit smoking this year." or "I'm gonna lose 20 lbs this year." Resolutions feel punitive, singular and failure is exceedingly easy. They're also intellectually lazy. Well of COURSE you should quit smoking and whoring around! Duh! Make a resolution that will make
- [Pillow fortress](https://www.realisa.org/pillow-fortress/) - When you've slept alone for several years, you change your sleeping habits. I frequently pay homage to the Victorians for keeping separate bedchambers. There is something sexy and clandestine about having to enter your husband's bedroom in the dark of night. Having gossipy servants that notice that the Lady Elizabeth didn't sleep in her own
- [Updates](https://www.realisa.org/updates-2/) - After a paltry and anemic showing over the last few months, I have decided to recommit myself to writing and posting here on Realisa as well as on Biddan Ridge. I also have a website for my office that has been overtly neglected and needs serious resuscitation. I haven't had the time, energy or interest
- [Kindergarten](https://www.realisa.org/kindergarten/) - This is my 5th birthday, one full year before I started kindergarten. I had Mrs. Biondo for the afternoon session of kindergarten at Cutler Ridge Elementary. I took swimming lessons at Cutler Ridge pool in the morning. I walked to school across the park. I wore one of my fathers discarded dress shirts backwards as
- [The Tyranny of the Urgent](https://www.realisa.org/the-tyranny-of-the-urgent/) - On Friday, I attended a conference for work. It meant getting up especially early to drive to Orlando to arrive by 9am. It's a two hour drive if no interstate or highway traffic dilemmas. One of the speakers used a phrase that has resonated all weekend. "Let us all stop falling victim to the tyranny
- [Room to grow](https://www.realisa.org/room-to-grow/) - Eventually, I'll hire a maid but my house is so fresh and new and barely lived-in that it hasn't gotten that dirty or cluttered. Also, I like cleaning and I especially like cleaning MY HOUSE. For all of my adult life, I have lived in condominiums or houses with previous owners. I had to deal
- [I've got mail](https://www.realisa.org/ive-got-mail/) - What a gloriously lazy day! The house is all open, the wind chime audible in the light breeze. I found fresh tulips at The Fresh Market this morning when I went o buy my Honey Crisp apples. They are a lovely burnt orange color and offset the colors of Thanksgiving nicely. I am solo for
- [The Decider](https://www.realisa.org/the-decider/) - She is the Decider, the maker of decisions. She is good at it, skilled and consistent. Malcolm Gladwell says you become an expert at something once you've done it for 10 years or 10,000 hours. She's been The Decider far longer than that. Within that space lies her Cosmic Protest. There are days, situations, circumstances
- [Freaky Friday](https://www.realisa.org/freaky-friday/) - Instead of making my usual and customary Sharpie marker list of chores and errands to do today on this day off, I decided to wing it. The compulsive part of me likes to scratch off the tasks from the list, the permanent marker testimony of the job's completion. Instead, I simply decided to not decide.
- [Burnt toast](https://www.realisa.org/burnt-toast-2/) - I am like burned toast. Over cooked, burned out, mentally tired. I am the frayed edge of a favorite dish towel or the pills puckering the front of a favorite sweater. I would like to believe that the long weekend I have would alleviate my sense of tension and restore my tensile strength and resiliency.
- [The right stuff](https://www.realisa.org/the-right-stuff/) - It was an absolutely gorgeous day today, a true Florida fall day. It stayed in the high 70's and as the sun has gone down, the temperature has dropped below 70F quickly. There wasn't a cloud in the sky all day. The birds found my bird feeders and also the bird bath. I managed to
- [Being a grown-ass](https://www.realisa.org/being-a-grown-ass/) - Last Friday sitting in a Marriott hotel room with a wallop of a migraine, I listened to my delightful cousin Kerrie tell a story about one of her co-worker's parenting strategies. In truth, it was a story of true Southern caliber and beyond my ability to retell. The moral of the story: "he's a grown
- [Production](https://www.realisa.org/production/) - The boys came home and my universe rights itself. I slept last night. I slept like a stone. I didn't move. I didn't wake at 4:11am to empty the bladder that competes with that of a race horse for capacity during the day but transforms into a teacup at night. I slept like the champion
- [Nightmare](https://www.realisa.org/nightmare/) - I guess the three days off was insufficient to get my brain to fully shut down and purge. I have always been a champion sleeper. I could sleep anywhere. Fall asleep fast. Be dreaming in ten minutes. I woke just after 2 am from a nightmare. I never have nightmares, at least I used to
- [Three days](https://www.realisa.org/three-days/) - It usually takes three days to unwind, three days to finally feel that you are off. Often, even with three days, I still don't get there. A real vacation doesn't start until the fourth day for this reason. I usually work a half day on Thursday, so when I have a Friday off, my weekend
- [Simple ](https://www.realisa.org/simple/) - Like a fist full of dry spaghetti, I wake with a mind full of stories, fragments of stories and tales to tell. I pull at them as I lay in bed resisting waking. The first person voice is the strongest and the one I shove away. I am not ready to climb into the head
- [Burnt toast ](https://www.realisa.org/burnt-toast/) - Last week I was simply toast, burnt. Charbroiled. Someone suggested taking a month off of work. In a service industry career, you eat what you treat. And as long as I am practicing medicine the old-fashioned way where you hang out your shingle and see patients, being away from the office means you just don't
- [Truly](https://www.realisa.org/truly/) - The universe reset itself yesterday. Wednesday is my favorite day of the week. Wednesday is the day my sons come home and this is our long week, which means they are here until Monday morning. It rotates. The courts call it a 5:2 split. It works for us. The truly best part about yesterday was
- [Little things](https://www.realisa.org/little-things/) - The drive home is perfection. Fifteen minutes of decompression time. By the time I turn on to CR 232, time has shifted. When I pass NW 170th and the live oak branches roof the two lane road, I feel the tension ebbing away. This week I will have a curbside refuse container with pick up.
- [Moved ](https://www.realisa.org/moved/) - So much changes so quickly. The illusory nature of time confounds me. For two years, time has crept slowly forward. Often it felt at a standstill. And then, like warp five, time flies forward and everything is changes. My dream house finishes - two full weeks ahead of contract - and on my birthday no
- [Jump!](https://www.realisa.org/jump/) - All organisms differentiate. From a single cell, the process of differentiation must occur. The cell divides and eventually becomes something different, something specialized, something specific. But, once a cells differentiates, can it change? This is the fundamental concept of stem cells. If you take a stem cell, you can pre-select and define how and what
- [Winning!](https://www.realisa.org/winning-2/) - It's important to push yourself. The best motivation originates from within. One of my favorite childhood books was The Big Tidy Up and if you've read this sweet story you know, Jennifer doesn't clean her room until she is disturbed by the mess. Tolerance for situations varies from one individual to another. The ability to
- [Supplication](https://www.realisa.org/supplication/) - Late yesterday evening, I took my grumpy self out to the house with the goal of getting my last flower bed landscaped and planted. It rained most of the day, but while the skies remained cloudy and threatened more rain, the weather stayed dry. I improvised with a standard shovel and non-preferred hand trowel because
- [](https://www.realisa.org/6548/) - I believe I work hard everyday. My 'regular' job is cognitively hard and on some days, emotionally difficult. When I come home from a particularly rough day or week, I'm bushed because of the mental toll of it all. I don't have a labor intensive job. I took Thursday and Friday off from work to
- [Twirling](https://www.realisa.org/twirling/) - They called it The Block. In reality it was one side of a boomerang shaped block in a planned neighborhood in the unincorporated part of the City. The City was later swallowed up by the county and all those once unincorporated parts. Her Block, from one end to the next, went this way: The Kapettas,
- [Paperdolls and wooden blocks](https://www.realisa.org/paperdolls-and-wooden-blocks/) - A simple person calls it dreaming. The marketeers coin catch phrases that make good meditation book titles or self-help work shops: creative visualization. She'd always done it. She'd been punished for it. Long before teachers gave it the ICD-9 diagnostic code of 314.00, she'd caught flak for being distracted and inattentive. Her family called it
- [Get it right](https://www.realisa.org/get-it-right/) - The tub was beautiful. She stepped into it and laid down. It felt just as she had imagined yet something was just not right. But, it was right enough. "Stop finding fault." Her words echoed in the unfinished bathroom. "Why can't you be content, it's beautiful." She didn't want to be a naysayer. And it
- [Limerock](https://www.realisa.org/limerock/) - "What will you do when you finish the house?" He asked. Without hesitation she answered. "I will write." The three words were all she'd spoken for over an hour. She had been content to listen to him talk and to watch him drive. They had bumped along two lane roads and packed limerock for a
- [Goals](https://www.realisa.org/goals/) - To underestimate the value of pop culture risks being disconnected from your peers especially in the future when friends are dispersed and shared experiences when young gain emotional value. I painted a rail fence today (and yesterday). After painting for about an hour, I heard inside my heard, "Wax on. Wax off." I bet money
- [Night falls](https://www.realisa.org/night-falls/) - There is a difference between thinking and doing. Doing is easy. Doing is just tasking. Make the list of things that need to get done and them do them. Doing is almost auto-pilot. There are days I love to have a long list of things I have to do. I feel fruitful and productive. I
- [Smile](https://www.realisa.org/smile/) - Lately, I find myself smiling. I catch myself smiling. I am folding laundry or climbing stairs or ironing or walking through a parking lot and I am smiling. I even ask myself, "Why are you smiling?" I am happy. For the first time in a very, very long time I have good things ahead of
- [Equation](https://www.realisa.org/equation/) - Each day gets closer and closer. Every small step that moves forward gets closer. Such is progress, such is life. Achievement is the general, cumulative force towards a goal regardless of velocity. Achievement could be reduced to a fairly simple physics formula that includes effort, energy, mass, speed, direction. It would have to factor the
- [Behind Door Number 1](https://www.realisa.org/behind-door-number-1/) - Dreaming and keeping a faith in that dream (or dreams) remains essential to my integrity. I recently went back to visit Charleston. I walked and drove around downtown, James Island and Folly Beach intent on returning to the houses and gardens that inspired my dream house. I found it nearly impossible to snap a photo
- [Passion](https://www.realisa.org/passion-2/) - He asked me, "Are you following your passion?" My simultaneous rush to respond is coupled to a hesitance to respond because people ask this question because its fashionable and en vogue. Everyone is following their passion, right? As I drove the five hours home yesterday I contemplated the question; I ponder this concept often, even
- [Indelible](https://www.realisa.org/indelible/) - An indelible mark, like the embedded watermark on linen stationary, remains within us, is left upon us, by certain places. When I received the email invitation to attend the retirement party of my residency director, Peter Carek, MD, I wondered how returning to Charleston might feel. I decided to be very low key about it.
- [Mystery ](https://www.realisa.org/mystery/) - This plant sprouted on a pile of nearly inorganic material scraped off the surface of my lot prior to the foundation being poured. It is a vine and seems to have appeared overnight.
- [Magic](https://www.realisa.org/magic-4/) - If only magic were real. In the daily press of life, logic and the physical constrains of time create stress. There are just not enough hours in a day to do all that needs to get done. What if you had the added benefit of magic? With a spell, you could stretch time, allowing yourself
- [Rhythms](https://www.realisa.org/rhythms/) - Time stretches and it seems I haven't felt organized and in a solid rhythm for a long time. What is a long time? It's hard to gauge since I still manage to be productive. To the observer it might be imperceptible but I know I am running with a stone in my shoe and my
- [Flags and pies](https://www.realisa.org/flags-and-pies/) - The mid-week holiday is either a delicious treat that fractures the grind of the work week or a terrible tease, a mongrel weekend. It felt like a lazy Sunday. The good thing is that I woke earlier, having forgotten to disarm my alarm, which permitted me the wee morning hours to clean my house and
- [Still](https://www.realisa.org/still/) - The office was busy but smooth leaving frequent lulls in activities and engaging tasks. I struggled with my wandering, daydreaming mind. My office manager (and BFF) being off for the day compounded my distraction. I had no one to talk to, chat with, listen to or share with. It seemed I had a lot to
- [Sardines](https://www.realisa.org/sardines/) - Mondays are days to return to work. After a long, four day weekend, I anticipate a truck load of work awaiting me when I return. Taking time off work always comes with a price and it takes several days to recover and get caught back up. Likewise, it takes about three full days off to
- [Country drive](https://www.realisa.org/country-drive/) - North central Florida gets hot in the summertime and the entire southeastern region lies under an oppressive heat wave. I met my builder early this morning at the house to review things. By 10 am and fifteen minutes pulling hose and setting up the sprinkles, I was drenched in sweat and my tank top clung
- [Rusty](https://www.realisa.org/rusty/) - Sometimes you spend the day digging post holes and you know the next day you won't be able to feed yourself. Some days, life smacks you with bad news and sucks the wind from your sails. Then there are days like I had on Wednesday when you just get stuck. It's a mechanical thing, a
- [Jolly good day](https://www.realisa.org/jolly-good-day/) - I saw the movie Hysteria yesterday. I hadn't heard anything about it prior to reading the blurb as I was perusing the movie listings for my town. The interesting thing occurred after I shared on Facebook that I was gong to see this movie. Friends whispered me and sent private messages asking if it was
- [Playing together](https://www.realisa.org/playing-together/) - I listen to NPR's Weekend Edition most weekends, especially Sundays. I slept late this morning, until almost 10am. It's raining outside as the weather shifts in response to Tropical Storm Debby out in the Gulf of Mexico. The torrential rains will cause a deluge and flash flooding but we all need rain so badly, few
- [The New Ridge](https://www.realisa.org/the-new-ridge/) - There are times in my life when I have been lost, times I wish I could get lost and others when I know I'm lost and I'm stricken with fear knowing I need to figure my way out. I am either a complete stubborn blockhead or simple profoundly self-reliant because I eventually figure it out.
- [Sleep](https://www.realisa.org/sleep-3/) - Sleep rarely eludes me. Once I decide to actually go to sleep, I fall asleep quickly. My troubles arise with staying asleep. Some of the origins are the "change of life" and others may be in that life has changed. I wake with leg cramps, prequels to leg cramps actually, below the knees. Both the
- [Canning the day](https://www.realisa.org/canning-the-day/) - This past weekend I picked wild blackberries on my property and made seedless blackberry jam. Two years ago when I first bought my property, I picked berries and made jam (with the seeds). It was tasty, nay delicious, but the microseeds drove me crazy. The recent rains have plumped the berries and the brambles are
- [Fierce](https://www.realisa.org/fierce/) - I listened to the segment this morning about the American Dream and how some people beat the steepest odds. I realized that I believe in the American Dream but I also know that despite their hardest work and best effort, some people just don't make it. It's not a character flaw, it's just a
- [Fresh Finds](https://www.realisa.org/fresh-finds/) - What to write about when you've lost your voice? What to photograph when your quilting projects have ground to a halt? I am cross covering for a provider who is out on maternity leave and while the patient care is shared by everyone else, the added patient contact hours every week have reduced my time
- [My Sunday Rest ](https://www.realisa.org/my-sunday-rest/) - Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the
- [Time to Mourn](https://www.realisa.org/time-to-mourn/) - We went away for a quick escape to Islands of Adventure at Universal Studios in Orlando. We learned while there that the older brother of one of Cameron's life long friends died. All of our children have been in school together at St. Patrick's for years and at multiple grade levels, all the siblings interweaving
- [Wait and change](https://www.realisa.org/wait-and-change/) - At some point in life, we think we know ourselves. At a certain age, after life hands us a generous portion of disappointment and misfortune, we might come to believe people cannot change. I am thrilled and pleased to discover I am not so jaded. I think people can change. I know they can change.
- [Evan's birthday ](https://www.realisa.org/6390/) - My baby Evan turns 12 today. He'll spend the day on a 6th grade class field trip to Camp McConnell. Shush, don't tell him but I intend on buying him a new.....like I'd post it here! I can barely keep a secret, I know ya'll can't. My baby is becoming a very interesting person. He
- [Tiaras](https://www.realisa.org/tiaras/) - Why do we live in a neutral zone? I recently heard the comment, "If everyone is special, then no one is special." It's common and customary to homogenize everyone and everything. Every Little League player gets a trophy. Every second grader gets a certificate. We've widened the Bell curve so everyone is underneath and there
- [Mothering](https://www.realisa.org/mothering-2/) - Today is Mothers' Day and we celebrate moms and motherhood, honoring our mothers. We give thanks to the women who gave us life, and raised us. For me, Mothers' Day also celebrates the day I became a mother. I am compelled to give thanks for this blessing and honor. I am humbled by the whole
- [Inspiration](https://www.realisa.org/inspiration/) - Many of the reasons that compelled me to start writing this blog reside in the personality traits of someone with whom I have regular contact. These traits occur and recur in many people and were the impetus to shift my own perspective. I don't want to be contrary or negative, pessimistic or dismal. It can
- [Perfect Sunday](https://www.realisa.org/perfect-sunday/) - A hot Sunday in Gainesville, baking a fresh strawberry cake and setting up dinner in the Crock pot.
- [Wednesday news](https://www.realisa.org/wednesday-news/) - Wednesday days are awesome days. Wednesday is the day my sons come back to me. I think divorce is hard and unfortunate but it really isn't the kids' fault. SO often they get stuck in the middle. The very best thing that we did through our divorce was to not tug-o-war over our sons. They
- [Confirmed](https://www.realisa.org/confirmed/) - My oldest son was confirmed today
- [Succeeding at life](https://www.realisa.org/succeeding-at-life/) - Pondering the recipe for success and how to be authentic in the efforts to be successful
- [Granola](https://www.realisa.org/granola/) - Homemade dried tart cherry, pecan, toasted coconut and maple granola
- [A fine hello](https://www.realisa.org/a-fine-hello/) - I walk into the kitchen to make my morning coffee and I am greeted by a four inch, long legged, thick bodied, swift wolf spider. That may not be their true genus and species, but I understand why they are called wolves. I quickly cover him with a heavy glass cake cover and finish prepping
- [Still and silent](https://www.realisa.org/still-and-silent/) - Just like I go through my e-mail spam folders to make sure truly important e-mails haven't been diverted into the bin, I sift through the spam comments folder on my blog. Occasionally there is a comment that may be genuine and from a real person who reads my blog and has commented. How can you
- [The Good News](https://www.realisa.org/the-good-news/) - Anticipation often leads to giddiness. I remember as a child watching cookies baking in the oven and being happyhappyhappy waiting for the buzzer to go off. On Christmas morning, my sisters and I would sit in the hallway of our home in front of the wall heater literally shaking in anticipation for our parents to
- [New finds](https://www.realisa.org/new-finds-2/) - Here are some of my new discoveries: The food and lifestyle blog Roost marvelously captures the simple beauty of the simplest things. Their video creations are lovely and make me want to fall into them. And as is the way of the internet and blogosphere, you stumble upon new writers, new books, new music and
- [Filling the Void](https://www.realisa.org/filling-the-void/) - It's not that I don't have stuff I could be doing. There is that list of things I need to do every week: laundry, clean house, grocery shop. And then there is the quilt to finish, the pickles to make with the baby cucumbers I bought yesterday at the farmers' market, the rail fence to
- [Destination](https://www.realisa.org/destination/) - Why are people indecisive? What makes a person change their mind? What causes the flip flop or the about face? Certainly, experts will have proof of theories based on observational data but I have my own opinion. People change their previously "made up minds" for two reasons. The first is the person whose choices and
- [Blushing rose](https://www.realisa.org/blushing-rose/) - Photo: Taken by Realisa @ Micanopy Arts Festival fall 2011 with my Kodak Z712IS This is a Confederate rose (Hibiscus mutabilis). It is a woody shrub that can grow over 10 feet tall with leggy stalks. It is cold hardy in my Zone 8 but it drops all it's leaves in winter and sprouts anew
- [Mapquest](https://www.realisa.org/mapquest/) - I sit listening to Fresh Air Weekend Edition on my computer as Jonah Lehrer is interviewed. His new book Imagine: How Creativity Works sounds fascinating and purchase worthy. It made me wonder if these last few weeks, nay months, of anemic creativity is a consequence of a sad mood or a percolating near happiness. Lehrer
- [Necessary for survival](https://www.realisa.org/necessary-for-survival/) - I love to cook. I love to bake. I have been baking cookies since I was in elementary school. This particular recipe is an old family favorite and the foundation of all cookie baking. What am I saying? This cookie recipe is THE Cookie recipe. It is the ONLY cookie my kids ask me to
- [For Real](https://www.realisa.org/for-real/) - For many years, ideas compelled me to write, thoughts came to me and I wanted to share, expound, highlight or praise. I felt moved out of wonderment and awe, filled with love or thrilled by whimsy. But my voice is of late muted or silenced by fear, apprehension or simply a desire to protect myself.
- [Gourd to grand](https://www.realisa.org/gourd-to-grand/) - Roast the butternut squash in the oven for 40 minutes, cut side down in a pan brushed with olive oil. After letting it cool completely, dice it into small 1/2 inch cubes. I used only a fourth of the squash. I sauteed a sweet onion until translucent, added a teaspoon each of butter and sugar,
- [Ashes to ashes](https://www.realisa.org/ashes-to-ashes/) - Ash Wednesday begins the Lenten season, a period of prayer and fasting for many Christians, the forehead marked with ashes, a memorial for the death of Jesus. Lent was once a period of rigorous fasting and abstinence, but contemporary Lent is often a time to give up an indulgence or a luxury habit, like beer
- [Ginger kisses](https://www.realisa.org/ginger-kisses/) - Compressed into a single day, we celebrate President's day, as the national day of observing the birthdays of our founding and sentinel presidents. Tuesday is Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, the day of feasting and gluttony before the Lenten season of sacrifice and discernment. Monday, February 20th is also the birthday of my oldest child, my
- [Face it](https://www.realisa.org/face-it/) - If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it. Fear shackles the mind, navigating the sock drawer becomes a Nobel laureate feat. I frequently advise patients who present racked with anxiety that fear is not logical. One cannot talk themselves out of fear, nor can a friend coach you through
- [Craven ](https://www.realisa.org/craven/) - I am listening to the unabridged audiobook Dance with Dragons, the fifth book in George R. R. Martin's series. Samwell is craven. He calls himself craven, feels craven and dreads circumstances he knows will proclaim his cravenness. John Snow commands Samwell to cease calling himself craven; while Samwell might be craven in his heart John
- [Chicken Heart ](https://www.realisa.org/chicken-heart/) - "He was the only one who saw her clearly, yet the only one who could not see her." I wrote a story, a novel. Sometimes, it feels like the novel wrote itself. I cannot recall how or where I found the time to daily sit and write for three or four hours and still work
- [This or That](https://www.realisa.org/this-or-that-2/) - In The Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell writes about success. What makes someone successful? How are they so successful, especially at a young age? Is it innate talent, luck, dogged persistence or drive? Gladwell makes an elegant proposition that it is a bit of all of those things plus environment and the simple application of time. Do
- [Clack clack clack](https://www.realisa.org/clack-clack-clack/) - I love roller coasters. Right at the beginning, the cars pull away from the station and start their climb; clack-clack-clack the coaster climbs towards that first drop. Lately it seems, I get right to the point where the tracks start to curve and I lean forward, anticipating the impending free fall over and down the
- [Beta Test for Curvy ruler](https://www.realisa.org/beta-test-for-curvy-ruler/) - I bought the curvy ruler from Sewkindofwonderful and decided to test the ruler and my ability to cut and sew a double curved block. Before I take a rotary cutter to the two yards of MODA fabric I bought for the intended project, maybe a quick trial run is reasonable. The cutting was very easy.
- [Donuts](https://www.realisa.org/donuts/) - I was given a donut pan as a Christmas gift this year. I hadn't used it until today. The recipe that came with the pan is a little dry and I think I will search for recipes for a sour cream cake donut. That, or dunk the donuts in melted butter after baking and roll
- [Half step](https://www.realisa.org/half-step/) - My faith resides in my absolute understanding that I know nothing. I may be intelligent and clever but whatever the meaning of this life, I am clueless. I don't even profess to know. I would appreciate getting clued in, getting a heads up, maybe some advance warning, but I accept my ignorance and innocence. Humility
- [Two eggs scrambled dry](https://www.realisa.org/two-eggs-scrambled-dry/) - It doesn't require a declaration. The smallest choices define us. I once read a demographic factoid that said if you live in Texas, bought bottled beer instead of canned and have more than two varieties of mustard in your fridge, you vote liberally. I am not sure if canned beer and mayo mean you are
- [Pieced together](https://www.realisa.org/pieced-together/) - I must buy the walking foot for the Singer Curvy as my old walking foot does not match this machine. Then I will quilt the pillow top and assemble the pillow. I am not sure I enjoyed this process of paper piecing, but now I know how to do it and I understand the
- [Sunday Sew Down](https://www.realisa.org/sunday-sew-down/) - Well, after a few day of stillness....and frankly boredom....I want to do something crafty. I need my hands at a task so my mind can run play-options. I watched the Saints vs 49ers game last night and yelled so hard at the TV screen in the last 3 minutes of the game I pee'd a
- [Paper piecing](https://www.realisa.org/paper-piecing/) - This is a very tedious and time consuming method of quilting but when finished, this will be a lovely pillow. Almost finished.
- [Love and loss](https://www.realisa.org/love-and-loss/) - "If you love something, let it go free. If it doesn't come back to you, you never had it. It it does come back, love it forever." When I went searching for this quotation, I discovered its author was Doug Horton, a name I have never seen. Pastor Horton was an American clergyman in the
- [Diastolic function](https://www.realisa.org/diastolic-function/) - Breathing is subconscious. That is to say, inhaling is usually an unconscious act. Most of the time, we do not think about breathing. It just happens. We must breathe, need to breathe and breathing just happens. Its control mechanism resides in the deepest part of our brains. Inhalation requires muscle contraction. The diaphragm contracts and
- [Tuesday's Like List](https://www.realisa.org/tuesdays-like-list/) - Here is a quick list of new discoveries and things I like: Trader Joe's Raisin Rosemary Crisps: these little crisps are like a Melba toast or biscotti but thinner and not as dry and pair amazingly well with goat cheese or a sharp cheddar. I will be ordering these online since I do not have
- [Courbet and the Sea monster](https://www.realisa.org/courbet-and-the-sea-monster/) - On Saturday afternoon, I walked slowly through the rooms of 'the little house' at the Phillips Collection in out nation's capital. Duncan Phillips loved art, studied art and after the death of his father in 1917 and his older brother from influenza in 1918 he started collecting works of art as a memorial to them
- [Sharing Degas](https://www.realisa.org/sharing-degas/) - Washington, DC captured my heart many years ago. IN high school, I cam to DC on Close Up trips twice. Riding the underground shuttle between the office building and the Capital Building with then Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neal, shaking hands with then Senator John Glenn, listening to Congress in session, touring the Library
- [Freezing in Florida, momentarily](https://www.realisa.org/freezing-in-florida-momentarily/) - Imagine on this cold Florida morning, where the temperatures have dipped to 23F, that most of the year we have spectacular weather. We have beaches and sunshowers. Remember the last time you walked leisurely along the shoreline while the surf kissed the shore and slid around your ankles. I love my state. I love the
- [Celebrate the day](https://www.realisa.org/celebrate-the-day/) - Tuesday the 3rd. Returning to work and starting a new year on the same day. So fitting and hopeful for the year that lies ahead and the past week was truly restful. I unwound and relaxed and let my mind off for the week, too. No furious list making. No arm length lists of chores
- [The Barre](https://www.realisa.org/the-barre/) - Beauty upon which to look, a brush stroke, a shade of coloring and the artist's energy captured in the build up of pigments, this is what brings me joy and pleasure. You can see the haste, the pressure, the fury, the painstaking repetitive strokes laid over and over upon canvas until he steps back and
- [What works](https://www.realisa.org/what-works/) - What worked? What hasn't worked? These are different questions than "What do you want to work?" Thinking something should work is not answering the basic question: What worked? We all know George Bailey. We all have that wonderful life and especially at the end of the year, as we look forward, we take stock. At
- [A good year, a new year](https://www.realisa.org/a-good-year-a-new-year/) - The week ends, the month ends and now the year also ends. What a truly amazing year! A rollercoaster of a ride, filled with terror and thrills, literally and metaphorically. I face a medical scare (mostly a consequence of being a physician and simply knowing too much...and letting my imagination get away from me.) I
- [The quilt gifts revealed](https://www.realisa.org/the-quilt-gifts-revealed/) - This is the quilt I made for my sister, Chrissy. She loves batiks. This is the Christmas quilt I made for my friend Ann. She moved away from her long time home in California to be closer to family in Texas. I wanted her to have something soft and fresh for her new home. I
- [Pitch a Fit](https://www.realisa.org/pitch-a-fit/) - On the day after Christmas, worthy topics include thankfulness or gratitude or an acknowledgement of blessings. Instead, I have a phrase stuck in my craw. He said, "...you want things on your own terms." Now, that 's a loaded phrase if ever I heard one. For one who wishes to be understood, there is a
- [Merry Christmas to all](https://www.realisa.org/merry-christmas-to-all/) - Merry Christmas to everyone. May your day be filled with squealing children, yummy food, clinking glasses filled with cocktails or mugs filled with warm mulled cider or hot cocoa. Enjoy your football and old movies. Don't let the "some assembly required" frustrate you too badly. Build a fire (or in our case, crank down the
- [Whistle Stop](https://www.realisa.org/whistle-stop/) - It's Friday. It's the Friday before Christmas. In about 90 minutes, full schedule of patients awaits me at the office and it looks to be quite busy. I don't feel I am ready for Christmas but I am likely plenty ready. Once my work day is over, my Christmas vacation starts. Vacation is an oxymoron
- [Wait just a second](https://www.realisa.org/wait-just-a-second/) - Is waiting a uniquely human behavior? I suppose nomadic animals in herds wait. Or do they? I conjecture that when the herd moves on you either get with the pack or get picked off by the predators. Nothing in the wild waits but maybe the solitary predator. He waits for opportunity to hunt and kill
- [Facts for today](https://www.realisa.org/facts-for-today/) - It's Wednesday and here are the facts as I see 'em: I have been painting my own finger and toe nails since I was in junior high. While I like the pampering that comes with a spa manicure and pedicure, I am increasingly grossed out by the idea that the brushes inside those polish pots
- [Properly fitting](https://www.realisa.org/properly-fitting/) - I went to undergraduate school in Washington, DC at American University. Because of family circumstances, I transferred and graduated from the University of Miami. I had an academic scholarship to AU and transferred out of there after the end of the fall semester 12 credits shy of my bachelor's degree in biology. The University of
- [Idle time](https://www.realisa.org/idle-time/) - Oh, I wish this weekend would continue minus being on call. I have no great motivation, no project, no list of endeavors. I like my work well enough....I am just more interested in being leisurely. That means dawdling and diddling and doing not much of anything. I was quite unfocused this weekend. I could have
- [Fast Facts belatedly](https://www.realisa.org/fast-facts-belatedly/) - I missed fast facts on Wednesday. It was one of those weeks. So, on this dreary Saturday morning when I have a list of "should dos" and a second list of "could dos" and a desire to "not do", I better write a bit, do my errands and leave this house. Otherwise, I may kill
- [Irony, the Conqueror of Wrinkly](https://www.realisa.org/irony-the-conqueror-of-wrinkly/) - I'm a practical girl. I openly admit that I enjoy ironing. It feeds my OCD tendencies. Few things are more satisfying that a crisply ironed and starched piece of linen, be it napkin or shirt. Living in Florida and preferring to wear natural fiber clothing means you wash and wear tons of cotton and linen.
- [Small Sundays](https://www.realisa.org/small-sundays/) - Silent Sunday mornings delight me. Waking before the morning and setting a pot of coffee to brew, I ponder on the day ahead. I started a load of laundry and have my other piles awaiting their turn. We put up out outside Christmas decorations, meager but festive. I found a sewing quilting blog last night
- [Saturday, here in the park](https://www.realisa.org/saturday-here-in-the-park/) - On this Saturday, I finished the border on my impromptu pastel wonky stars quilt. I took it and the batik bento box quilt to Tracy at Buttons&Bows for long arm quilting. I lucked out that she is caught up and has the ability to "fit me in" before Christmas. I have met my 2011 goal
- [Fast Fact Wednesday](https://www.realisa.org/fast-fact-wednesday/) - I missed my fast facts last Wednesday, being deep in prep work for Thanksgiving. Here are my fast facts for this week: Other than a sandwich and bowl of soup at Panera, I did not spend a dime on Black Friday or on Cyber Monday. I am contemplating canceling Netflix, Audible, XBox Live and several
- [Practical Alchemy](https://www.realisa.org/practical-alchemy/) - 1 + 1 = 2 In a practical world, for a pragmatic mind, logic supports expectations. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Fill up your gas tank, drive for a few days and for a sizable distance and the gas tank will need refilling. Same with your tummy. What you
- [Wall climbing](https://www.realisa.org/wall-climbing/) - It is official. I am climbing the walls. I last worked on Tuesday. Off on Wednesday, I relaxed and did prep for the cooking extravaganza on Thursday. On Thursday, my sister and I cooked like fools. We made a 20lb turkey with all the fixins and four kinds of desserts not counting the ice cream
- [Stuffing](https://www.realisa.org/stuffing/) - Thanksgiving is our national day of thanks.We live in a country of abundance and bounty. Even with a crummy economy and soldiers off our soil serving in foreign wars, we have so much for which to be thankful. It is far too easy to get caught in the debates about politics, economics, religion or if
- [Free Range Turkey ](https://www.realisa.org/free-range-turkey/) - There is a Facebook group for people who grew up in Cutler Ridge, a once unincorporated part of Dade county. It is now renamed Cutler Bay and is an incorporated part of Miami-Dade county. If you lived south of Eureka Drive (north of Eureka is technically Perrine), east of US1 (AKA Useless 1) and north
- [Compounding joy](https://www.realisa.org/compounding-joy/) - I observed something interesting. Over the last few weeks, I have been juggling some fairly significant 'stressors'. The situations that fell within my skill set, I managed well. Emotionally, they caused me pause but didn't have me fall apart hysterical. For some, the discovery of a lump in a breast (or anywhere else for that
- [Get Crackin'](https://www.realisa.org/get-crackin/) - My brain is filled with too many things today to write. To many activities, chores, projects, creative ideas that I am about to bust at the seams. I will make an abbreviated list of what is on deck and then when the day is done, I will let you know how far I got. Mind
- [The Mouth](https://www.realisa.org/the-mouth/) - These are my fast facts for Wednesday: It will be a cold day in Hell when I give up coffee. Seriously and fortunately, I live in Florida and it isn't likely to happen. And that cup-o-joe iss made with Florida Crystals turbinado sugar and a plop of Half&Half. How can people pollute a perfectly divine
- [Pinch of Time](https://www.realisa.org/pinch-of-time/) - "It's 19 minutes after seven o'clock," the radio announcer declares. Why is it that in this thin sliver of time, my mind floods with ideas? I see and hear all manner of creative things: a quilt pattern, a long forgotten swag of fabric I tucked away in a box in the closet, a craft project
- [The Night Sky](https://www.realisa.org/the-night-sky/) - Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.
- [Upgrades](https://www.realisa.org/upgrades/) - Products lack compatibility. How many old phone chargers, camera cords and USB plugs for varying electronic devices clutter the drawers of your desk? Sometimes phones made by the same company change plugs, so the cords from the older Blackberry can't be used for the new slimmer model. Why? Likewise, software is not similarly compatible. I
- [The Girls](https://www.realisa.org/the-girls/) - After a few weeks of processing through the "what ifs" associated with having a lump in my breast, I am relieved to know that my MRI was negative. NEGATIVE. I don't have cancer. It would have been a truly cruel twist to have discovered a malignant mass in my breast but I dealt with the
- [Lap 499](https://www.realisa.org/lap-499/) - Having a hard time getting in gear on this Friday morning. I am still holding my breath. It happens when you feel like you have averted a disaster. You are driving along in dense fog and heavy traffic, poor conditions everyone knows. You can't really slow down when the average speed of those around you
- [Fast Facts](https://www.realisa.org/fast-facts/) - It seems I have developed my own hump day quickie, the Just the Facts, Ma'am post. So here goes. I live quilting and I love starting a new project. I love quilt stores and all the quilt fabrics. I do in there with a color idea or a particular pattern and walk out with a
- [Unwelcomed visitors](https://www.realisa.org/unwelcomed-visitors/) - This morning NPR reported on an air craft carrier sized asteroid that will pass by our blue planet. Did you catch that? An asteroid the size of a military air craft carrier will pass closer than the moon and has an orbit of approximately 100 years. So, if it misses us today, it will get
- [Confederate Roses](https://www.realisa.org/confederate-roses/) - One of my favorite shrubs is the Confederate Rose. A member of the hibiscus family, the blooms open in the morning a soft white. As the day progresses, the flower slowly turns to a deep pink color. The blossoms rival dinner plates in size and are fragrant free. I love this notion of waking and
- [Hold on to your hats](https://www.realisa.org/hold-on-to-your-hats/) - When I went off to college, I didn't own a winter coat. Why would I? I was born and raised in Miami. So in the fall of my freshman year at American University, I had to buy a winter coat. My parents were out of the country when a couple of my dorm mates[Sue and
- [Facts not fiction](https://www.realisa.org/facts-not-fiction/) - Wednesday is for facts only. I like going to conferences and learning. Even in the most boring lecture, there is always something to learn. There is always a pearl. I love Williams & Sonoma, Crate & Barrel, IKEA and West Elm. I would rather be served at a restaurant than to have the self-serve buffet.
- [Swiss Army knife](https://www.realisa.org/swiss-army-knife/) - What do you need for the day? When the day is sitting in a convention center 'classroom' from 9 am until 6pm and your hotel is a half mile away, what should you tote along? It is an easy walk and there is a shuttle every 20 minutes or so, but there isn't really enough
- [Homeward bound](https://www.realisa.org/homeward-bound/) - Home is where your heart is and not always where you lay your head. Home resides with the people entrusted with your heart, who happily welcome you and voluntarily (even eagerly) climb into your head. Homelessness is lonely, isolating and sad. Critics might say that having no place to call home is worse than the
- [October blooms](https://www.realisa.org/october-blooms/)
- [Just the Facts, Ma'am](https://www.realisa.org/just-the-facts-maam/) - A dear friend suggested that I make a list of the facts. I like lists. This listing could or might help me better define the dilemma and better focus on reality. By sticking to the facts, I peel away the emotions. By better seeing the facts, I don't play Mad Libs with the things unknown.
- [Fog in dreams](https://www.realisa.org/fog-in-dreams/) - I love a foggy morning. Growing up in Miami, there was little fog. Living so close to the ocean and at the tip of a peninsula, fog rarely occurred. But now, living in the palm* of the state, fog happens frequently and especially on the morning that cannot decide if it's summer or fall. There
- [Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots](https://www.realisa.org/rock-em-sock-em/) - Wedding advice from the experts and the successful married folk is easy to find. Marriage advice - genuine, heartfelt advice from a person once married but no longer married may offer a better and more realistic flavor. The people who are doing and getting it right might not really be able to tell someone what
- [Happy List](https://www.realisa.org/happy-list/) - I steal from the Bright Yellow Balloon the idea for today's post. This is a list of random things that make me happy. Softened, room temperature butter which is easy to spread on untoasted bread Lizard Moneybags or AKA a lizard showing his red neck thingy. If you don't live in the subtropics you'll have
- [Sunrise](https://www.realisa.org/sunrise/) - Things usually look better in the morning. Whether it is a block of sleep or the sun rising, whatever scrapes at the inside of your skull late at night has mellowed by morning. Sleep gets the credit in my mind. Sleep means I shut the monster down for six hours during which I stop ruminating.
- [Scary ](https://www.realisa.org/scary/) - I have been hunting and pecking for an hour. I have a thread in my head I want to tug at for a blog post but that thread is a wadded up mess and there is no way I am going to untangle it and get a coherent post tonight. Shit, I saved the draft
- [Free Will](https://www.realisa.org/free-will/) - The idea of free will is complicated. On the most fundamental level, it is easy to consider our lives are either predetermined or we have free will. The idea that the future.....our future....is predestined eliminates any real responsibility to make "good choices". If we are simply going to end up in the same place, what
- [A Happy Mother](https://www.realisa.org/a-happy-mother/) - In Mass today, Fr. James told this story: A teacher is speaking with a student. They are learning fractions. The boy is asked how many people are in his family. He answers 6: His father, mother and 3 other siblings. The teacher they says, "Your mother bakes a pie and then cuts it to serve
- [Stand by](https://www.realisa.org/stand-by/) - It's Sunday and well....it's Sunday. My self-imposed exile from work on Wednesday afternoon plays out as usually when I have more than two days off of work. I spend the first two days fretting about how I should be working, the third day finally unwinding and the fourth day realizing NOW I need to proceed
- [Pretty in Pink](https://www.realisa.org/pretty-in-pink/) - Live in Florida long enough and you learn the seasons. People who live up north insists that Florida has no seasonal variation. My friends who spend their winters double digging out of their house and driveways have declared Florida winterless. But on a day like today, when I have the chance to be outside, I
- [The Watertower](https://www.realisa.org/the-watertower/) - The watertower on the corner of Coral Sea Road and S.W. 200th street no longer exists. When I was a kid, despite it's surrounding fence and padlocked gate, neighborhood kids still managed to climb and tag the tower. This tower tags my memories and is a beacon of a slower, simpler life. If I had
- [Shameless](https://www.realisa.org/shameless/) - Cats feel no shame. They are shameless. Either by guile, pluck or sheer moxie, cats are immune to shame. They have no cat equivalent to tucking their tails and cowering like their canine brethren. A dog can be shamed as easily as a human. Maybe that is why dogs are considered the best companion and
- [My space](https://www.realisa.org/my-space/) - I casually said to Sara over a Korean rice bowl that I was stuck, blocked and unable to write. I shared that I follow several other writers' blogs and universally, they all say that a writer should learn to write anywhere. The ritual of "getting in the mood" to write is to be avoided at
- [The Vous](https://www.realisa.org/the-vous/) - I discovered my true belief in a Creator in genetics class at American University. Reverse transcriptase unzipped my mind and my heart. Creation is not random, mitosis and gene replication are the best and most elegant argument for Intelligent Design. While the mind of the Creator cannot be fully understood, I knew that there
- [Snuggle](https://www.realisa.org/snuggle/) - I woke to a cloudy day drizzling with rain. The cloud cover is dense and it is the kind of fall Saturday that warrants snuggling. I stayed snuggled down in bed for as long as I could but my two cats will have none of the rolling over and going back to sleep. I took
- [Catch up](https://www.realisa.org/catch-up/) - In making plans to see a friend tomorrow for lunch, we exchanged the "catch up" list. What's been happening in your life since I last saw you? She has a rare weekend free of family duties and work. While I have my sons, I am eager to make time in my world for the people
- [A Good Jobs](https://www.realisa.org/a-good-jobs/) - Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes ... the ones who see things differently ... they're not fond of rules.... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change
- [Scratch and dent](https://www.realisa.org/scratch-and-dent/) - Somethings in life are best when brand spanking new. The smell of a new car with that factory paint job comes quickly to mind. I love to crack the spine of a brand new hardback book. It's easy to assume that new clothes overshadow hand-me-downs or thrift store purchases any day. But new and never-been-used
- [A hero in your soul](https://www.realisa.org/a-hero-in-your-soul/) - Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of
- [Party ](https://www.realisa.org/party/) - At about 9:30 last night, my younger son and I picked up the remnants of his older brother's birthday party escapades that had been strewn about the front lawn and road. It was the tween equivalent of drunken debauchery: caffeine and sugar laden mayhem mixed with the hormones of the co-ed group. It looked like
- [Hot things on a cool Monday](https://www.realisa.org/hot-things-on-a-cool-monday/) - It's been many months since I did a Hot & Not list. Here are a few of the the things I have discovered and LOVE, LOVE, LOVE: Intelligensia Coffee: I buy my small bags of this coffee at The Fresh Market. I recently tried the El Gallo Organic breakfast blend and the flavor is
- [Authentication ](https://www.realisa.org/authentication-2/) - Ask someone to tell you about happiness and they often share their sadness. Ask them about love and they tell you about heart break. Ask for the proudest accomplishment and often, they share their tribulations and failures. Too often, we define ourselves by how we stumble and fall. We use the missing parts, the gaps,
- [Memories](https://www.realisa.org/memories/) - Memories are potent. In the last few days, my mind drifts off to a place with such vivid memories, flashes really, of places from my past. I have this image of driving east on Ives Dairy Road in North Miami beach, over I-95. It is night, the street lights are on. Their yellow glow cast
- [Feisty](https://www.realisa.org/feisty/) - I am sure most Americans have seen that catchy TV commercial for the iPod Nano. The microscopic video player that reminds me of my age because there is no way I could watch a TV show on that Bandaid sized screen. Well, that singer is Leslie Feist. She has one of those simple, ethereal voices.
- [Let it be](https://www.realisa.org/let-it-be/) - I saw this movie on Saturday. I took Cam and a friend to see The Game Plan, but I didn't want to see that movie. I saw Julie Taymor's movie, Across the Universe, instead. The screenplay has many (most) of the most popular Beatles songs imbedded. The movie is about the 60's and the power
- [Time Out](https://www.realisa.org/time-out/) - I was never a great advocate of the "time out" for my sons. That method of discipline simply never worked. Corporal punishment is so taboo, but I am certain my sisters and I acted up only once or twice. There was no delay in the swiftness of my mother's judgment. We each learned QUICK not
- [Breathe](https://www.realisa.org/breathe/) - The human breathe, the sacred remnants of God's breathe into Adam. Every breath we take is a derivation of His original divine inspiration. Pause and breathe. Think of the first breath, that first awareness of life and pulse. It is a force. When each of my children were born, they had their first breath. I
- [Tiny Hurricanes](https://www.realisa.org/tiny-hurricanes/) - Men and woman are different. Is it just that simple. I once believed that the genders were equal. It was really just how children were socialized. I had a toy machine gun. I had "boy chores" like painting the fence, helping with the car repair, crawling around in the attic. I was a serious Tomboy.
- [Appetizers](https://www.realisa.org/appetizers/) - I love appetizers. Little teasers of food. One of the most fun, original restaurants for appetizers is Cafe Tu Tu Tango. We went to the one in Coconut Grove when they first opened. Some Friday One our recent favorites is Ahi Tuna with grated ginger. I sear the tuna in the Griddler and serve it
- [Familiar](https://www.realisa.org/familiar/) - I walked today. When I finished patient care, I changed clothes, locked all my stuff in my car, put on my iPOD and walked. I listened to a podcast from NPR. NPR edits and packages their segments into categories. I regularly download the NPR books and NPR music podcasts. I listened to an interview with Anne
- [Palatable memories](https://www.realisa.org/palatable-memories/) - I started thinking of some of the meals I have eaten. In the last 20 years, I have so amazing food memories. I started running through a quick list the other day with Paul. Most of these meals we have eaten together. I learned of food in college. One of the best jobs I ever
- [Playlists](https://www.realisa.org/playlists/) - I love my iPod. We have all of our CDs copied onto the house server. I just transferred a long list of CDs to my laptop. IÂ will sync my iPod and have nearly 3 days of music. Unbelieveable. Paul bought the new Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers film Running Down the Dream. It is nearly
- [The End of the Rainbow](https://www.realisa.org/the-end-of-the-rainbow/) - The perfect fall day in northern Florida. The weatherman predicted 40% chance of rain with severe storms. He was so wrong. It was glorious. The sky was so blue it hurt. Birllian white cotton candy clouds super high in the sky and moving fast. Close your eyes and you here the sounds of children at
- [Stone crabs](https://www.realisa.org/stone-crabs/) - Extravagance is something luxurious and rare. It is usually something expensive and beyond the ordinary. When you live someplace that has a particular thing that in other parts of the world is considered extraordinary it should make you pause. In Florida, we have oranges, mangoes and blueberries. We have spiny lobsters, which are considered less
- [SKILL](https://www.realisa.org/skill/) - Brains are fascinating. The anatomy of the brain is truly unusual, but within the brain dwells our minds. How does the structure of the brain convert chemicals into feelings and thoughts? How does it synthesize feeling fearful when we hear the music from Psycho? How does it convert the tone of someone's voice into self-doubt?
- [Making tea](https://www.realisa.org/making-tea/) - I had this thought this morning......."I am not making tea for Satan today." I know that will sound bizarre to many people, especially to most Catholics. CRAZY TALK. Now, I don't actually see Satan. I don't hear voices, but I know his wicked ways. The closer I am drawn to the Lord the more ferocious Satan
- [Bases Loaded](https://www.realisa.org/bases-loaded/) - I am not much of a baseball fan but I understand the game. I have actively discouraged my sons from playing baseball, because I felt that it was not a true team sport. I always felt that you were either greatly successful or a profound failure....all under the eagle eye of 2 bleachers full of people.
- [Nobility](https://www.realisa.org/nobility/) - My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Her Noble Excellency Elizabeth the Possible of Giggleswick under Table Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title This is hysterically funny. I always wanted a title. Now I need subjects to do my bidding! If you want your own title go here.
- [Confidence](https://www.realisa.org/confidence/) - What does it mean to be confident? Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This con·fi·dence     /ˈkɒnfɪdəns/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[kon-fi-duhns] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation –noun 1. full trust; belief in the powers, trustworthiness, or reliability of a person or thing: We have every confidence in their
- [Halloween](https://www.realisa.org/halloween/) - Halloween in Cutler Ridge was serious business, specifically candy. Costumes came in cardboard boxes with the hardpalstic mask under the stiff cellophane. My block was shaped like a boomerang. We walked from Gulfstream across the footbridge. We must have gone to 150 houses. I knew all these people. We hit every house. I would come
- [My Little Guy](https://www.realisa.org/my-little-guy/) - My first born son is an absolute joy. He is so smart, so clever, so funny and just a delight. He is covered with freckles, like a million angel kisses. He is my sunshine. I would sing that song to him almost every night. Now I sing it to his brother, but I catch him
- [I never knew](https://www.realisa.org/i-never-knew/) - A wonderful friend sent this to me. Â Thanks! Â Before I was a Mom I never learned the words to a lullaby. I never thought about immunizations. Before I was a Mom - I had never been puked on. Pooped on. Drooled on. Chewed on. Peed on. I had complete control of my mind and my
- [Opening doors](https://www.realisa.org/opening-doors/) - Our new front doors were installed on Thursday. We had solid, windowless doors before. These new doors create an openess I desire when you enter our home. From the interior, it is light and the outdoors are more connected. The house feels more fluid and integrated. The previous front door was not welcoming. Â This
- [What a riot](https://www.realisa.org/what-a-riot/) - I stumbled upon this new kind of chocolate, Sweetriot. I stopped at Dorn's on Friday evening on my way home from work. We needed mind-eraser, better known as Cointreau, for Cosmopolitans. I had stopped at Northwest Seafood for a few stonecrab claws. I popped into The Fresh Market for fresh cut roses, tomatoes, cheese, fresh
- [My new favorites](https://www.realisa.org/my-new-favorites/) - Â I have just finished reading the last of Stephanie Meyer's books. I loved the entire series. I am so enthralled with these characters and their stories. Twilight introduced Bella Swan, a 17 year old girl. She has the fortune (or misfortune) to fall in love with Edward Cullen, who just happens to be a
- [Preformed thought](https://www.realisa.org/preformed-thought/) - Some minds are greater than most. Original thinkers and paradigm shifters trigger historical change. They birth movements and revolutions out of ideas, words or sound. Change is the consequence of a physical event. If not for these original minds, human existence would have drudged along in a linear path. Instead, the protagonists and provocateurs, with
- [Reconciliation](https://www.realisa.org/reconciliation/) - My youngest son is in sacramental preparation for Reconciliation. This is the year the Church designates that he is old enough to know sin, the make choices and to be responsible for his life. He is 7. Â The amazing thing is that he DOES know the difference between right and wrong. He can identify sin
- [Perspective](https://www.realisa.org/perspective/) - We are starting the very preliminary planning of our trip to Italy for Easter vacation. In recalling our initial trip to Italy, I remember the simultaneous covergence of feeling both very small and very immense. I was acutely aware of time and its passage, the accumulation of human inhabitance on this wedge of the planet.
- [Slivers](https://www.realisa.org/slivers/) - Slivers are really thin. A sliver of cake. A sliver of chocolate. Sometimes a sliver is just enough. I may not really want to eat entire piece of cake. There are times when just a small piece can give the perfect amount of satisfaction. Some may call it a tease, but it arouses the taste
- [Music Appreciation](https://www.realisa.org/music-appreciation/) - I love music but I am not a learned afficionado of music. I love jazz, classical, pop, techno, blues. Instrumental and beat driven music. I grew up in Miami and have a real love for old school rap and reggae. (I even like the newer rap performers). I like angry grundge and feminist Indie singer songwriters.
- [Gathering](https://www.realisa.org/gathering/) - Thanksgiving is a day of gathering. We gather together to ask for the Lord's blessing. We gather to give thanks for all our abundance. It is our chance to share a meal with people we may see infrequently. It is a true joy. Even if our families are dysfunctional, the gathering is great. I believe
- [Thanksgiving](https://www.realisa.org/thanksgiving-2/) - The word eucharist means to give thanks. Thursday is out national day of Thanksgiving and it is my most favored holiday. The holiday is compressed into one single day. Work limits advanced preparation. So,I am forced into this hardcore press to get it all done. It all manages to get done and I love the
- [Necessary](https://www.realisa.org/necessary/) - It is easy to become focused only on what is necessary. Consider whimsy and frivolity as necessary things. Life is pure drudgery if we are forbidden to be silly. Some people devote themselves to a life of simplistic solitude. Some religions believe that adornments are offensive. I truly believe that God is a truly whimsical being.
- [Energy conservation](https://www.realisa.org/energy-conservation/) - Can conflict serve a greater good? I think nature gives us so many examples where conflict or friction results in something tremendous. Eons of immense pressure turns coal into diamonds. A grain of sand in an oyster grows into a lustrous pearl. Billions of gallons of water flowing over Niagra are turned into electricity. The
- [Gift Giving](https://www.realisa.org/gift-giving/) - I know that one of my love languages is gift giving. I enjoy the selection of a gift. As I get older and the people I am shopping for are also adults, the gift giving is more thoughtful. My gifts usually express something meant specifically for the recipient. Be happy. Enjoy life. Life is sweet. Isn't
- [Fear](https://www.realisa.org/fear/) - I had a scare today. I had to have a test done, one of those "preventative" tests that we get sent for when we reach a certain age. Usually, they are a quick task. You go in, the technician takes a few films and then comes back and says, "everything looks fine. Â Who can we
- [Space](https://www.realisa.org/space/) - Anyone who has been to a Grateful Dead concert knows about space. The spaces were usually Mickey Hart drum solos. The space between two songs filled with the lingering melody of the previous song. It meanders its way and then ends up in the next song. These spaces were spontaneous, free-formed and unpredictable. I am
- [Laundry](https://www.realisa.org/laundry/) - Sometimes things happen and force you into a situation that you have otherwise avoided for a long time. In college, we had a laundry room on every dorm floor. One summer I remember lugging laundry up New Mexico Avenue to the campus from my summer apartment. Otherwise, I have always lived with a washer and
- [Christmas](https://www.realisa.org/christmas/) - I think it is officially the Christmas season. We put up our tree this weekend. It is our first year for an artifical tree. I am exceedingly pleased with the tree. It looks real and even dropped a few needles for authenticity. We have ornaments ffrm the last 17 years. We have ornaments made by
- [The Red Flag](https://www.realisa.org/the-red-flag/) - People are weird. Probably most people are quirky. There are some of us weirder than the rest. I think there are certain things people do that are dead giveaways. These red flags are immediate identifiers. I am not always sure WHAT they identify, but I know they are usually significant. maybe it is weirdness or
- [School](https://www.realisa.org/school/) - I loved school. I thrived in school. From the earliest age, I loved almost everything about school. The structure, the lessons, the process of learning. I loved puzzles and problem solving. I like creativity and self-expression. I like all the assignments and even homework. I was an organized student all the way from elementary through
- [Sign of the times](https://www.realisa.org/sign-of-the-times/) - I watched Becoming Jane tonight. It is a fictional account of Jane Austen's life. She is one of my favored writers. She lived and wrote in the late 1700's. It was the time of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, The French Revolution, the Guillotine, the American Revolution. Odd how there are so few women
- [Crossing the desert](https://www.realisa.org/crossing-the-desert/) - Most of my friends are in the forties. There is something about turning forty, being forty. 40. Everyone dreads the 40's. Turning forty is some harbinger of doom. I have an alternate opinion. It is the 30's that are awful. The thirties were treacherous. I was no longer the 20 something with all of her
- [If Wishes Were Horses](https://www.realisa.org/if-wishes-were-horses/) - This is the car I drive. I love this car. It fits my family and our needs. It is a definite Mom car. I swore when I was young that I would never drive a mini-van. Yeah, well, we make concessions to keep our most prized creations safe. Vanity is set aside. Yesterday I drove
- [The Boy Brain](https://www.realisa.org/the-boy-brain/) - Yesterday was my youngest son's 1st Cub Scout meeting. The Pack has to write their own rules. This is their code of conduct. Overall, they have the general rules of conduct and decorum, but the testosterone factor got some play. The boys came up with this list and I think it bodes well as a
- [Affirmed](https://www.realisa.org/affirmed/) - God says, "I knew you and you were mine." I envision the Lord simply radiates affirmation. In His presence, one must feel complete, whole, loved, affirmed. In this earthly world, we seek affirmation. We desire the wholeness of the Lord. Each of us in hungry for Him, even without direct knowledge of Him. Every child
- [A Space of One's Own](https://www.realisa.org/a-space-of-ones-own/) - Virginia Wolf felt that a woman should have a space of her own. It was vital for her intellectual development. Simone de Beauvoir tended to agree. By modern definitions, a woman is not free unless she has her own "space". The implication is that we want to be divided away from, separate from, isolated and uncontaminated by the rest of the world
- [Stuff](https://www.realisa.org/stuff/) - The Story of Stuff got me thinking. This time of year we all seem compelled to buy and consume. I keep thinking about all the STUFF we buy that we know is trash. All the stuff that is waste from the moment we put it in our grocery cart. I want less STUFF. I want
- [Finally](https://www.realisa.org/finally/) - I am giddy with excitement. I have my own little cubby. They set the countertops for my desk this afternoon. I am so glad I waited for them to get the correct laminate. It makes a huge difference. The space is so lovely. It has a particular magnetism for all my guys. I can sit
- [Big Sisters](https://www.realisa.org/big-sisters/) - Today is my biggest sister's birthday. In fact, December is the month of BOTH of my sisters' birthdays. Both Sagittarius. My sisters are both very amazing women. I was the baby. They were OLDER. So mysterious. Debbie is 4 years older than me. Her favorite number is 4. She is the middle child and "Child
- [Magnets](https://www.realisa.org/magnets/) - Magnets have polarity. One end is positive and one end is negative. If you try to place two magnets against each other, they have to be in opposite positions, otherwise they repel from each other. Flip one around and then the magnets cling to one another. Take a stack of magnets and they will all
- [Christmas](https://www.realisa.org/christmas-2/) - This time of year is so special. There are so many layers to the Christmas celebrations. Of course there is the secular Christmas of Santa Claus, but in America it goes so far beyond that. There are those claymation TV specials that were corney 30 years ago. Rudolph and Frosty and Charlie Brown's sad, dead Christmas
- [Domino](https://www.realisa.org/domino/) - I have had the sweetest, most lovable, most feminine, petite little calico cat for the last 19 years. Her name was Domino and she died this morning. Actually, sometime last night. I have had her since 1989. She is one from the litter of the Trailer Cat. Paul had a cat that lived under his
- [Christmas Flowers](https://www.realisa.org/christmas-flowers/) - I got some beautiful flowers yesterday. Paul brought me the sweetest minature roses at The Fresh Market. I love flowers. They are frivolous and serve simply to adorn and delight. Â I put them on my kitchen table so I can look at them while I bake cookies and make peanut brittle....for the second time.
- [Christmas Morning](https://www.realisa.org/christmas-morning/) - I got the sweetest card from my cousin Matt and his wife Heather. There is a picture of their three stunningly beautiful children sitting on a donkey. The quotation asks us to consider the 90 miles Mary rode (and Joseph walked) to get to Bethlehem. The funny part was how sore Mary's "bum" must have been.
- [Sorrow](https://www.realisa.org/sorrow/) - I am so sorrowful. We learned today that the husband of Evan's 1st grade teacher died very unexpectedly on Friday. As far as we know, he was not ill. He was 50. It is stunning. It sinks in and it makes me still. I cannot imagine her loss. The sheer suddenness. It has to feel
- [Culling](https://www.realisa.org/culling/) - When I looked up the exact definition for the word "cull", I was surprised that my use of the word was not the primary definition. I would use the word in this fashion: "I was able to cull my fear and cross the bridge." Maybe my use of the word is colloquial. In the last
- [Patron Saints](https://www.realisa.org/patron-saints/) - I have just returned for the wake for Evan's teacher's husband. Patrick was 50. His birthday was 1/27. He died last Friday. He was from upstate New York. His sister Mary told the story that his parents had tried the first 4 years of their marriage to have a child without success. So, his mother
- [Moral Dilemma](https://www.realisa.org/moral-dilemma/) - Our neighbor, Tom, has a dog named Max. The dog is very old, blind, mean and very big. The dog has no teeth. Tom has even pre-dug the dog's grave. He anticipates that the dog will die one of these weekends, when he and his wife Debbie are over at the beach. We are blessed
- [Threads](https://www.realisa.org/threads/) - The threads of an experience often unusual. The seemingly disconnected ultimately connect. Before Thanksgiving, I did some of my grocery shopping at Albertson's. It is not my usual grocer, but I can use gift cards we get through the SCRIP program for school. While in the store, I saw some Ball jars that were unusual
- [New](https://www.realisa.org/new/) - Today is a new day. It is also a new year. Time moves swiftly. The Old Testament reading at our wedding was from the Book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus). The last few verses are Remember the time of hunger in the time of plenty, poverty and want in the day of wealth. Between morning and evening
- [Outrageous](https://www.realisa.org/outrageous/) - Do we get too old for some things? It there a point in life when we are supposed to be mature and behave accordingly? I hope not! I I think you can bank a fire for a time, but if you want to keep the fire hot and alive, you have to BOTH stoke it
- [Atonement](https://www.realisa.org/atonement/) - I went and saw the movie Atonement today. It is based on an Ian McEwan novel. It was sumptuous, sensual, melacholy and visually captivating. Kiera Knightley and James McAvoy star in this movie along with some easily recognized British faces. She is perfectly cast in this role. She fits my idea of the 1930's beauty. She
- [Play](https://www.realisa.org/play/) - I listen to NPR podcasts. They take segments from their various shows and bundle them into categories. I listen to the NPR Books and the NPR Music casts while I walk or garden. Today I listened to a review and interview with the authors of The Daring Book for Girls. It was written as a
- [Caprice](https://www.realisa.org/caprice/) - What car company made the Caprice? Who in the advertising and marketing department thought that was a good name for a car? I suppose it defines an era. Capriciousness does not imply stability but rather a whimsical nature. Was it a popular notion in the mid-1960's to be silly, frivolous and whimsical?  Could it have been
- [Believe](https://www.realisa.org/believe/) - Believe in yourself. Have faith. Show confidence. We get so must instruction for others to believe. It isn't really encouragement. It often feels like an admonishment, as if we aren't faithful enough. So we doubt. We let fear creep in. We second guess ourselves and our situations. Why? Because we are human. Because we hang
- [Drizzle](https://www.realisa.org/drizzle/) - Yesterday afternoon it started drizzling. The raindrops were small and it barely looked like rain. They fell softly. They fall straight down. There was not wind, no lightening, no thunder. The temperature was cool but not cold or chilly. It rained steady for over an hour. It smelled of rain and that smell lingered for
- [Protest](https://www.realisa.org/protest/) - When we feel indignant and wish to express our opposition, we usually raise our voices. We assume a posture of conflict and confrontation. The ability to hear another in this negatively charged encounter is greatly diminished. We limit our success and the possibility anyone will hear us much less take our opinion to heart. It
- [Captivating](https://www.realisa.org/captivating/) - My sister Debbie asked my to read this book, Captivating. She has started teaching her first women's group at her new church. Her family moved to Tennessee a few years ago and it is my impression that she is thriving spiritually in this new place. It is a particular envy that she has heard Gary
- [Disproportional Response](https://www.realisa.org/disproportional-response/) - Sometimes the way to get a person's attention and warn them away from running afoul is to advise them in advance that they will be severely punished. If you are dually warned that your bad behavior or poor choices will be met with punishment both swift and harsh, you may think twice about your actions.
- [Main Frame Brain](https://www.realisa.org/main-frame-brain/) - Sitting at dinner tonight, I spontaenously shouted across the table, pointing at my husband, "Chef Allen's!" I repeated myself several times as he registered the memory. Many months ago I recalled a restaurant we went to several times over the 5 years I was in medical school and internship. It was in North Miami Beach,
- [Dr. Martin Luther King](https://www.realisa.org/dr-martin-luther-king/) - Dr. King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. I look in the background of this photo and I see white faces. I see the sea of people who also marched on Washington for jobs and freedom. A living wage and worker representation.
- [Peanut butter](https://www.realisa.org/peanut-butter/) - I love peanut butter. It is a perfect foot. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. It goes in cookies, on crackers or bread. It can be added to sauces and salad ressings. Chopped peanuts in Thai food or over ice cream sundaes. I love peanut butter mixed with honey. It is a great debate. Peanut butter and jelly
- [High Society](https://www.realisa.org/high-society/) - I have Society Garlic planted as a border plant in my front yard. The plant blooms and the lilac flowers are pretty and succulent. Do I care that the plant smells of garlic the rest of the year. Nope. My across-the-street neighbor does. In fact, he and his wife hate garlic and onions. They won't
- [Mardi Gras](https://www.realisa.org/mardi-gras/) - When I was a little girl, my Granny would send us a big box. This box arrived sometimes after the New Year. It came before Easter. It was full of candy. The Mardis Gras box. My parent grew up in Mobile, Alabama. Mobile, like so many cities and towns along the Gulf coast, have a
- [That Space](https://www.realisa.org/that-space/) - My room, my small little sliver of space, is finally complete. Last Saturday, the electrician came and dropped electrical outlets to the wall in my new desk area. I have power to my laptop without industrial extension cords. I have recessed lights. I am a happy girl. It is true what is said. If you
- [Embellishments](https://www.realisa.org/embellishments/) - When I am cooking, I love finding that really cool ingredient. I am very loyal to products. When I find something I like, I stick to it. Tonight I made salmon for dinner. I marinated it is Yoshida's Original Sauce. Our Publix supermarkets stopped carrying this product for a brief time, but I think so
- [Immersion](https://www.realisa.org/immersion/) - I listened to NPR Sunday Morning Edition today. Liane Hansen interviewed Steven Reich, the composer. His piece "Music for 18 Musicians" was recently preformed by the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble. I have never been effected by a piece of modern music the way this piece effected me. The piece is performed by
- [Sanctuary ](https://www.realisa.org/sanctuary/) - A friend recently asked me if I had any tips as to how she could break out of a cycle of chronic stress. She wrote: I have been trying to rearrange my priorities to put relaxation (exercise, alone time, time with friends) higher on the list. I was doing better, but I seem to have
- [Bubbly](https://www.realisa.org/bubbly/) - There are some things in life you can easily take for granted. There are things you can easily forget that you enjoy or love dearly. Silly things. Inconsequential things. I like carbonation. There are few things as delightful as an ice cold CAN of soda. I am a little particular about soda. I like Diet
- [Despair](https://www.realisa.org/despair/) - I found the funniest t-shirt site. It is called Despair Wear. For the cynic and pessimist, it is a gold mine. The caption reads: Not everyone gets to be an astronaut when they grow up. I also love Threadless. The visual pun and the word play makes for something orginal and authentic. In a world of
- [The Sacrifice and the Offering](https://www.realisa.org/the-sacrifice-and-the-offering/) - Today is the first Friday of Lent. Tonight our church will do the Stations of the Cross. Afterwards, there is a fish fry. I enjoy doing the Stations. It is a solemn hour. I have been a bit blue today. If I shift and look at it from a "glass half full" perspective, I am
- [Sauntering](https://www.realisa.org/sauntering/) - I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend four hours a day at least and it is commonly more than that sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields absolutely free from all wordly engagements. ~Henry David Thoreau I started walking again about 5-6 weeks ago. I had
- [The Big Entrance](https://www.realisa.org/the-big-entrance/) - I finally have my new entrance. Now, I get to walk into my front door when I return home. Guests get to walk in my front door when they visit. What a spectacular difference between navigating through a garage stuffed with the clutter and discards of living and walking through the bright, beautiful glass fronted doors.
- [Happy Valentine's Day](https://www.realisa.org/happy-valentines-day/) - Is there a map for love? Love is a many spledid things. Love is full of import and power. Love is the spark of all humanity. From love is born all of the richness and treasure of this world. Love cannot be bought or sold. Love is not a commodity yet it is our most priceless
- [Delayed Gratification](https://www.realisa.org/delayed-gratification/) - Our modern society simply refuses to accomadate patience. Our daily existence is a string of instances and immediacy. We drive through the bank. We drive through for food. We order gifts online. We can barely tolerate cell phones and resort to texting. We send email and repeatedly check for responses. We are on the verge
- [Happy Birthday Cameron](https://www.realisa.org/happy-birthday-cameron/) - Read my new page on Cameron.
- [My Sweetpea](https://www.realisa.org/my-sweetpea/) - Twelve years ago on this night, I waited. I was 37 weeks pregnant. I was sick. Only days later did I really know how much danger we faced. I was not yet due, but I had developed pre-eclampsia and I had early HELLP syndrome. I was going to have a my baby the next day
- [Candles](https://www.realisa.org/candles/) - I love candles. After I clean my house I love to light candles. I even learned to make votive candles so I could burn them alot and never have to consider the cost. I rarely have the time to make my own candles. Plus now Target sells tea lights and votives at unreasonably low prices.
- [My Tunes](https://www.realisa.org/my-tunes/) - I have some really good, new music. Some is from well known artists, some is from artists I have not previously known. I listen to the NPRmusic podcast when I walk. Some of this music is from those interviews. Some....I have no idea how I found. Being a musician or a songwriter is inspirational. I
- [Blue](https://www.realisa.org/blue/) - I think humans since the dawn of time have struggled with melancholy. I imagine our ancient brothers and sisters howled at the moon, wailing at the heavens and weeping. The Bible is filled with lamentations. The paper had an article today with statistics stating that the suicide rate in the 5 years from 1999-2004 saw
- [Cool Find](https://www.realisa.org/cool-find/) - I got a link to this site today through one of my other feeds. The Diocese in Phoenix has made these videos as part of their campaign to reach out to "fallen away" Catholics. I thought it was a powerful, inspiring message about the power of Jesus and the Catholic Church. Click on the link
- [Black Out](https://www.realisa.org/black-out/) - My hometown had a massive black out today. Miami (and much of south Florida) fell off the grid for several hours. I grew up in a little area called Cutler Ridge and south of that area is the Turkey Point nuclear power plant. There was some type of transmission failure and the nuclear plant simply
- [Wonka Land](https://www.realisa.org/wonka-land/) - I came across this really cool website for a bakery....in Belgium, no less. Â I found them on a blog from Canada for illustrators called Drawn!. This site won the Weblog Award for 2007. Can you imagine the mastery and the artistry for somthing tiny like marzipan. And then....to eat it? Whimsy at it's most
- [That's Just Wrong!](https://www.realisa.org/thats-just-wrong/) - For many years I have said that there is a real career to be made doing stand up comedy at medical conventions and banquets. If continuing medical education conferences had a master of ceremonies like The Oscars, attendance would go up. The problem is that there is a type of humor that only those in
- [That Girl](https://www.realisa.org/that-girl/) - I went and saw The Other Boleyn Girl this afternoon. While it was a glorious day today, I was captivated by this movie and really wanted to see it. A story of two sisters (and their brother). Betrayal. Deception. Love. Duty. Sacrifice. Selfishness. Ambition. Most people know Anne Boleyn was one of the wives of Henry
- [Quiet](https://www.realisa.org/quiet-2/) - He will quiet you with his love (Zeph 3:17). The beauty is unveiled. God reveals beauty in every pattern. In the smallest of details, even in things that appear random. We usually think of beauty as something you SEE. Beauty can be sound, too. There is beauty in a breeze through tall Australian pines or
- [Deadly sins](https://www.realisa.org/deadly-sins/) - The Seven Deadly sins: pride, envy, gluttony, lust, wrath, greed and sloth. Each of us has succumb to these sinful indulgences. My desire is to recognize them before I am chest deep in them. I do not want to cloak myself in anger. The fury of wrath is wasted energy, wasted love. I do not
- [Cookies](https://www.realisa.org/cookies-2/) - Cookies are divine. Cookies are a big deal in my house. Cookies were a big deal though out my childhood. I am not a fan of "store bought" cookies. I like an occasional Pepperidge Farm Double Chocolate Milano. I also like sugar wafers. I think that mostly my love of sugar wafers are because they
- [My Sisters](https://www.realisa.org/my-sisters/) - This a piece from a fantastic illustrator named Claire Robertson. Besides having one of my most favorite "girl names" [Claire] she captures a certain whimsy of "girlhood" that is quickly and too early set aside for most of us on our march toward womanhood. I am the youngest of three girls. Mind you, I am the
- [Raining](https://www.realisa.org/raining/) - It has been raining here all day. Hard, steady rain. The streets are filled with leaves and debris. The spring that runs through our neighborhood is usually a trickle and barely moves. It is more like a mosquito retreat. Now, it is flowing fast. If it were not raining, you could hear it from my
- [Daylight Savings](https://www.realisa.org/daylight-savings/) - Last night we started daylight savings time. I love this spring forward part! It stay lighter later. I can walk after work and not feel like I am racing the sunset. By summer, it will not be dark until after 9 PM. It is wonderful. In my childhood, daylight savings time meant more time to
- [Packing](https://www.realisa.org/packing/) - I am going to a conference tomorrow. In Denver. Am I nuts? Born in Miami. Lives in Florida. Winter for me is a little frost on my evergreen St. Augustine lawn and a windshieled with a dusting of frost a bank card will scrap off. The weather website says highs in the upper 40's. I
- [Denver](https://www.realisa.org/denver/) - I am in Denver for the ACOFP. It is the national convention for my specialty, family medicine. I am attending lectures. Today has been all about kidney disease. Lots to learn and relearn. Nephrology was one of those courses in medical school that 99% of the class slipped into a vegetative state. There was a
- [Saturday](https://www.realisa.org/saturday/) - Denver is pretty cool. I have had a nice adventure and a few misadventures. On Thursday I went to the Denver Art Museum (aka DAM) and saw the Impressionists exhibit. I haven't walked around a museum listening to a hoity-faloity art historian talk about art since the Botticelli exhibit in Florence 4 years ago. The
- [Integrity](https://www.realisa.org/integrity/) - Somedays, I wonder about the prevalence of integrity. There was recent published research conducted on the incidence of narcissism in college students. We do epidemiology studies on depression or violence or baldness. The rates and occurence os all kinds of medical conditions and personality disorders are studied. I am curious... is there is a slow
- [Toys](https://www.realisa.org/toys/) - I think I know where Evan gets his love of toys. I love toys. I delight in finding the unique and quirky adult toys...rather mature toys. I was NOT referencing the kinky or risque! While in Denver, I found the Buddha Board. Their website alone is way too cool. I also like these little wind
- [Frustration](https://www.realisa.org/frustration/) - I let myself get beyond frustrated yesterday. On the eve of the Easter morning, my frustration lead to doubt. I was trying to make Easter bread. It is a Greek tradition, this brioche type bread. It is baked with deep red dyed Easter eggs in the wreath. It is a symbolic bread. The yeast makes
- [Flying time](https://www.realisa.org/flying-time/) - The boys and I are in Tennessee. I have never been to Tennessee. My sister, Deb and her family live in Clarksville. It is funny (and maybe even a little freaky) how connected people really are. Clarksville is home to Fort Campbell army base. This base and the town of Clarksville are memorialized in the
- [Little Beasts](https://www.realisa.org/little-beasts/) - I came across these and I am again blown away by someone's creativity. Leslie Leving's got a cool vision.
- [Etsy Website](https://www.realisa.org/etsy-website/) - I found a cool place on the web. Etsy is a website that is for selling all things HANDMADE. The arts and crafts equivalent to pod safe music or Ebay.
- [Blocked](https://www.realisa.org/blocked/) - Well, I am officially blocked. Writer's block. Actually, it is thinking block. I just can't think straight. I suppose this is the remnant of my attention disorder. Usually, I am hyperfocused. Lately, I am unfocused. Even my eyes have refused to focus without strain and effort. I have wanted Realisa to be a place I
- [Blockage](https://www.realisa.org/blockage/) - So maybe what I write about is the block. Why am I blocked? Why do any of us get blocked? There are a multitude of variables that lead to obstruction. I have this image of a coronary artery. There are these small arteries that feed your heart muscle. When you have chest pain or when
- [Something cute](https://www.realisa.org/something-cute/) - OK......they are cute and ugly. This is a potter named Tammy Marinuzzi. This is one of those discoveries made while drilling down into the internet. I think of them like diamons or veins of gold. Clever people with clever ideas and wild imaginations. It is just too cool.
- [Soundtracks](https://www.realisa.org/soundtracks/) - Movies have sounds tracks. Somedays, I think my life has a soundtrack. There are times, especially in retrospect, that I think of the PERFECT song to narrate or punctuate an event. I also pay really close attention to the words in songs. Sometimes one line in a song will catch hold of me. Other times,
- [Flair](https://www.realisa.org/flair/) - So ETSY is my new infatuation. I found a tilemaker that I really like and it is the inspiration for my master bathroom remodel. I have a small master bath compared to the master suite extravagnazas of the model McMansions. It is functional and appropriate. There are no bells of whistles. There is no ROOM
- [Empathy](https://www.realisa.org/empathy/) - Empathy is uncommon. Empathy cannot be taught. I think empathy is like perfect pitch or left-handedness or blue eyes. Some people are born with empathy. Most people lack it completely yet recognize it and appreciate it. Empathy is also different from sympathy. Everyone can have sympathy; it is a concordance or an agreement. You can
- [The Truth Hurts](https://www.realisa.org/the-truth-hurts/) - Cathy Thorne's comics are funny, wry and all too realistic. Can I go to work in these pink puffy slippers and bathrobe? Aww come on! They match!!
- [Telling a story](https://www.realisa.org/telling-a-story/) - I love stories. I think it is part of why I like my job. I learn about people and their "stories". I learn their woes and their tribulations. Stories are not gossip. Stories are about perspective. Everyone knows the story of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. But the book and then the broadway show Wicked
- [Humor](https://www.realisa.org/humor/) - I get real pleasure out of the silliest things. I especially like things that reveal another person's wit or sense of humor. Yesterday, there was this old 1977-ish white Cadillac Coupe deVville with these bumper stickers. Just say NO to negativity! If ignorance is bliss, why aren't you smiling? What would Scooby Do? You gotta
- [Communion](https://www.realisa.org/communion/) - Evan made his first Holy Communion on Saturday. He did very well and Mass went smoothly. What a joyous event. His Granny and Grandma were here. The most significant part was that Evan's godparents, his Aunt Rosie and Uncle Rob were here. Their presence when Evan fully joins the celebration of the mass is huge.
- [Quite revealing](https://www.realisa.org/quite-revealing/) - So people have all kinds of fantasies. They dream of being a football hero. Most kids pretend to one day be president or Miss America. Fantasies are personal and reveal so much about a person. Winning the lottery. Getting your dream house. Going on a super vacation. Meeting someone really famous. I was once asked
- [Grab the tail](https://www.realisa.org/grab-the-tail/) - Life can be so predicatable. It is what helps us feel secure, right? Yet, if my last post and the comments are any indication....many of us secretly wish for a bit of impulsivity and even chaos. When life is staid and calm, it feels safer. We feel safer. It is not so scary. But.....where is the
- [Shifting gears](https://www.realisa.org/shifting-gears/) - Last Saturday, this week looked long and arduous. I stared at my Google calendar and was overwhelmed by the long days I had ahead. I hate being so tightly budgeted for time. I have commented to friends and our priest that my method of sacrificial giving is time. If the church asked for a tithe
- [The roadside palate](https://www.realisa.org/the-roadside-palate/) - Driving back from picking Cam up in Melrose, I stopped at the roadside vegetable stand. Cameron got a bag of fresh picked and boiled peanuts. They were still warm in the quart sized Ziplock bag. As we rode back into Gainesville, he shucked and slurped boiled peanuts, the juice running down his arms to his
- [Creativity](https://www.realisa.org/creativity/) - I started a creative writing class in the community college last week. It is a community education class. There are 8 other people taking the class, hoping to find a voice. I was supposed to take samples of my "work" (Hah!) to read in front of this group. So intimate. Scary. While I am willing
- [From the Archives](https://www.realisa.org/from-the-archives/) - Daily, an inspirational post comes to me from Ransomed Heart Ministries.  Today's post was about the heart. I wish I could link it but you have to be a subscriber..... When I read it I kept hearing this snipet of a song in my head. I couldn't quite place it. The heart is a precious thing and
- [Grudge](https://www.realisa.org/grudge/) - Do any of us every fully let go of something? If we have been wronged or slighted, how long do we carry it? Does the mere memory of something imply a grudge? If we hold onto a memory of something bad that has happened, is that an automatic grudge? If that were so, then the
- [Create](https://www.realisa.org/create/) - Where does creativity come from? Is everyone capable of creativity? I get stuck in the wrong side of my brain for far too long....years even....and I am finally motivated and compelled to get into the left side of my brain, which is the right side of my brain. Does this remind anyone else of Abbott
- [Swing](https://www.realisa.org/swing/) - We lived across from a public park with a "tot lot". Compared to today's parks, our was a liability wet dream. There were these miniature iron merry-go-round horses on giant springs. Back and forth we would ride the horses, trying to touch the nose and the tail to the sand. Yep....SAND. The whole place was
- [The Unexpected](https://www.realisa.org/the-unexpected/) - I am a dedicated gift giver. I love to gift things for people. My friends and staff comment that I am the only person they know who still wraps presents. I am not trying to make any political statement against the gift bag, but I like the hand wrapped present. I really think about the
- [Perspective](https://www.realisa.org/perspective-2/) - I had to go to the doctor today. It sounds funny. It is ironic. For the record, doctors are the WORST patients. Talk about non-adherent! Add denial with a paranoid level of knowledge and doctors are nightmare patients. We just know too much. It starts in med school. If your had gas and bloating, it
- [Treasure](https://www.realisa.org/treasure/) - I am reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love. Somehow I missed this book. Everyone woman I know has read this book already. Where have I been? I have only gotten through the first third, Italy. Italy is where she eats. Eating as a metaphor for regaining herself. Out of her personal wasteland, she travels to
- [Big](https://www.realisa.org/big/) - Does the sunflower have to apologize for its size? It grows so tall. It's flowers can be huge. It can block the sun from reaching smaller flowers or plants that cannot grow as tall. The sunflower is bold. It is not the most vane flower. Certainly the orchid is more fragile and dainty. The iris
- [King for a day](https://www.realisa.org/king-for-a-day/) - Today my Evie baby turns EIGHT. Evan ain't seven. He's eight. He's great! He came home from school today tired. He then ate like a 16 year old. A chocolate chip muffin, a left over cinnamon roll from breakfast, a Blow pop, 2 corn dogs. Then the boys went to Wendy's and he ate a
- [Food](https://www.realisa.org/food/) - I am the 1st Reader at Mass today. This was not my scheduled day to read, but someone needed a replacement. I am still not comfortable standing before 1,000 people reading scripture. I would be comfortable reading an anatomy text book. Â The 1st reading is an Old Testament reading from Deuteronomy. Moses is speaking to
- [Writing](https://www.realisa.org/writing/) - I have not posted much recently because I have been doing some other writing. I am taking a community education class at Santa Fe, the local community college. It has met every Thursday night for the last month or so. Each week, each class member reads a bit of whatever they are writing. These people
- [Transformation](https://www.realisa.org/transformation/) - Earlier in the spring, catepillars literally fell from the trees. When I walked, I had to avoid stepping on them as they inched across the sidewalks headed to their next meal. The catepillars chomp on leaves all day. Do they know what's coming? Was there ever a catepillar who just dug their many heels in and
- [Marvelous space](https://www.realisa.org/marvelous-space/) - I don't mean to bogart things from other blogs I read, but I LOVE this house. I once had a dream of building a custom home. "The House" I have always called it. I still have a file folder tucked away with clippings from magazines of rooms, images, fixtures, decorating ideas and simple flair. A
- [U-Pick](https://www.realisa.org/u-pick/) - Saturday morning I woke early and left my guys at home in bed. I was off to pick blueberries. I usually go east to a place on lake Santa fe, but it is farther drive and the cell phone coverage is patchy. I was on call, so I couldn't be off the grid. Instead, I
- [Ingredients](https://www.realisa.org/ingredients/) - In every recipe, there is usually one special ingredient. I do not mean the necessary ingredients, like flour or sugar or salt or eggs. I also do not mean the catalysts like baking powder or baking soda. I mean the thing like vanilla extract. Chocolate chip cookies required vanilla extract. It is like trying to
- [Understanding fear](https://www.realisa.org/understanding-fear/) - Fear is a prickly thing. I think human beings are the only species on the planet that regularly talk themselves out of being afraid. Because we do not wish to appear rude, we will get in an elevator with a complete stranger and ride into a subterranean parking garage. Because we do not want to
- [Frugal](https://www.realisa.org/frugal/) - I certainly know how to splurge. I have a knack for finding the most expensive item on a rack. The non-sale items beckon me. I am an infrequent shopper, so when I shop I will often just buy what I want. But I can be thrifty, too. I love a good bargain. I love garage
- [Passion](https://www.realisa.org/passion/) - Passion, derives from the Latin word Passio. When we think of the word passion we think of either romantic, sensual passion as between lovers or we think of the Passion of Christ. (At least I do.) Centuries ago, the word passion was made to describe the suffering and woe, the enduring, physical affliction...of life. Do
- [Piece Meal](https://www.realisa.org/piece-meal/) - This is my new project.  I spent most of the day cutting, piecing, ironing and piecing some more. I have to cut 72 more of the 4 patch blocks tomorrow and then I can start putting the 8 inch squares together. Once the squares are together, then the rows are sewn and the quilt
- [Seams](https://www.realisa.org/seams/) - When you are making a quilt, every cut has to be precise. Every angle just so. Every seam consistent. There is no fudging. While in the early stages of a project, you may think a millimeter here or there is not a big deal. If you gyp a millimeter for every seam, after 144 piecings, you're
- [Fourteen Days](https://www.realisa.org/fourteen-days/) - What would you do if you had only TWO WEEKS to live. Yesterday, a close friend got a call from one of her close friends. Her husband had simply dropped dead. It was not a total surprise, he had been having strange headaches and had a few other bizarre and peculiar symptoms. He was 37
- [Gifts](https://www.realisa.org/gifts/) - Some people possess gifts that simply amaze and confound me. This is a local artist, Kana O. Handel. I know her but did not know her art. I am infatuated with her sweet, joyful painting. The monochromatic Sumi-e pieces are also so powerful. Skip around her site and see her lovely vision. Â
- [A Healthy Heart](https://www.realisa.org/a-healthy-heart/) - I get several daily inspirationals, some Catholic some not. All Christian. Religion has always been something to apologize for in my family. Religious participation was scoffed at. Faith was something you hid. Faith was scorned and shunned on a good day. On a bad day, it drew unfriendly fire. If you had found your Spark, you
- [Plenty](https://www.realisa.org/plenty/) - Mostly, when a person says they have plenty, they mean enough. The true definition of the word PLENTY is quite different. Enough means you have just the right amount. But, plenty means a luxurious, extravagnat amount. Hidden inside this common word.....a word commonly misused...is this context. Plenty is like a double secret agent. It disguises
- [Sports Metaphors](https://www.realisa.org/sports-metaphors/) - I have never been a fan of the sports metaphor. We had a priest at our parish nicknamed, Father Gator. He would often work the Gator football performance from Saturday into his homily on Sunday. When he would try to preach a life lesson, he would roll out a sports metaphor and I would groan.
- [Da Boys](https://www.realisa.org/da-boys/) - My little guys come home today. I am so excited. They have had, what sounds like, a truly awesome week with their Aunt Rosie and Uncle Rob, Granma and all the Miami family. There is such an abundance of fun for the kids down there. I remember going to Girl Scout camp in Sebring, Florida,
- [Skellies](https://www.realisa.org/skellies/) - In my always circuitous meandering on the internet, I came across these.  They are adorable! The creators are Zander and Karla of Geekfreeks. They live in New Zealand. There is some confluence of divine energy and creativity flowing that part of the planet. I really want a set of these!
- [The Shack](https://www.realisa.org/the-shack/) - I just finished reading The Shack. What a fantastic book! Fantastic, as to mean, fantastical and supernatural. It is provocative and inspiring. I believe I will read it again. It is filled with ideas and concepts, a very meaty proposition. What would I do, if God invited me to a weekend off in the woods
- [Seeds](https://www.realisa.org/seeds/) - The Gospel reading from today's Mass was from Matthew 13:1-23. Jesus tells a parable about the farmer that sows seeds. I must confess something. I never really understood this piece of scripture. Rather, I had it backwards. I thought the seeds represented PEOPLE. Some people land in good soil and grow abundantly and produce great
- [FORMIDABLE](https://www.realisa.org/formidable/) - Someone commented to me that I am a formidable person. Formidable is one of those words that might be offered as a compliment, but it has a double edge. I do not like the idea that I am considered fearsome. I prefer awesome, tremendous and being difficult to defeat. But formidable I suppose I am.
- [New tunes](https://www.realisa.org/new-tunes/) - So it is likely that everyone who watches TV has seen the iPod commercial that features Coldplay and their song Viva la Vida. Apparently, it is the most downloaded song on itunes (per Cameron). I bought the CD...so we could all put it on our iPods. Thinks late 80's- early 90's "alternative" sound. With a
- [You Crust be Mazy](https://www.realisa.org/you-crust-be-mazy/) - Almost everynight Evan asks me to read to him. It is often his way to delay actually facing sleep. He has a ritual. Will you read to me? Will you lay down with me? Will you snuggle? Will you say prayers? Can I have water...with ice? Can you leave the light on? Can Cameron sleep
- [Hidden Treasure](https://www.realisa.org/399/) - The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Today, Fr. John shared a wonderful homily today. He spoke of his vocation to the priesthood. He felt it was a
- [Pouring Rain](https://www.realisa.org/pouring-rain/) - When it rains it pours, right? The best laid plans have a way of going berzerk. You can have the belief you are in control and have planned well, only to be diverted by the smallest of things. Like the lion with a thorn in his paw, it does not take anything massive or catastrophic
- [Trees](https://www.realisa.org/trees/) - I went looking for a picture of an Australian pine cone. I stumbled upon this a very cool site! If you like trees and marvel at them mystery and majesty, this site is something to behold.
- [Choices](https://www.realisa.org/choices/) - Somedays you simply deserve a reward. Or maybe, you deserve consolation. There may be an abundance of well deserving scenarios in which we consider something to soothe ourselves. I was in such a mood tonight. My choices were an already made Cosmopolitan, fruity and fun but a little watered down. It leaves a warmth that
- [To be thankful and have joy](https://www.realisa.org/to-be-thankful-and-have-joy/) - Yesterday, I had a patient come in to the office I had not seen since last summer. She came in to "refill medications". It seemed like a simple enough appointment. Then I looked at the name.....REALLY looked. Last summer, when she came in for a simple complaint of nausea, I went hunting for gallstones. Instead,
- [Holding your breath](https://www.realisa.org/holding-your-breath/) - As a kid, I was a bit superstitious. All of us were. When we drove over railroad tracks, we would lift our feet up off the floor boards and put both hands on the roof of the car...even if we were driving. To get to high school, we had to cross train tracks each way.
- [Mercy Me](https://www.realisa.org/mercy-me/) - I had a truly wonderful opportunity to scoot over to St. Augustine Saturday. An old freind and her family have rented a place on the beach for the year. Her husband has a grant to complete. They figured.....you can work on that anywhere....so let's move to the beach. Her oldest daughter was in kindergarden with Cameron.
- [Twilight](https://www.realisa.org/twilight/) - The last book in the Twilight series is out. I will get my copy this weekend. I am enthralled with the three main characters of the Stephanie Meyers series. I love that this series is a wonderful platform to speak to young people about how they make choices. Some things that happen to us are
- [Sleep eludes me](https://www.realisa.org/sleep-eludes-me/) - I am usually a great sleeper. I actually fell asleep in the waiting room at the boys dentist today. I can easily take a power nap anywhere, if I decide to sleep. But I have been unable to sleep at night. I finally fell asleep earlier, but in about 30 minutes I woke. So I
- [On the Prowl](https://www.realisa.org/on-the-prowl/) - On Friday I moved. It was a big move in many different ways. More than a bit scary. It went smoothly, more than I expected. The next day I went to pick up my cat, Gumbo. Gumbo is a thick-bodied, orange tabby with a white breast and a ring of white around his nose as
- [Techie](https://www.realisa.org/techie/) - Okay...after a supremely frustrating inability to get online yesterday, I was determined to fix it tonight. I went to the Cox cable customer support center, got a new cable modem and came home and replaced the other defective unit. And it was a total "unit". I finally got Glenn with Cox internet support services and
- [Nomenclature](https://www.realisa.org/nomenclature/) - In every discipline there is a system of naming things. Whether it is botany, microbiology, cooking, online gaming, medicine or Yu-Gi-Oh cards...there is nomenclature. A name defines, identifies and delineates. God created all things, but he allowed Adam to name everything. In naming everything, Adam owned it. He marked it as his in a particular
- [Waking](https://www.realisa.org/waking/) - I woke this morning to this glorious fog. If you keep the blinds on your windows pulled, it may be easy to miss the hushed beauty. The development in which I now live is bordered by a golf course to the west and a stand of pine to the north. I took the opportunity, in
- [Iced Coffee](https://www.realisa.org/iced-coffee/) - I am learning to make less coffee. I haven't mastered it yet. But, I hate throwing away perfectly good coffee. So, I hatch a plan. I can't take all the credit. I got the idea for the coffee ice cubes from Martha Stewart. Back in the day, I would often pay $3 for a Coffee
- [Waiting](https://www.realisa.org/waiting/) - Hurricane season is a unique time of year. For anyone who has living in the hurricane regions, especially if they have weathered a storm, this time of year generates a real shift. And while we all watch the weather, we are slow to get motivated or enthusiastic about tropical storms. Like violence on the street
- [Gumbo](https://www.realisa.org/gumbo/) - This is my boyfriend. Gumbo is Cameron's cat. We got the boys cats in May of 2007 after our crazy, smiling Minnie dog died. We got Cameron the orange marmalade cat and Evan the smoke gray cat. Gumbo and Luther. Almost from the first day, Gumbo was smitten with me. He eventually got nicknamed "Boyfriend"
- [The Dark Side](https://www.realisa.org/the-dark-side/) - Energy follows thought. It is a motto I live by or at least try to live by. I know that if I am afraid and let my mind dwell in that fear, fear takes up residence. If I am bitter and give the bitterness an audience, it gets comfortable. I do not want to think
- [Cup of sugar](https://www.realisa.org/cup-of-sugar/) - I went to the grocery store to buy 5 things: brown sugar, coffee ice cream, ArmorAll wipes, parchment paper and Hot Pockets. Five things. I really needed the brown sugar. I had a goal. I was making cookie dough for the boys to have while I am away. Their Grandma, Aunt Rosie, Uncle Rob and
- [One year older](https://www.realisa.org/one-year-older/) - What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us, so said Ralph Waldo Emerson. I would not consider my past a tiny matter. Nay, my past is the biggest part of me, for the future is uncertain and unguaranteed. I have no promise for more. But,
- [Estrogen City](https://www.realisa.org/estrogen-city/) - On the last day of my escape vacation, I spent some time at the community pool. It was estrogen central. A group of women, all from the same family, visiting and vacationing together. They were obviously having fun. Sisters, sister-in-law, cousins, mothers and mothers-in-law. As it approached the cocktail hours (with faint echoes of Jimmy
- [Tootsie Pops](https://www.realisa.org/tootsie-pops/) - Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away...there was this commercial. The child asks the wise old owl, "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Lollipop?" The owl responds, "One.....(lick)...Two....(lick)....Three.....(CRUNCH!). It takes three licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll lollipop." [Youtube video] Is
- [New discoveries](https://www.realisa.org/new-discoveries/) - I recently bought some magnets for my refridgerator. It has been a family hobby to buy a magnet from any new place we visit. I have a new fridge but not many magnets. So I decided to look for artsy, clever, cute magnets. I found these on Etsy.com The artist has their own website at
- [Persuasion](https://www.realisa.org/persuasion/) - Is being persuasive honest? By definition, persuasion is simply to be convincing. Through reasoning and conviction, another person's opinion or belief can be changed to better compliment your own. They assume your position in a matter but they do it because they are "persuaded". I have always considered persuasiveness as somewhat devious and deceptive. It
- [Math Whiz](https://www.realisa.org/math-whiz/) - Cameron has made high math. Of all the kids in the high math class, he was second overall in the first month of testing. Cameron is doing math work at the level I did in 8th grade with Mr. Kuett. And he is doing it with panache. He is a cool kid. Unfortunately, now I
- [Seagull House](https://www.realisa.org/seagull-house/) - Several years ago, Paul and I happened upon a house being built in the panhandle. We were on vacation in Seagrove. When I went back there last week, I went to find this house we had nicknamed the Seagull House. Local lore says the house is shaped like a phoenix from the sky. When we
- [Poetry](https://www.realisa.org/435/) - I admit it. I know nothing about poetry. Nothing. I even struggle reading it. I want to learn to appreciate poetry. Poetry is so subtle yet it reaches deep into your soul, into the very fiber of your nature and speaks. There are all things in poetry. I think there is also visual poetry. I
- [Grossology](https://www.realisa.org/grossology/) - As the mother of two boys, I appreciate the humor and fascination with grossness. I must admit, I find much of it funny too. I am the youngest of 3 girls and I would classify all three of us as "sick" when it came to humor. My oldest sister would have to admit to a
- [Report cards](https://www.realisa.org/report-cards/) - I was usually proud of my report cards. Report card day was always a very special day. When I was in elementary school, the report cards were on thick card stock paper and were in manila sleeves. Long before computers, the teachers hand wrote the grades and the comments. Being a good student and getting
- [Containment](https://www.realisa.org/containment/) - Hazardous waste requires containment. I think of radioactive waste and the need to protect the public from something dangerous and unstable. You do not contain a child. Containers are to hold something IN. Children are meant to grow, expand, explore, learn and ultimately INCREASE. Children are like seeds; you plant them and they grow. Nothing
- [Happiest Place](https://www.realisa.org/happiest-place/) - I was sitting and reading the obituaries this morning. It is a lovely day today: bright, sunny with a tinge of coolness in the air. Fall has started. I am not a usual obit reader. But, as I turned the page through the local section of our anemic local newspaper, a photo of someone caught
- [Wild Sweet Oranges](https://www.realisa.org/wild-sweet-oranges/) - I found this new band. I like this sound and the voice very much. Check it out. The name made me think of eating big, juicy oranges as a little girl. My mom would cut a cone out of the end of an orange and we'd squeeze and suck the juice out of the orange.
- [Vision](https://www.realisa.org/vision/) - Some people have amazing vision. I thought this was far too cool to leave unmentioned. Long ago, Cameron took a Crayon to a wall in the house. And I think Claire Herrington took a Sharpie to a spot in the kitchen. But this takes the cake!
- [Pretty Package](https://www.realisa.org/pretty-package/) - I like these reuseable grocery bags better than any of the ones you can buy. Publix sells their bags for only 99 cents but I am relucant to walk into The Fresh Market with them. Unfortunately, these bags are expensive. Pretty to look at. The epitome of whimsy and frivolousness. I will be prudent and
- [Despicable](https://www.realisa.org/despicable/) - I keep hearing Daffy Duck saying, "You're despicable!" He was always so indignant and outraged when he felt wronged. He probably sprayed his adversary with spittle as he said it too. But is Bugs Bunny so contemptible? I suppose it depended on what he had done. Bugs was not the most honorable character. He was
- [From the Other Side of the World](https://www.realisa.org/from-the-other-side-of-the-world/) - I received my copy in the mail Friday. This book is not published in this country. Red Dog Books mailed me a copy. Woot! I am not an artist by any means although I think I struggle with the same divided heart. My division was between my vocation and profession as a doctor and my
- [Waste](https://www.realisa.org/waste/) - There is a difference between frivolity and wastefulness. Frivolity has value simply because it is silly and entertaining. Being frivolous may use resources but it usually results in laughter or joy. I think of things like pie fights, mud wrestling, bunjee jumping, manicures or $3 cafe lattes. They bring pleasure. They make us smile. And they usually do not make another person cry. Frivolity is not
- [Keeping company](https://www.realisa.org/keeping-company/) - Infrequently, I feel lonely. I am usually surrounded by people. My environments are usually noisy and busy. My staff thinks I have bionic hearing because I can hear conversations happening way out in the lobby. My kids think I have super powers. So, when the house is empty except for me, it is silent. Some
- [Interstate](https://www.realisa.org/interstate/) - I think the interstate highways in Florida are some of the best roads to drive....especially if you are driving fast. The speed limit is 70 or at least it is the designated speed. The in vivo speed is 80+mph. I don't have a radar detector, most people don't. We all speed. If there is an
- [Tree of Memory](https://www.realisa.org/450/) - Ficus trees are the classic house plant. You can buy a plastic or silk imitation to sit in the corner of your living room. Real ficus trees are water seekers and the can grow to enormous sizes. The resort I am staying at has some very large ficus trees. They are not as larger as
- [Housewife](https://www.realisa.org/housewife/) - Recent circumstances have had me thinking about what defines a housewife. I started making a list. The list is long. A proper housewife is not simply someone who runs a load of laundry and can make dinner. A true housewife is the mistress of a household, a tireless servant to her house and the words
- [Coal and Diamonds](https://www.realisa.org/coal-and-diamonds/) - Tears spill out of my eyes like rain. So fresh, so easy, they fall, dotting the lap of my skirt. My eyes are so much brighter and clearer with tears. Their blue iris sparkles even in my sorrow. Every tear feels tethered to my gut. There are tears from the heart. Heart tears are sad
- [Test Yourself](https://www.realisa.org/test-yourself/) - I love these little tests. It is easy to say that it is not possible to REALLY know someone by a silly 70 question test, but it is a window. And often you learn how to better see yourself. I took this Myers-Brigg test today out of curiosity. I was not very surprised by the
- [Distraction](https://www.realisa.org/distraction/) - In his research, Alfred Kinsey states in Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female: "Cheese crumbs spread in front of a copulating pair of rats may distract the female, but not the male". At least once a week I have a discussion with a female patient about her libido....usually her low libido. Most of these women
- [Gateway tattoos](https://www.realisa.org/gateway-tattoos/) - Is there a tattoo equivalent for a starter drug? If there is, it is henna. My dear friend is marrying the love of her life on Saturday. Tonight she had her bridal henna done. All of her wedding party also got henna and she invited me. I got a little baby henna. It looks delightful.
- [Blessing Upon You](https://www.realisa.org/blessing-upon-you/) - Yesterday a dear friend got married. She and her now husband have had a long and truly remarkable journey. For all of us standing as witness for them yesterday, it was a joyous sound to hear: "Hussam and Leslie are now married." The story of their love is beyond description. A very long list of
- [Sleep](https://www.realisa.org/sleep-2/) - I wake at 3:41 am and roll over. Why am I awake? What woke me? Did the phone ring? Is the house quiet? Oh yeah, my children are with their dad. So, why am I awake? Nose is a little congested. No leg cramps as I wiggle my feet. Cold? No. Hot? No. Bad dream?
- [Woot!](https://www.realisa.org/woot-2/) - Thursday afternoon Cameron made the St. Patrick's Interparish Varsity basketball team. I do not think I have every seen my son as happy as on Thursday as he sprinted from the gymnasium, pumping his fists in the air. My beautiful, redheaded son made the team and I could not be more proud. Cameron did this
- [Nuances](https://www.realisa.org/nuances/) - Anyone who has reads Realisa has an idea of my thoughts on suffering. In a nutshell, there is great value in suffering. Adversity, as a tool, is effective. It gets the attention, at least it gets mine. I nicknamed it "the divine brick through the windshield" approach. And when I am way off course, The
- [Hello!!!](https://www.realisa.org/hello/) - Some days I am faced with such absurdity. Illogical and incongruous. I cannot make sense of things and my organized brain screams. We, as a country and globe, are facing one of the greatest economic crisis. Now this is not the kind of crisis equivalent to tanks rolling into Poland or trains chugging down tracks
- [Intensity](https://www.realisa.org/intensity/) - Something can be intense AND balanced. It is easy to assume that intensity means excessive, extreme or overwhelming. I have been preoccupied with this concept for a few days. When is something TOO MUCH? Can a dish have too much garlic? Doubtful. And Sour Skittles totally kick ass. They have a brief, full throttle experience
- [Suspended](https://www.realisa.org/suspended/) - When you lose something you grieve. You greive as if you lost a loved one to death. You are bereft in the despair. The process of grieving follows stages, defined by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Â I recall watching someone very close to me who lost a child. The complication was that the child was not dead, just
- [Cooking up something](https://www.realisa.org/cooking-up-something/) - I have cooked a few things lately. Evan and I were hanging out yesterday as the weather shifted and started to turn cooler. The drizzling rain startedand I got the idea I would make soup. So I madesoup. A wonderful tomato bisque from scratch. I looked through my cookbooks, of which I have too many
- [Gifts](https://www.realisa.org/gifts-2/) - We give gifts. For what purpose? To please? To impress? To win favor? To apologize? And when we get a gift, does it work? Are we pleased, impressed, influenced or forgiving? A friend sent me a copy of a post on a psychology blog that was very interesting. Giving gifts may not be such a
- [Misplaced](https://www.realisa.org/misplaced/) - I hate misplacing things. To know I have been handed something important, something valuable or irreplacable, and to later be unable to locate that item is beyond frustrating. Somewhere in my memory is the knowledge of the item and its whereabouts. I set it someplace safe. So safe, even I cannot find it. I wish
- [Planes, Trains and Automobiles](https://www.realisa.org/planes-trains-and-automobiles/) - Traveling is a dissociative process. To sit in an airport waiting to get on a plane that will cross hundreds of miles of topography and time zones is surreal. To be a traveler requires the ability to let go of a certain amount of control. The more control you need that more your are challenged
- [First Light](https://www.realisa.org/first-light/) - I woke in a twin bed in the attic dormer bedroom of my sister's new house. Well, new old house. She said, "this house is all the other houses we have lived in rolled into one." And I agree. Tall ceilings, wood floors, lots of windows and light, a roaring fire. And her stunning, glorious
- [Baby Mojo](https://www.realisa.org/baby-mojo/) - This is baby Emma. She is my sister's first granddaughter...grandchild. And she is lovely and scrumptious and wonderful. La Nina muy es bonita. I fed her a bottle today and she fell asleep in my arms. I got a healthy shot of baby mojo.
- [One less day in the nursing home](https://www.realisa.org/one-less-day-in-the-nursing-home/) - Thanksgiving is a day of abundance. It is a day of family. It is a noisy day. A busy day. A day of gluttony...even if we don't intend it. My sister and I woke this to start a day of cooking and baking. And, if I toot our horns....we are pretty awesome at it. Last
- [Threes](https://www.realisa.org/threes/) - There is an old addage that bad news comes in threes, especially really bad news. I wish good news did, too. I would take the trifecta of misery, woe and horror for the triple play of elation, satisfaction and peace. And our brains need a balance of good news and positivity to counter the WHAMMO factor
- [The New Flu Season](https://www.realisa.org/the-new-flu-season/) - So anyone tapped into the news that listens for items other than gore, mayhem, disaster, "bleakery" or sports scores should have heard about the new article published in the British Medical Journal. Apparently, happiness is contagious. If we have happy friends, we are more likely to be happy. If we are happy; our happiness can
- [A great and true friend](https://www.realisa.org/a-great-and-true-friend/) - I great and true friend came to visit me today. She disclosed she had been reading Realisa. She also admitted that she realized that her reading was solitary and not an actual dialogue with me. I assume SOMEONE reads Realisa. But, I write for me. It is a solitary thing. If someone reads it cool.
- [Real or True](https://www.realisa.org/real-or-true/) - Is everything real also true? Is reality an absolute or is reality relative? Can I believe in anything? How am I to be certain what I see or hear or taste is real? I suppose, it is real for me. But is my reality the truth? Reality can be deconstructed. Each layer is real, as
- [Cookies](https://www.realisa.org/cookies-3/) - I love Christmas cookies. I love to plan which ones I am going to bake and in what order. I love looking for new cookies to add to the menu. I came across this listing. Gourmet magazine's archives of Christmas years past. Too cool. Every year I bake Sand Tarts and Spritz, which are made
- [Natural](https://www.realisa.org/natural/) - So far, today has been a natural day. I woke refreshed without prompting or agitation from a deep sleep. The room was lit and the clock said 7:31. Late for me. I agreed that I would get up and walk but sleep returned and I woke a second time over an hour later. I kept
- [Gifting](https://www.realisa.org/gifting/) - Gifts from the heart are the best kind. When a gift is mostly an investment of time it resonates with me. While I occasionally come across the PERFECT store bought gift, I prefer to make gifts. Ultimately, time is my most precious commodity, so to find the time and use that time to make a
- [And the stockings were hung](https://www.realisa.org/and-the-stockings-were-hung/) - I finished the new Christmas stockings. A few years back, my stocking went M.I.A. It was time to consider a replacement. After splitting our ornaments and Christmas decorations, I decided to make new stockings for the new house. I anticipated the separation of the ornaments to be difficult, a minefield of emotions and memories but
- [Waking Up](https://www.realisa.org/waking-up/) - I woke this morning like most mornings, with a leg cramp. Funny things that fling me out of bed. It is baffling that both my calves and the shin muscles can cramp simultaneously. No anatomical way to stretch one without pain in the other. So, I force through the pain. It is intense but brief.
- [Merry Christmas](https://www.realisa.org/merry-christmas/) - Evan creeps into my room at 4:32am. "Mommy, can we do presents now?" I was suprised he made it through the night. I convinced him that it was too early and to go back to sleep. We snuggled up and were fast asleep until Cameron came in at 6:33. "Cameron, were there presents?" Cameron grunted
- [Magic](https://www.realisa.org/magic/) - My Evie has taken to doing slight of hand magic tricks. He is not so slight of hand but he is thoroughly amused by the idea of illusion and making things disappear. He knows that he is not doing actual magic but rather trickery. It is delightful to watch. Silly. He is silly. He hides
- [Fearsome](https://www.realisa.org/fearsome/) - Strength is a trait that is forged. Strength is not inborn nor bred. It is developed, cultivated and nurtured. The process of fortification can be part adversity, part fear, part tests of bravery or courage. Strength is the by product of many failures and many losses. The loss and the misfortune is the antidote to
- [The Three Wise Men](https://www.realisa.org/the-three-wise-men/) - The Three Wise Men set off in search of the new born king. They follow a star high in the sky over Bethlehem. I am sure their wives loved this piece of theater. Can you hear it? "Honey, me and the boys are going to go follow that star. We heard their was a baby
- [Strategy](https://www.realisa.org/strategy/) - I learned to play chess as a small girl. I learned from my father. I was no more than 8 when we first started playing. He would start with a handicap by giving me his queen. Other than that, I perceived no additional consideration. Over time, I could easily beat his handicapped battalion. Then we
- [What a character](https://www.realisa.org/what-a-character/) - Easily 20% of the patients I see struggle with psychological issues. Sometimes it is simple grief from the death of a loved one. Sometimes they come in complaining of physical problems but the source is their unemployment or caring for an ill parent. They have insomnia or irritable bowel syndrome or even chest pain. We
- [Cold](https://www.realisa.org/cold/) - Florida is The temperature is supposed to fall during the NIGHT. It is Freaky Friday. They predict the temperature will drop during the day into the low 20's. Ouch. Mind you, it is a gloriusly bright Florida winter day with periwinkle blue sky sans clouds. There was a crayon called "sky blue" and that is
- [Voice](https://www.realisa.org/voice/) - The voice is a window. So much can be conveyed in the voice and its inflections. And the memory of a voice is a powerful thing. I was watching Chowder, a silly cartoon with Evan this morning. There is a character called Chestnut and the voice is Anthony Terrel Smith, better known as Tone-Loc. There
- [A New Day](https://www.realisa.org/a-new-day/) - Today we inaugurated our new president. I voted for Mr Obama. I voted for him in the primary. I was not a rabid Obama follower. I have no bumper sticker. I wasn't interested in trying to convert or promote. I was simply overjoyed to have a presidential candidate that I could cast a proud vote.
- [Ecodreaming](https://www.realisa.org/ecodreaming/) - Can a heart capture true joy without dreaming? Can a soul soar to heaven without imagination? Dreaming eventually enters the realm of risk takers and daredevils. To dream is to have an uncommon faith in something bigger, greater, unknown and uncontrollable. Dreaming is to reach higher, farther and without eagerness. Dreaming is wanting and imagination
- [Fried](https://www.realisa.org/fried/) - There is a particular emotional state best described as fried. It is past tired but not yet burnt. It is an inbetween place. You wish you were burnt because there is less feeling. Second degree burns hurt like hell. Third degree burns, while more life threatening, are painless. In honor of my state of mind, I
- [Legacy](https://www.realisa.org/legacy/) - My sons are my greatest legacy. I doubt I will climb Mt. Everest. I won't cure cancer. I won't break a sound barrier. But I have 2 sons. And by the grace of God, they are truly amazing. Last week, driving home, my oldest spoke up. To me. He was not disrespectful. He was not
- [An Apple a Day](https://www.realisa.org/an-apple-a-day/) - I didn't pack my lunch yesterday. I just ran out of time. When lunch rolled around, I was too hungry and impatient. If I had the afternoon off, my lunch choice would have been easy. But I dislike fast food and I dislike eating fast. What is the point? Right? You dash to some drive
- [100% Certified Organic](https://www.realisa.org/100-certified-organic/) - Can a person be certified organic? Organic means no fillers, no synthetics, no chemicals, no falsehood, no bullshit. Wouldn't it be amazing to have humans with this certification stamped on the back of their hand? You reach to shake their hand and you see that inspection stamp; you can be assured of truth and authenticity.
- [Atlas Shrugged](https://www.realisa.org/atlas-shrugged/) - I must reserve my commentary on this book (audiobook) until I have listened to it all.....all 47 hours of it. And I apparently got through my entire lower and higher education without ever reading any Ayn Rand. I care nothing of her politics or aspiration at diety. I only care about her images and vision
- [A Few Degrees of Separation](https://www.realisa.org/a-few-degrees-of-separation/) - Occasionally, life strings together a series of events and occurences that permits discovery. I reconnect with an old friend. That old friend makes a casual introduction with one of their friends. After a bit of easy dialogue and banter, a few recipes get exchanged. I am a tremendous lover of recipes. I love to just
- [Quote of the Day](https://www.realisa.org/quote-of-the-day/) - Laying in my yahoo inbox was a forwarded snippet from someone equally enamored with words. The ability to talk through an idea, rolling it through your head and getting those ideas out of your mouth is a treasured gift. I love the dance of ideas. I especially love the clever turn of words that twists
- [Write to write](https://www.realisa.org/write-to-write/) - What started as a bleak day proffers possible bounty. The epilogue comes a few more hours from now. I am filled with gratitude for finally have my music library. It was a kind and generous thing from Paul....and iTunes did not attempt to purge it or blackball it. I am playing David Sanborn. I have
- [Folds](https://www.realisa.org/folds/) - Life is not linear. Mathmeticians might argue that there are no coincidences and that chaos theory can predict everything from hurricanes to stock markets; I prefer to leave people to serendipity. Any person piddling around in Facebook or Myspace has certainly stumbled upon some long ago playmates, childhood classmates, lost friends or old lovers. Like
- [Fire](https://www.realisa.org/fire/) - To have a life well lived is the greatest feat. What defines living greatly? A genuine sense of purpose offers direction. A well matched partner offers support and depth to one's heart. The legacy of children bellows into the future one's existence. Accumulated treasure ensures secutiry from the ravages of the world. If the rhythm of
- [Happy Birthday Sweet Pea](https://www.realisa.org/happy-birthday-sweet-pea/) - In my life, nothing has humbled me more than motherhood. Thirteen years ago, we waited to go to the hospital. A planned induction because I was ill. Pre-eclampsia was the initial diagnosis. After delivery, it was determined I had HELPP syndrome. At 37 weeks gestation, I gave birth to the tiniest little baby. It was
- [Inside Out](https://www.realisa.org/inside-out/) - What do you do with bananas way, way past edible? Unless you are of a Caribbean descendancy, these go into the trash. A boy I went to high school with would eat these. He cut them in half and ate them with a spoon. GAG! I do not eat fresh (or rotten bananas). After sitting
- [Catalyst](https://www.realisa.org/catalyst/) - Physical chemistry is the study of "chemical phenomena from a physical and mathematical perspective. Physical chemistry includes chemical thermodynamics, kinetics, spectroscopy, quantum chemistry, and statistical mechanics." This kind of chemistry is either formative or destructive. Certainly, perspective matters.  In every formula there are reagents. You mix them together and they make a new product. In the
- [Hungry](https://www.realisa.org/hungry/) - Sometimes I let myself get too hungry. I delay eating or I get busy and forget to eat. Mind you, I am lover of food. I am a picky eater, though. I am adventurous but particular. I watched Jeff Corwin's new show on the Food Network, called Extreme Eating. Not for me. I could not
- [Giving and Leaving](https://www.realisa.org/giving-and-leaving/) - Each Lenten season, Christians are called to reconsider their faith and the sacrifices made by Jesus. We are asked to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit and recommit to our baptismal promises. Many Christians chose to fast during this holy period. I remember my high school friend Julie. As Greek Orthodox, she gave up all
- [Nodes](https://www.realisa.org/nodes/) - For each lifetime, there are sentinal moments. There are people that are pivotal. Their influence, even if brief when compared to the length of a life, may be monumental. Mitchell Kaplan, my 10th grade English teacher, was such man. I believe my 10th grade year was the ONLY year he taught public school. He went on
- [Mementos](https://www.realisa.org/momentos/) - As a small child, my parents had the 1970's equivalent of a time share condo....but they had a time share in a Winnebago. I don't know the exact arrangement, but for 2 weeks every summer my family piled into that Winnebago and toodled off on some destination. What I remember about these trips are the
- [Watchmaking](https://www.realisa.org/watchmaking/) - There has been this saying in my family, often used to describe a person who is tangential or circuitous. The phrase is usually offered in this manner, "I asked John for the time and he told me how to make a watch." This particular trait can be problematic if one needs to make quick decisions
- [Skate](https://www.realisa.org/skate/) - Yesterday, as I walked down Pennsylvania Avenue in DC, I heard this rumbling noise. It was incongruous. I realized I heard skate boards.....MANY skate boards. I turned just as a literal herd of skaters pumped past me to the small monument on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue across from the East Gallery. The herd was
- [Origami](https://www.realisa.org/origami/) - Origami is fascinating. To take an ordinary piece of paper and fold it intricately and precisely into something beautiful. I have spent much time the last few weeks, nay months, considering this idea of folding. As I packed my luggage for my recent trip, I got lost in the folding of the clothes. How do you
- [Ironing](https://www.realisa.org/547/) - The fine arts of keeping a home are slipping away. So much of life is disposable. It is planned obsolescence. Nothing is built to last. Applicances do not get repaired, they get replaced. And why not....Best Buy has a sale on the new top of the line appliances. We race around at these break neck
- [Left, Left....Left, Right, Left](https://www.realisa.org/left-leftleft-right-left/) - Occasionally, I discover I have been backwards about something. I must sound so certain and assured that anyone around that knows the truth simply won't deliver the news that I am misguided. For about 10 days now, I have been making the statement....."I am staying right brain on this." I made this as an attestation
- [Mood and music](https://www.realisa.org/mood-and-music/) - Music sets the mood. I often find a new piece of music and play it in heavy rotation. I play it until I know the words or the emotions it evokes are well imprinted. I will listen to a piece of music or an album from a particular time in my life and it recalls
- [Wiggle Room](https://www.realisa.org/wiggle-room/) - The idea of not writing was untenable. Best Buy had to "dump" my data off my laptop. It took 3 days until they called and said they had my data. They also were now sending my laptop off for servicing. I thought...my laptop should have a name. My parents always named our cars. Brown Bertha.
- [Space](https://www.realisa.org/space-2/) - Space is a peculiar and fascinating thing, an actual geographic place. It is the spot you occupy. Space is also a concept of where you have been and where you hope to go. We stood last Sunday on the edge of Payne's Prairie and watched the space shuttle launch. I considered the vastness of space
- [Cropping](https://www.realisa.org/cropping/) - After the application is sent, we wait. We wait to be accepted. We apply for all manner of things in life. Do we ever stop applying? Back in the day, I recall collecting the brochures on the colleges. Before the advent of the internet, it meant weekends at the local public library going through the
- [Packaged](https://www.realisa.org/packaged/) - In keeping with the recent thread I have been tugging at regarding packaging and how it makes things more attractive and appealing....I stumbled quite accidentally upon a very cool website called The Lovely Package. OMG! I love design. I delight in walking around a Dean & Deluca store and touching everything. Sometimes it is the
- [Look Both Ways](https://www.realisa.org/look-both-ways/) - Sometimes we want something so badly we project it. We wish it so. The professionals call this delusional but each of us can fall victim to dreams so far fetched they seem possible even when an impossibility. The desire can be so fierce it makes us covet or envy or lust. We sacrifice our better
- [Space](https://www.realisa.org/space-3/) - We went to the Kennedy Space Center this past weekend. Why haven't we done this before? It was cool...especially for those of us who are space geeks. We heard the shuttle land with the distinctive double sonic BOOM-BOOM.
- [MOVE](https://www.realisa.org/move/) - I put the Battlestar Galatica disc on the DVD player and then set about making my dinner. I forget to start the DVD until I hear the loop of music at the beginning playing over and over again. At first, I don't care, but I eventually get a bit annoyed by this 25 sec of
- [Phobias](https://www.realisa.org/phobias/) - Some people are afraid of heights. Some people require sedation for MRI tests or flying on airplanes. Me? I am petrified of the dentist. I have a true phobia. It is illogical. I have a wonderful, kind, gentle dentist. It does not matter. I had a true sadist for a dentist as a child: Dr.
- [New Music](https://www.realisa.org/new-music/) - The Decemberists' new album The Hazards of Love is truly awesome.
- [Tick Tock](https://www.realisa.org/tick-tock/) - Recall the Tomb Raider movie. Lara Croft wakes from sleep. She has had a disturbing dream. She wakes to hear a clock ticking. She searches her whole house and discovers a hidden compartment built under the staircase. Stored in this space are boxes and treasures and the ticking is louder. The ticking is an antique
- [Books](https://www.realisa.org/books/) - There are few things as delicious as a good book. Actually, my pleasure is less the book than in the reading. I love immersion. I love getting lost in the story, the character, the plots. I love closing my eyes and seeing the words transform into images. On the inside of my eyelids, I see
- [Series](https://www.realisa.org/series/) - In physics, circuits can run in series or in parallel. Parallel means multiple things simultaneously. Series means one lined up right after another. A group of things in series means they build upon one another. I love a good series. I read the Terry Goodkind series last year. I am thankful I waited until they
- [Pickle things](https://www.realisa.org/pickles-things/) - First pickle aisle. There is also a really good children's book called Pickle Things.
- [Pets](https://www.realisa.org/pets/) - I miss having a pet. This may be a project for the Easter break....get a pet. I found this website and there is a tab on the site called Daily Chuck. I thought Chuck would be the baby or the partner. Nope. Chuck is the dog. The pictures attest to the nature of this animal
- [Paint to paper](https://www.realisa.org/paint-to-paper/) - I have always loved the hidden humor, the sly remark, the quip. I like visual jokes as well. It is one reason I love Threadless and Random t-shirts. I couldn't draw myself out of a paper bag, but I see art. I see images. I have no ability to translate what I see into a
- [Simple and Mundane](https://www.realisa.org/simple-and-mundane/) - I am absurdly passionate about all things simple and mundane. I am passionate about sheets dried on the clothesline and how babies smell. I am passionate about properly tied ties, how a shirt is ironed and mens' shoes. I am passionate about freshly baked bread and homemade jam. People confuse this with being opinionated. I
- [Soar](https://www.realisa.org/soar/) - When you see a car pass you on the road with a nearly flat tire, do you wave to the driver and tell them? Do you feel compelled to offer up that which you know about another, especially if it involves their safety? A parent warns a child about risky behaviors trying to impart wisdom.
- [Headache](https://www.realisa.org/headache/) - The migraine is a unique experience. I suppose if I had them regularly or daily, I might have a different observational relationship with them. My migraines are infrequent. I can tell they are coming. When severe, I am best served by darkness, silence and ice. I never feel nauseous but then, I am not an
- [Ripple](https://www.realisa.org/ripple/) - Someday, a single act can ruin things. The event can be small: spill coffee down the front of your business suit, break a nail to the quick, discovering mold on the last few slices of bread and be unable to pack a lunch or find your freshly purchased perfectly ripe mangoes at the bottom of
- [Gather](https://www.realisa.org/gather/) - We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing. We gather to celebrate or to commemorate. We gather to console. We gather to demonstrate. A gathering is the culmination of effort and energy. Whenever two or more of us are gathered, there is love. The abundant love of the Creator is reaped when the harvest is
- [Mothering](https://www.realisa.org/mothering/) - I hear that wonderful song my Etta James....there's no greater love than the love I have for you. The love of a mother for her child is surpassed by no other love. This is a cellular love, a visceral love and love woven into the very fiber of a woman. There is something profound and
- [Positive](https://www.realisa.org/positive/) - Gratitude brings positivity. For what am I grateful? How can my brain formulate gratitude for all that I should and must give thanks? Are there words enough? Fortunately, feelings are an infinite commodity. I can feel love forever. I can feel thankfulness until infinity. I cannot expend my pleasure or exhaust my awe. But negative
- [Sense of smell](https://www.realisa.org/sense-of-smell/) - Who can deny the scent of a rose? Among the senses, the olfactory memories are rooted deeply, primitively in an area of our brain. Scent and the recognition of familiar and known is the basic building block of immunity and defense. From the origins, scent has given direction, territory is marked and tracks are laid.
- [Spoon](https://www.realisa.org/spoon/) - I have bought dried cherries from American Spoon Foods for years. They have a new blog. The photos alone make it worthy. Check out the American Spoon Blog.
- [Sopchoppy](https://www.realisa.org/sopchoppy/) - On our way to the beach vacation today, we drove through Sopchoppy, FL. Who knew there was such a place? isn't it wonderful? Can you imagine? "I live in Sopchoppy!" It sounds so silly and yet, so wonderful and whimsical. I love the panhandle of Florida. I love the sugar sand beaches and the wind.
- [Get Away](https://www.realisa.org/get-away/) - The getaway is a delicious treat. As children, we often have secret hide-outs, the tree house, the converted shed.Our side yard had a small aluminum boat leaning onto the side of the house. It made a perfect hidden lair. As adults, we still seek our secret hide-away. They are more costly and usually borrowed, but
- [Anticipation](https://www.realisa.org/anticipation/) - I learned today that Pat Conroy's new novel, South of Broad will be released August 11th. I am excited about this novel from an author I have long admired about a city I adore. Charleston is the city where my first child was conceived and born. He has Lowcountry in his DNA. Once a Chicken
- [Manifest](https://www.realisa.org/manifest/) - So much of one's assurance is from feeling in control. One's power resides in the ability to control direction. Manifest Destiny is woven into the fabric of every American. It is a cultural legacy; we believe we have ultimate control over where we are going and how we are to get there. Even more, we
- [Wealth beyond measure](https://www.realisa.org/wealth-beyond-measure/) - "We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty." ~Mother Teresa It is with a humble heart and pure gratitude to know one is surrounded by
- [Magical](https://www.realisa.org/magical/) - Everyday, I forget to notice the magic in my world. I look at the coreopsis blooming at my front door and am pleased with their color and whimsy, but I overlook the sheer magical, almost supernatural abilities of plants. Life and all things living have that All Spark, that life force that perpetuates and thrums
- [Say something nice](https://www.realisa.org/say-something-nice/) - Realisa started as an effort to find a place to better express myself, a place to find my voice. Did I have anything relevant to say?have I said anything effective? It was easy to find the rant. I have a quick tongue for sarcasm and criticism. I can find the bleak perspective easily. I disliked
- [Purveyor of Substance](https://www.realisa.org/purveyor-of-substance/) - Whether you get a true glimpse of the innards Elvis Perkins in the NPR interview he did prior to the SXSW music festival...or simply a glimpse of a genuine soul shining bright, his music blazes for all to see the love and sorrow and gratitude he has for his origins. How to take loss and
- [Oh Father](https://www.realisa.org/oh-father/) - Today we ponder and give thanks for fathers. Fathering a child and being a father encompasses so much. To offer yourself so as to conceive a child and to do it mindfully and with love and intention is lovely and noble, but not all children are fortunate to be so well-planned and expected. To wait
- [Comfort Food](https://www.realisa.org/comfort-food/) - Driving to an appointment tonight, I got to thinking about comfort food and all its various permutations over the years. In college it was Popeye's fried chicken and biscuits and Haagen Daaz ice cream. As teens, we ate Drake Cake's Ring Dings. When I was pregnant with Cameron it was old fashioned spaghetti with meat
- [Invite](https://www.realisa.org/invite/) - Henry Miller said, "Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature and music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people." The world is a spectacular place. My world, albiet, this sweltering middle patch of north central Florida,is lovely. So many of the
- [Natural Consequences](https://www.realisa.org/natural-consequences/) - Google or Bing "natural consequences" and you hit a lengthy discourse on the appropriate application of "natural consequences" in parenting and teaching. If Johnny refuses to eat the dinner you cook, then Johnny will go hungry. If Mary refuses to study for the test or complete her homework, she may fail the class. It is
- [Making a new home](https://www.realisa.org/making-a-new-home/) - For my whole life, I have always had a pet, with the exception of a failed attempt with a hamster in Letts Hall. Except for college, I have always had a cat. When I moved last August, I could not bring my "boyfriend" with me. Gumbo, a monster orange tabby, was a beast of a
- [Niche](https://www.realisa.org/niche/) - Over the course of a life, bonds are formed. The nature of human existence is to aggregate and form social structures. It was the horrifying thing about being stranded on a remote, postage stamp island. A tattered volleyball can never replace the organic presence of another living soul. Even pets cannot fill the space that
- [This I Like](https://www.realisa.org/this-i-like/) - I found a new singer, Josh Pyke. I have been quite enamored by Clare Bowditch, an Australian singer. I read an interview with her in a book called The Divided Heart. It is a collection of interviews with women who are both artists and mothers. Her insights into the balance and tug-o-war between the call
- [Lost](https://www.realisa.org/lost/) - NPR had a segment Wednesday about the psychology of getting lost and knowing your way. Colin Ellard, wrote You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall. The interview was amusing. We all get lost. Sometimes, we get lost for a long time. Sometimes we give
- [Character](https://www.realisa.org/character/) - I have recently been privy to an early copy of a novel not due until August, a novel by a writer much admired but long absent. The main character is Leopold Bloom King. How can one be a dullard with that kind of name? By page 43, I was astonished at how vividly the main
- [Come Here Doggie](https://www.realisa.org/come-here-doggie/) - Ivan Petrovich Pavlov sets his metronome, at Westminster Hall the chimes mark time, my new kittens hear the can of cat food open and each elicits a conditioned response. Like the Pavlov's dogs, my kittens hear this as noise a conditioned stimulus and over a mere few weeks, that stimulus gets linked to their hunger.
- [Buried treasure](https://www.realisa.org/buried-treasure/) - Giving a gift is a particular pleasure of mine. When I decide to give a gift, I spend time really thinking about what the person has shared with me, what they like, if they have identified a desire or an interest. I really pride myself in giving the thoughtful and the intimate gift. If I
- [Claim](https://www.realisa.org/claim/) - In elementary school P.E. class, we did calisthenics. Spread out so that we were "double arms distance" from one another, fingertips just barely touching, we would do jumping jacks and toe touches. Everyone was told to spread out and make room for themselves. The object lesson at the age of 10 was that each of
- [Hunger](https://www.realisa.org/hunger/) - Hunger goes beyond craving. Hunger causes pain. Satiety quiets hunger. Satiety does not mean full. The stomach can be full of rocks or cotton candy and hunger remains. A properly nourish human can survive weeks without food. If a meditation and cerebral pursuit, the hunger pains of a fast subside. One can sit before a
- [Dividends](https://www.realisa.org/dividends/) - Dreams exist only in the imagination. Making a dream reality does not JUST HAPPEN. To convert that dream to the tangible, effort and energy are required. Like any savings account or portfolio, the size of the dividend is directly related to the investment. While a bull market helps, if you never bought a share of
- [Adrenaline](https://www.realisa.org/adrenaline/) - I rode the Manta today at Sea World. I love roller coasters. This coaster you ride laying forward on your chest, like you are flying. It corkscrews and loop-de-loops. I like the Hulk and the Dueling Dragons at Universal Studios. Space Mountain still owns. Long ago, in central Florida, there was Circus World with an
- [Stuff](https://www.realisa.org/stuff-2/) - George Carlin famously said that a house is just a place to keep your stuff. Get more stuff and you need a bigger house. Have a big house, you feel compelled to get more stuff. The balance of nature requires the vacuum be filled, often with unnecessary, essentially worthless, rarely used stuff. Reading Carl Honore's
- [Whirlwind](https://www.realisa.org/whirlwind/) - I have moved. Packed, moved, unpacked and reorganized to another house. It was unexpected. It's done. There is a natural inertia to change, yet change and one's ability to adapt is a testament to agility and fortitude. If I want to remain flexible I shall always hope to be open to change. I am reading
- [Elbow Room](https://www.realisa.org/elbow-room/) - Some things feel connected but they are unrelated. There is a sliver of a bar on Las Olas Boulevard in Ft. Lauderdale called the Elbo Room. Then I found this band, Elbow from the UK. A friend linked their single, Grounds for Divorce on Facebook. The slider guitar is awesome! Great music to play LOUD!!
- [Mine](https://www.realisa.org/mine/) - Is mine always singular? Can mine be mine to many? With tangible objects singular possessive seems reasonable. These shoes are mine. Those markers are mine. But with the evolution and the complexity of the object, the pure possession of it becomes questionable. These song lyrics are mine. These paintings are mine. These recipes are mine.
- [Hammer](https://www.realisa.org/hammer/) - Today is one of those days that I feel like a hammer and the world is a box of nails. Specifically, one of my children is a giant, flat headed galvanized nail. It is the responsibility of a parent to mold and train; we teach and encourage. Today, I felt like a blacksmith with an
- [Step Over](https://www.realisa.org/step-over/) - Would you go bungee jumping? Would you go sky diving or hang gliding? Is it something you do solo with a hired instructor or does it require an audience, a cheerleader? Do I get credit for the endeavor if no one stands witness? Are there things in this life you want desperately to do, dream
- [Pop](https://www.realisa.org/pop/) - Occasionally, you will hear a line in a song and it grabs you. A snippet flows through your mind and you process it off cycle, after the song has past. And then you cannot remember where you heard the song or even to what song the line belongs. "We kissed like we invented it." My
- [Stumbling](https://www.realisa.org/stumbling/) - I have stumbled across a few wonderful discoveries, the most recent being a weblog by photographer Jessica Claire. I found it because of a crazy-on-crack room renovation she did in her home. Like all things web, you fall down the rabbit hole. The wall is not to my taste. I truly think the wall is
- [Elude](https://www.realisa.org/elude/) - Sleep is elusive. Children resist it, adults crave it. It cannot be bought or sold. Despite all the pills and marketing, it can't be swallowed or induced. Poor sleep has impact. Chronic poor sleep amplifies that negative impact. Good sleep is simply perfect. To fall asleep easily is a blessing. Last night I laid my
- [No Uncle Tom](https://www.realisa.org/no-uncle-tom/) - While this space is usually for positive reflection and optimism, I find myself unable to side step and put a smiling face on things; I can't be an Uncle Tom. Two unrelated but fundamentally similar situations have occurred in my world to make me stop and think about the privileged and freedom I have and
- [Scope Creep](https://www.realisa.org/scope-creep/) - A dear friend warned me against scope creep. Scope creep? Being an engineer, and having the humor that is unique to the highly intelligent, scope creep defines the tendency for a project to run amok. It is a technical term but can be applied to all manner of living. A previous president re-emphasized this with
- [Dreaming](https://www.realisa.org/dreaming/) - In 1976, I was 10 years old. Like so many children that year, I wanted a bedroom decorated in red, white & blue. I can still remember the narrow space between the far side of my twin bed and the wall, a space wide enough for my pillows and lean, boy-like body. I would lie
- [Something new](https://www.realisa.org/something-new/) - I am motivated to update and make some changes. Change can be good. It can also be frightening. One gets adjusted and accustom to life in a certain way. There is familiarity and a routine. It is easy to predict and anticipate. But the monotony can leave the imagination malnourished, the heart restricted and the
- [Alacrity](https://www.realisa.org/movie-review/) - On Sunday last, the boys and I went and saw Cloudy With a Chance for Meatballs. It was in 3-D, for which we paid an extra $3.50 to see! I choked on the $12.50 ticket prices. It helps that I earn free tickets and we use Scrip cards when we go. The movie was sweet.
- [Energy Follows Thought](https://www.realisa.org/energy-follows-thought/) - Our local public radio recently went to an "all talk" format. I have been thrilled to have Talk of the Nation, Science Friday, All Things Considered and more. Today, I caught a segment from a producer I had never heard before: Humankind. David Freudberg and Human Media had a long segment on stress reduction, meditation,
- [Santa Fe River](https://www.realisa.org/santa-fe-river/) - I went canoeing down the Santa Fe River yesterday. There was a 60% chance of rain. I am glad I put on sunscreen, because not one single drop fell. It was beautiful. There were turtles galore sunning themselves on logs. They clustered under the clumps of water weeds, their black thumb-sized heads poking out of
- [Missing Ingredient](https://www.realisa.org/missing-ingredient/) - I recently made a batch of my apricot scones. I have adjusted the recipe for my taste, so I use almond extract instead of vanilla. I often make a double batch, too. I plate the dough onto a parchment lined jelly rollpan with a large ice cream scooper and freeze them, uncooked. The last batch
- [Tapas](https://www.realisa.org/tapas/) - Emiliano's restuarant has been in Gainesville for a very long time. I have not eaten there for probably close to 10 years. As a townie, Emiliano's is way downtown! It is so far to drive (5 miles). It was lovely to discover a Monday night tapas restaurant with live jazz and a full bar. While
- [Delve](https://www.realisa.org/delve/) - One must delve into life. Life is not for skimming. Life should not be lived like some Evelyn Woodhead Sped Redding course. Life demands the depth and the effort to investigate, to ask, to ponder, to dig deep. Certainly, digging deep can encounter toxic sludge or a mass grave. Digging deep can lead to the
- [Spark](https://www.realisa.org/spark/) - The tiniest of sparks can set ablaze the side of a mountain. The intentional chink of stone against flint can start the fire, but flames cannot be controlled. My new quote is from E.D. Nixon, the architect of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Did they have any idea that their local protest would spark the civil
- [Hots & Nots](https://www.realisa.org/hots-nots/) - I follow the blog and art of Loobylu. She has started a weekly What's Hot & What's Not. She encouraged others to add their own Hot&Not post to her's. At is a veritable Choo-Choo train of blogs from amazingly talented artists. I tip toed through the list like a giddy window shopper. I decided to
- [Special Treats](https://www.realisa.org/special-treats/) - Having moved away from Miami and all the easy, quick Cuban food, I have had to learn to cook a few things myself. I get by. A warm pastelles con queso with a cordadito is a delicious way to start the day. It also helps to have fresh flowers arrive via the Fed-Ex man, enough
- [Float](https://www.realisa.org/float/) - It is easy to forget how close we are to natural beauty. Less than 10 miles from my front door is this loveliness.
- [Recipe](https://www.realisa.org/recipe/) - I was asked for the recipe for the Cuban pastries. They are ridiculously easy! Buy a package of Pepperidge Farm puff pastry sheets. Thaw them over night in the fridge. Each sheet is folded in thirds. I cut each sheet into six squares and then each square in half. Each sheet makes a dozen. Cut
- [Anthem](https://www.realisa.org/anthem/) - Over the course of my life, there have been songs that exemplify my feelings far better than I could ever express on my own. My youthful assurance is captured in More Than a Feeling by Boston. I have the most vivid memories of driving back from Crandon beach with my best friend Kristin, blaring this
- [Lost and Found](https://www.realisa.org/lost-and-found/) - I am having to edit and review all the posts and pages since changing blog themes. I just updated and fixed the eulogy and wanted to share it again. I link this glorious and devastating eulogy with Mr. Conroy's permission. In the oft circuitous connectivity between all of us, it is by sheer happenstance that
- [Praise and thanks](https://www.realisa.org/praise-and-thanks/) - In the last few weeks I have been very concerned about my younger son. He has had issues with a reading delay. At 9, he lacks the fluency and comfort with reading that is expected by his school and teachers. It is a sobering experience to fathom that despite his remarkable intelligence, his reading is
- [Escapee](https://www.realisa.org/870/) - The weather has changed and we are in fall. To a non-Floridian, seasons may be imperceptible. For the native, it is as obvious as snow on the ground; plus, you have to put on socks because your feet get cold. The A/C gets turned off. An extra throw goes over the back of the sofa
- [Titans](https://www.realisa.org/titans/) - I am thrilled to be the overseer of all things extra credit. I am now certain I planted the seed in my oldest son to be as creative and original as possible when it comes to school projects. Last week, my Facebook hosted an impromptu forum on mother's lamentations regarding the ridiculousness of homework and
- [Hot & Not Wednesday](https://www.realisa.org/hot-not-wednesday/) - As I wind down my day , I click on the few blogs I follow and I am reminded that Wednesday is Loobylu's What's Hot and What's Not Wednesday. I have 51 minutes to do my Wednesday list, too. So a quickfire rendtition: The Hotness is being helpful and useful for my sons. I got
- [Tapestry](https://www.realisa.org/tapestry/) - The esteemed Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Conner said, "We don't accomplish anything in this world alone ... and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something." The weaver sits at a loom and threads the shuttle.
- [A clever phrase](https://www.realisa.org/a-clever-phrase/) - I am a great fan of the metaphor. Speaking metaphorically, I prefer the use of characters and comparisons to explain and emphasize. I could say that I have a large cavity in my tooth. But to say I have a cavity the size of the Grand Canyon emphasizes the extreme pain and sensitivity. Sometimes things
- [Apples](https://www.realisa.org/apples-2/) - I learned recently that there are a few variety of apples that actually grow in Florida. I would never have considered apples as an option. I dream of one day having a small piece of land, not much more than 5 acres. On this land I envision pecan trees, blueberry bushes; raspberry trellised up walls
- [Hot&Not](https://www.realisa.org/hotnot/) - To blog or not to blog? When I have a long and jam-packed day, the idea of clearing enough space in my brain to write even a small paragraph seems like a daunting task. It mght as will be a term paper with footnotes and a bibliography. Remember the days of TYPING a term paper
- [Pink](https://www.realisa.org/pink/) - There is a certain level of fearlessness when you are 13 going on "conquer the world". I think it may be different for boys than girls, but that may be a generalization. At 13, I was exceedingly self-conscious yet ridiculously brash and loud. There is the mutiny of puberty, the body changing without permission or
- [Jigsaw](https://www.realisa.org/jigsaw/) - Nature hates a vacuum so said Aristotle. And while science has disproved this theory in many ways, we still accept it. Did you know the earth is really flat and the sun revolves around us, because we are the center of all creation? Human nature fills in the void. We drink down our cup of
- [Comfort Foods](https://www.realisa.org/comfort-foods/) - My son has graduated. He has learned a mandatory life skill: how to make the family chocolate chip cookie dough. There are a few tangible things I can exchange with my sisters that will be a surefire remedy to a tough or sh*tty day. Raw chocolate chip cookie dough. And we are cookie dough snobs.
- [Eager](https://www.realisa.org/eager/) - It is such a cool word, a goofy word, a childish word. It sounds kinda square and geeky. Can words be suave or debonair or awkward, like people. Eager. Someone will name their son Eager one day. I can hear the NFL announcer, "Eager Bakerfield, catches the ball on the 20, fakes to the left
- [Found ](https://www.realisa.org/found/) - Long ago, in my genetics class at American University, I found my faith. I admittedly had lost the slim, tenuous thread of faith from my childhood years before. Depression in adolescence can be easily attributed to moodiness and hormones. The desolation of coming of age only compounded by the maw of depression. Adults and parents
- [Hot&Not](https://www.realisa.org/hotnot-2/) - Wikipedia Wednesday and this is what I learn: Wednesday's child is full of woe. Wednesday is Pooh's blustery day. The Romans named the third day of the week after Mercury. The Vikings named it for Odin, some Nordic god. Wednesday is the day for Loobylu's What's Hot and What's Not. The exercise makes me pause
- [Domino](https://www.realisa.org/domino-2/) - Dylan Thomas says to rage against the dying of the light. He implores it: rage, rage. What feeds the rage? From what source comes the energy to maintain a fervent opposition? At some point, things are exhausted, and the raging becomes but a whimper. No one hears a whimper. When my sweet and loving kitty,
- [Thankful](https://www.realisa.org/thankful/) - This morning at 7:12, my house was quiet, except for me starting my Thanksgiving preparation. I knew that every woman in my family, and likely every woman I know, was rising from bed quietly to start cooking the bountiful meal we celebrate this day. I paused in that thought, happy in the solidarity. This is
- [Into my own](https://www.realisa.org/into-my-own/) - One of my wishes is that those dark trees, So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze, Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom, But stretched away unto the edge of doom. I should not be withheld but that some day Into their vastness I should steal away, Fearless of ever finding
- [Lost to me](https://www.realisa.org/lost-to-me/) - Poetry is a new landscape, a foreign land. I am exploring. I was given this poem by a wise and dear mentor. I pass it forward to an old friend. I think she has her own jar bobbing out to sea. The Jar I took the man out of my jar. I thought, That's no
- [Hot & Not Wednesday](https://www.realisa.org/hot-not-wednesday-2/) - Inspiration is found in the oddest of places and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I am a Wednesday child; and yet, it is my favorite day of the week. Wednesday means I am halfway through my work week. It is the day the boys come back to me. It is the day I
- [Stand up straight](https://www.realisa.org/stand-up-straight/) - A good attitude is like good posture. Sometimes I just feel crummy. How I feel is reflected in my posture. It may seem "easier" to care less about standing up straight or sitting up straight. But slouching and slumping effects breathing, digestion and coordination. I can spring up from a chair easily, if I am
- [Baked](https://www.realisa.org/baked/) - Baking is my solace. I love the smell of a house with something baking in the oven. I have a loaf of cranberry walnut bread in the oven currently. I bought a bag of cranberries for Thanksgiving, but did not use them. I figured, a quickbread was the best option. After going through my cookbooks
- [Declare yourself](https://www.realisa.org/declare-yourself/) - Swallow the blue pill. Drink the Kool-Aid. Accept the status quo. Buy a cookie cutter house in the planned community with the white picket fence and assert that you are an original because you drive a Saab or have a tattoo on your bicep. All those common trappings that we think make us different really
- [Hot & Not Wednesday](https://www.realisa.org/hot-not-wednesday-3/) - If you have not been following along, skip over to Loobylu's Wednesday fling and check out the most talented cadre of peeps. I have thoroughly enjoyed dropping in on everyone elses' blogs. In fact, once down the rabbit hole, I found some really wonderous new places. The Hotties for the week: Patty and Alex had
- [Barter](https://www.realisa.org/barter/) - I will trade you this for that. Is there ever a truly fair trade? When you desire something, you are willing to make an uneven trade. You give up more or take a loss. Eagerness is the enemy and craving makes you foolish. Maybe it is best to not allow yourself to crave something too
- [Rush](https://www.realisa.org/rush/) - Somethings in life should not be rushed. A good meal should not be rushed. One should linger upon the subtle complexities of an aged scotch. To rush into it, to gulp it down allows you to stake the claim that you have done THAT THING, but did it really register? You cannot hasten my Aunt
- [The New Main Course](https://www.realisa.org/the-new-main-course/) - If baking is how I deal with my stress, what would I do if I could bake for a living? I mean, if I had my tiny pocket of a bakery and could make cakes and cookies and brownies and quick breads all day, would I be the coolest cat ever? I had the office
- [Deep water](https://www.realisa.org/deep-water/) - When something or someone is missing from your life, what shall be done? Should we endeavor to fill the void? Is it possible to find an equivalent substitute? I think there are people that occupy spaces in our hearts that nothing and no one else can reside. Their suite is for them alone and when
- [Christmas Tidings](https://www.realisa.org/christmas-tidings/) - Tidings in the last few hours before Christmas, this long night before my Messiah was born. I often think of Mary and the request made of her by God. Pain and fear are relative and in modernity, far different creatures than in Bethlehem 2010 years ago. My labor and deliveries were both in sterile hospitals.
- [A wonderful life](https://www.realisa.org/a-wonderful-life/) - Today was my Christmas. My mother and oldest sister thankfully waited to celebrate my Christmas and exchange gifts until my sons came home. This was the year the boys got to spend Christmas with their father. It sounds like they had a great time with him and spent time with his very large family. Both
- [Pandering](https://www.realisa.org/pandering/) - Pandering in a shameless attempt to get free soda. Since I drink Diet Coke daily and have considered that the chemical build up might be a good resolution for the next decade, I have to find a substitute carbonation. I read Twelve 22 and had an Ah-Ha! moment.
- [The real thing](https://www.realisa.org/the-real-thing/) - I look at my blog stats and I have to be thankful for the Russian spammers. They make the site visits so much higher. It is like sugar free, fat free cookies, empty and worthless, but we eat them anyways. We willingly accept falsehoods and trickery; we trick ourselves. And we play along with the
- [Food Photos](https://www.realisa.org/food-photos/) - Today feels like Sunday, yet it is Friday. Yippee! The old addage is that a picture is worth a thousand words. Here are pictures of all that I have cooked this holiday season:
- [Pace](https://www.realisa.org/pace/) - In the strictest definition of the word, I admit making resolutions for this new year. To have resolve and determination toward a goal is reasonable. New Year's resolutions are so often like Lenten sacrifices, half-hearted and short lived. The resolutions are made flippantly like that impulsively purchased candy bar in the supermarket check-out. Rarely do
- [Return](https://www.realisa.org/return/) - The boys are back with their father tonight as we return to our regular parenting schedules. The boys go back to school and I return to work. It was a lovely, easy, realxing break. We didn't go anywhere. We didn't do much of anything. We saw Sherlock Holmes, which was wonderful and underrated by the
- [What's Hot and What's Not](https://www.realisa.org/whats-hot-and-whats-not/) - Having been off work on Monday I keep thinking today is Tuesday. I almost missed Loobylu's Wednesday Parade of What's Hot and What's Not. I have a very long list of Hotness this week and it is only "Tuesday". So I might as well get to it. Hot Work is actually on the Hot List
- [Angelic Swine](https://www.realisa.org/angelic-swine/) - My Evan thought it appropriate to get a new Christmas ornament of a pig since we had Swine flu this year. He called it a Swine Angel. Thank you Miss Janis.
- [Penciling in time](https://www.realisa.org/penciling-in-time/) - On the eve of a new work week, it is a reflective time. I review my calendar and appointments. I update my checkbook. I have my groceries done. I have my wardrobe ready for the week. I have time and schedules visualized in my head. All of this lend itself to living somewhat, in the
- [All aboard](https://www.realisa.org/all-aboard/) - I have to admit having a little bit of compulsive tendencies. I am not a repetitive hand washer or appliance checker. I can lock my front door and drive away and not return to double, triple and quadruple check if the door is indeed locked. I can't deny the odd thing I do with numbers,
- [A strand of pearls](https://www.realisa.org/a-strand-of-pearls/) - How does the mind go from being sound asleep to awake. Somewhere before 4:23 am, I was having a lucid dream about Paris, a city to which I have never been. I was not in this dream of course, but the goal was to get underground, into a secret lair at the base of one
- [Happy Lists](https://www.realisa.org/happy-lists/) - I loved 22Twelve's lists. Anna's blog is lovely. She shared a few lists today that I enjoyed and felt I could easily replicate. I am a shameless copycat. Things I have or did this week because I am a foodie: I eagerly shopped at Sur La Table and bought 10 inch round, deep cake pans
- [Liberating thoughts on Martin Luther King Day](https://www.realisa.org/liberating/) - January 16th is the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King. Monday is a federal holiday and a four day weekend. Since I was a teenager, listening to Dr. King speak made me weep, overwhelmed with his words and their message. To have hope and faith in the face of such adversity, institutional oppression and cultural
- [Breakfast](https://www.realisa.org/breakfast/) - Sunday morning breakfast was as simple as a can of Grands biscuits, half a stick of butter melted and cinnamon sugar. Baked at 350 for 24 minutes. Yum!!
- [Can people change?](https://www.realisa.org/can-people-change/) - "I ran into Mike from high school the other day. He hasn't change one bit. He is still the same guy as he always was." Is that possible? Can one live 25 years and remain unchanged? Does our core "self" remain encapsulated, a psychic operating system, that can never be altered or even hacked? Is
- [Bouncing](https://www.realisa.org/bouncing/) - For two years I have been taking a creative writing class at my local community college. It is one of those community education classes given along with wine tasting, learning to invest in the stock market and quilting. Prior to this class, I imagined writing. I never believed I could truly write. Maybe eight people
- [Eggs Benedict](https://www.realisa.org/eggs-benedict/) - I woke this morning with a desire to be walking in the cool morning light down King Street in Charleston to The Baker's Cafe. My favorite breakfast is served at this sliver of a restaurant on the southern end of King, as you approach the antique stores. All eggs on the menu are poached. Only
- [Genuis](https://www.realisa.org/genuis/) - I LOVE iTunes and especially iTunes Genius. While Pandora is cool, I am still a fan of the album. Artists, even musicians, create their "art" to tell a story, evoke an emotion or embody something. While each track can be taken separately, the album played from beginning to end is another experience entirely. So, I
- [Sense](https://www.realisa.org/sense/) - The line from Norah Jones' song In the Morning, "Funny how my favorite shirt smells more like you than me..." is a poignant reminder of the potent connection between memory and smell. British Sterling cologne is my father and always will be. My sister wore Halston when she was in high school. My first perfume
- [The secret hide out](https://www.realisa.org/the-secret-hide-out/) - Is there an adult equivalent to the tree fort or playhouse? As a child, the secret fort was a necessity. Some kids had SERIOUS, permanent forts; one kid in particular had a tree fort in his front yard with electricity and the rumor of a TV and dorm room fridge. Then there were the secret
- [Planting seeds](https://www.realisa.org/heirloom-seeds/) - It is a new, fresh day and I am percolating with ideas. Shall I write? I find that the space needed to unfold all the characters of my novel competes with the time I have with the boys. It may be that in the solitude and sorrow of their absences, I planted a tiny seed
- [A Jump Start](https://www.realisa.org/a-jump-start/) - Usually, The What's Hot and What's Not is a lovely blog equivalent to the chain letter that starts on Loobylu every Wednesday. I will not likely get to write tomorrow, so I figured I would do my Hot & Not tonight.I will have a longer list of hotties than notties. The Hots actually using my
- [Lost Treasure](https://www.realisa.org/lost-treasure/) - I have found lost treasure. It is like digging up the buried time capsule in the back yard in a coffee can. In fact, I know that 10145 S.W. 200th Street has a buried Maxwell House can with trinkets and knickknacks. There are few things more powerful than photographs. Once believed to steal your soul,
- [The Box of Crayons](https://www.realisa.org/the-box-of-crayons/) - As a child, every year for Christmas, I would get a new Scribble pad and box of Crayola Crayons. When Crayola made the new 64-count box of crayons with a built in sharpener, we were officially Uptown. There were crayons in that flip top box that I would not share, shades that were mine alone.
- [Sunday morning](https://www.realisa.org/sunday-morning/) - Irregardless of faith or religious persuasion, Sunday is the culturally accepted day of rest. It is the day before returning to the work week. We spend our day in reflection, prayer, worship, leisure and occasionally preparation for the tasks of the week ahead. We often do chores saved for our day "off": laundry, yard work,
- [Audacity](https://www.realisa.org/audacity/) - To have audacity affords one opportunities that skip the timid. To be audacious means that you are brazen, bold, daring, confident and maybe foolhardy. It also means to be unconventional, unorthodox and a non-conformist. Audacity challenges the status quo, questions authority and refuses the ordinary rations doled out to the masses. It is not a
- [Cupcakes](https://www.realisa.org/cupcakes/) - The boys are back! It always makes the most imperfect day perfect. It doesn't matter if it is raining, freezing, sweltering, busy, boring, frustrating, aggravating or just one of those days you are eager to end...the boys redeem it all. And I love doing all manner of silly things for them. Valentine's Day is a
- [The helpful gadget](https://www.realisa.org/the-helpful-gadget/) - I am a gadget girl. I love kitchen gadgets, gardening tools, quilting and sewing things. I even have a ridiculous amount of scrapbooking gadgetry and I am an infrequent scrapper. OXO makes this cool tool specifically for mangoes. You grid the flesh of the fruit and turn them inside out and you have quick cubes
- [Be Silly. ](https://www.realisa.org/be-silly/) - Today is Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras. It is the last hoorah before entering the Lenten season. It is a day of indulgences and extravagance. It is often a day of feasting and drunken debauchery. I am a more staid and mellow reveler, instead enjoying simple things. Onion rings with my dinner (still baked, not fried).
- [Ash Wednesday](https://www.realisa.org/ash-wednesday/) - The very best thing about Wednesday...ALL Wednesdays...is that the boys come back home. Today, as a rarity, I managed to get to school for pick up. Usually Granny picks up because my work schedule has changed. After pick up and a run to the regular grocery store, we went to the Downtown Farmer's Market. It
- [Starfish](https://www.realisa.org/starfish/) - I believe that starfish are magical, supernatural creatures. In plain view to the human eye, a starfish will regenerate a severed limb. In truth, as long as a segment of the core structure of a starfish is retained, the entire fish will regrow. True that for a while, as it is regrowing, it will look
- [Happy Birthday](https://www.realisa.org/happy-birthday/) - Fourteen years ago today I became a mother. Fourteen years ago today I was humbled beyond words, keenly aware of the wonder of creation and so profoundly changed even now it is difficult to explain. On that day, a part of me was suddenly separate from me, autonomous and unique. I can still feel that
- [Challah](https://www.realisa.org/challah/) - What is it about food? Food and culture? Food and geography? My friend Janis talks about good ole fashioned southern cookin', cracker cuisine. Who could argued when possum and cooter are in the index of the recipe book. For those uninformed....cooter is TURTLE...and a delicacy from the Bayou to the Everglades to the Okefenokee swamp.
- [Tiny rebellions](https://www.realisa.org/tiny-rebellions/) - I make my little protests, my small rebellions. I leave a basket of laundry unfolded. I refuse to pair the socks. I leave my dishes in the sink. I leave leftovers in the fridge too long. I don't water my houseplants, watching them wither from thirst. Tiny revolts against an otherwise well managed life. Could
- [Spectator](https://www.realisa.org/spectator/) - I get the rare opportunity to host my son's 14th birthday party, a co-ed party to which he has invited 26 of his classmates. These kids, at this age, are different than I was at 14; they are far less mobile. At 14, I had a bike and no cell phone. I could ride from
- [Upbeat](https://www.realisa.org/upbeat/) - I have watched patients over the years wait for the other shoe to drop. A woman with lymphoma that is successfully resected waits her five years to hear the "all clear". Despite the passage of time and her apparent health, she carries a nagging fear that something lurks for her. A man has an episode
- [Lemonade](https://www.realisa.org/lemonade/) - The idiom is that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. There are daily opportunities to turn that which is unfortunate into something positive, even beautiful. There are artists that create their works from junk yard discards. Much of our trash can be recycled into reusable items. And the thrift store, often gussied up and
- [Big Adventures](https://www.realisa.org/big-adventures/) - I spent the day with my younger in St. Augustine on a class field trip. I let him carry the camera today and he took some amazing photographs. He has an artistic eye that needs to be cultivated. In the early morning, we get up and set off on our first big adventure. Like the
- [Walking](https://www.realisa.org/walking/) - Life and the pace of living changes when you walk through most of your day. We walked from the airport, each tugging their suitcase along. We made our way through the Metro stations along with the mid afternoon commuters. A few soldiers got on the train and exited at the Pentagon, They looked serious and
- [Travels](https://www.realisa.org/travels/) - I love to visit a big city. I love the vitality and the intensity, but I also appreciate my little town when I come to the big city. A big city can emphasize how small we really are. It is easy to get lost in a big city. Lost can mean needing to ask for
- [Travelers](https://www.realisa.org/travelers/) - There is a difference between being a tourist and a traveler. I fancy myself more of a traveler even when I am doing pretty touristy things, like taking pictures of the White House. We got to the White House after walking all the way from The Churchill Hotel, a small hotel five blocks north of
- [After All](https://www.realisa.org/after-all/) - Scarlet O'Hara says, "After all, tomorrow is another day." I don't have to think about that until tomorrow. Or the next day. Or ever. If no one remembers and I conveniently forget, I don't have to ever think about that. If life were so forgiving and lenient to permit such amnesia. I could sweep under
- [Customize](https://www.realisa.org/customize/) - My office did a massive upgrade on our electronic medical record at the end of February. We have had an electronic medical record (EMR) for over five years. The system we use is very agile and adaptable because it allows us to customize most of it. They give us the tools and the supplies and
- [The Early Stages](https://www.realisa.org/the-early-stages/) - A few years ago, I stumbled upon the pictures for a house building in Mexico. The Flickr array was mesmerizing. As I tentatively step into the flow of my own creative process, I can see my own desire to chronicle everything. It is like a baby book where you record all the firsts, the miniature
- [An apple a day](https://www.realisa.org/an-apple-a-day-2/) - The idiom is that an apple a day will keep the doctor away. I request some clarification. Which doctor? And apples in which form. Since the two varieties of apples that grow in north central Florida are not sold commercially, I am stuck with the selection at the local Publix. I am thrilled when the
- [Better living through chemistry](https://www.realisa.org/better-living-through-chemistry/) - In life, as in chemistry, there are catalysts, people who influence or effect change or trigger events but themselves are unchanged and unaffected. In chemistry, I can understand this effect and power. It is like the finger that taps that first domino into motion. The finger is unchanged, but triggers a cascade of events, which
- [Adventurous](https://www.realisa.org/adventurous/) - Recently both of my sons have promised to be adventurous. These promises were given unsolicited and randomly. They have repeated the promise. Initially, it was about traveling on mini-break by airplane. Then it was in reference to eating "different" foods while we were on vacation. They get credit for keeping their promises. Since coming home,
- [Contented](https://www.realisa.org/contented/) - A few nights ago, I lay beside my younger son in his bed talking a bit before he went to sleep. He had gotten quiet and hesitant, wanting to tell me something but worried about my reaction. He even got a bit tearful and then said, "I think you get very alone when we are
- [Equinox](https://www.realisa.org/equinox/) - The Vernal Equinox just passed, the day when the length of the day equals the length of the night. It is the day when the sun and the equator of our green marble are in the same plane. The spring equinox is celebrated by many cultures. It marks the beginning of many significant events. In
- [The Squeeze](https://www.realisa.org/the-squeeze/) - I start this post in the few minutes before I NEED to leave for work. I start it knowing I should be driving. I write because I feel compelled and in the often silence of my existence, in between when my house returns to a home, when my sons come back on Wednesday afternoon, I
- [Round 2](https://www.realisa.org/round-2/) - I got the next phase of drawings for the house. I went to the home show a few weeks back and got a bunch of cool ideas. I learned about solar panels and HVAC units. I learned about water reclamation and pondless waterfalls. I learned about engineered surfaces and screen enclosures. I added a whole
- [Attitude Adjustment](https://www.realisa.org/attitude-adjustment/) - When a day starts in the doldrums and painfully drifts into a torrential rainstorm fraught with hail, turbulence and simple and plain fear how to you get out of it? A massive amount of energy is expended trying to get clear, energy that the storm consumes, ineffectual energy. While studying about tornadoes and hurricanes yesterday,
- [Testing the waters](https://www.realisa.org/testing-the-waters/) - Less than a year ago, we adopted two little kittens. We found the notice for free kittens on Craig's list. I was thrilled that one was a brindle. We named them Dagney Taggert and Caprica Six. They are delightful. As babies they were fun and inquisitive. As teenagers, they are rambunctious and troublemakers. This was
- [Step ladder](https://www.realisa.org/step-ladder/) - Who limits us? Who draws the lines? Who sets the perimeters? Who gets us to agree to stay in the lines and accept the boundaries? If we question the accepted limitations does that make us insane? Galileo was a heretic. Ponce de Leon was a madman. Yet, but challenging the cultural standards, Florida was found.
- [Lego](https://www.realisa.org/lego/) - There are few things as powerful as answering the phone to hear your child speak your name and then start crying. My Evie called a bit ago. He must have antennae because I had just been thinking about him and missing him but knowing it was late where he is at. He is having Easter
- [The garden](https://www.realisa.org/the-garden/) - I have Cuban pastries in the oven and a full pot of coffee. It is spring. My English daisies are happy. I have watched the squirrels taunt and torment my cats. A day of rodent reckoning is long overdue. I daydream of seed packets and tilling soil and compost. I love the smell of dirt.
- [Spring](https://www.realisa.org/spring/) - I do not have time to post, but thought I'd add a picture. This is a Japanese maple on my property.
- [The Economy](https://www.realisa.org/the-economy/) - There is an economy to relationships, a form of capitalism in dating or friendships. In business, there was once a time when your name and reputation were intimately connected to your service or your product. Even if the product was good, if you were a scoundrel, people would make their purchases elsewhere. A businessman cared
- [Old Tunes](https://www.realisa.org/listening-to-albums/) - We went to dinner last night at a local restaurant called The Red Onion. "E" ate sweet potato french fries. This is high culinary adventure. There was live music and the duo played Beatles, Jimmy Buffet, the BeeGees and others. We talked music and TV shows. My older son and nephew had a spirited and
- [Foresight](https://www.realisa.org/foresight/) - As the sun goes down on this Sunday, I try to stay in the moment. It is hard because it is the time of the week to assess the coming events and plan the necessary tasks. The schedule gets full, the Google calendar has daily entries. I am going to be juggling again this week.
- [Hot & Not](https://www.realisa.org/hot-not/) - It has been a long time since I posted about what has been hot and what is not. I have been reluctant to propagate something that was originally Claire's idea. Since Loobylu has been so busy, as are we all, I let it fall by the wayside. But, this week has much to be thankful
- [Poetry](https://www.realisa.org/poetry/) - In high school I had to memorize Samuel Taylor Coolridge's poem Xanadu. What is it about alcohol or drugs and creativity? We tolerate the infusion of mind altering chemicals for the brain that writes poems or songs or novels. We even romanticize the artist that paints or sculpts in an inebriated state. There is this
- [Friend](https://www.realisa.org/friend/) - If we are lucky or blessed in this life, we manage to find people with whom we can be ourselves. We find that rare occurrence with a person who sees us, hears us, knows us and still sticks around. She can be someone who sits quietly across a table and lets us silently work at
- [Finish line](https://www.realisa.org/finish-line/) - I can remember that woman in the Olympic marathon who literally collapses feet from the finish line. Her body defies her will and she flops and flails to the ground, her limbs boneless and cartoon-like. That kind of system failure does not happen suddenly. She knew she was in trouble. The early warning signals started
- [Audiobooks](https://www.realisa.org/audiobooks/) - I truly adore audiobooks, unabridged and word-for-word to the original type set novel in hardback or large print. I can dock the iPod in the speakers or plug the book into my ears while I walk or sew or clean. Some nights, I lie in bed listening to the book and I fall asleep. The
- [Small is the new big](https://www.realisa.org/small-is-the-new-big/) - I am not a newshound. I do not get the daily paper. When I travel I "treat" myself to a "real" paper, like the Post, the Herald, the Times or the Tribune. Sadly, I get my current event from the Yahoo blurb when I sign onto my email and Morning Edition with NPR when I
- [Dream Big](https://www.realisa.org/dream-big/) - A friend recently posted to their Facebook status a quote I paraphrase, "Dreaming about the person you wish to be wastes the person you are." Something in that philosophy catches for me. Are we to work at simply being content with who we are and abandon the notion that we may be more. If I
- [The Back Porch](https://www.realisa.org/the-back-porch/) - Three years ago this month, I started this blog. I started writing. I started getting stuff out of my head. This has been my veritable back yard. In this space I do all those things relegated to your back yard. It is backyard cooking and eating. Pictures of all the cooking and eating. It is
- [Get to it!](https://www.realisa.org/get-to-it/) - There are these moments in life when you pause. There are things you want to do very badly but there is that momentary hesitation just before you step forward. Imagine standing in the wings, just off stage, waiting to go out and perform at a recital. Imagine the hunched over swimmer waiting for the signal
- [Be True](https://www.realisa.org/be-true/) - How do you tell is something is real, the genuine artifact? Authenticity comes with some type of verification, a branding. A new DVD comes in a sealed box that is shrink wrapped. Some items come with a certificate or warranty direct from the manufacturer. And we have all seen the knock offs sold by vendors
- [Monday Mornings](https://www.realisa.org/monday-mornings/) - Am I one of the few who like Monday mornings? Mondays are a new start. While Sunday is the divine day of rest, it is just NOT that kind of day for me. While I can spend Sunday lingering and being quiet, it is not psychologically the beginning of my week. Similar to how I
- [Faux Finish](https://www.realisa.org/faux-finish/) - Structure dictates function. Whether it is the human body, the design of a car, the floor plan of a house or organization of a garden. The placement and proximity of one thing to another determines how things eventually work. Who can argue the grand design of the human body? Consider the rib cage. It is
- [Little Dumplings](https://www.realisa.org/little-dumplings/) - Wednesday day is my favorite day of the week primarily because my sons come back home. Their father and I share custody of them; the proper term is time sharing, like they are some biological form of a vacation beach rental. It all sounds absurd but it is the best and most balanced way. This
- [Again and Again](https://www.realisa.org/again-and-again/) - If only the simple laws of physics applied to all human endeavor. If only an outcome or product was proportional to the input of energy or effort. For people, the predictability of outcomes never follows the fixed rules of science. If I work at my peak capacity and maintain my aim squarely on the desired
- [A Mother's Blessing](https://www.realisa.org/a-mothers-blessing/) - There is a Jewish proverb that says God could not be everywhere so he created mothers. Motherhood, being a mother, is by far the most stupendous experience of my life. The abounding love I have in my heart for my children surpasses all angst and neurosis. I would not have called myself a natural mother.
- [Foodies](https://www.realisa.org/foodies/) - I woke this morning and in the haze of "not yet awake" my first formed thought was that it was Saturday and the second was that I was going to make sour cream coffee cake. In a split second I was fully awake and realized it is Tuesday, a work day and not a 'making
- [Change](https://www.realisa.org/change/) - I am contemplating change. I am observing the natural evolution of things in comparison to intentionally doing something different. Sometimes, even intentional changes take time to manifest. Most people have made an effort to live healthier or to lose weight. The process requires changes in activities, changes in food choices and portion sizes. It mostly
- [Loquats](https://www.realisa.org/loquats/) - This is a special week. Mostly because it is my oldest son's last week of 8th grade and partly because my younger son turns 10 next Saturday but also because this is the one brief week of the year when LOQUATS are fully ripe and free for the picking. Most people confuse loquats with kumquats.
- [Frustration](https://www.realisa.org/frustration-2/) - Sometimes you must accept that you just aren't smart enough to "get something". I am absolutely and totally stumped by this word press theme for this damn blog. I must admit I am just piddling around, feigning a true mastery of this forum. All I want to do is display the PARENT categories for my
- [Blaze](https://www.realisa.org/blaze/) - How much credit does the match get for starting the fire? While that initial spark is but only a catalyst, a trigger, it ignites the fuel. The flame licks at the edge of the crumpled paper and the domino begins. The paper burns catching the fat wood. Fat wood burns slow and hot; eventually the
- [In the details](https://www.realisa.org/in-the-details/) - It is the simplest things in life that transform the mundane into sublime. It is the smallest of details that converts an average day to a spectacular occasion. And so often, we look right past these minute embellishments. A slice of fresh lemon in a glass of ice cold Pellegrino, a dollop of fresh whipped
- [To Boldly Go](https://www.realisa.org/to-boldly-go/) - There is an invincibility to youth. The belief in your indestructibility may be exactly what makes one indestructible. But this goes beyond wishful thinking. There is a conviction in youth, a righteousness, a fervor. It is the absolute knowledge that you have all of life before you. There are no road blocks, no toll booths,
- [Double Digits](https://www.realisa.org/double-digits/) - E turns 10 today. TEN. Where has the time gone? His birthday has historically been a grand production because it is sandwiched up against the end of the year and Memorial weekend being so close. This year, timing meant so many of his friends were away with their families or have siblings graduating, that the
- [Bunker](https://www.realisa.org/bunker/) - There are days when there is no silver lining, when you cannot find the upbeat, when your voice loses its upspeak. These are bunker days when you hunker down into a protected corner and wait. Some days, this is the battle. How, amidst the drone of war, can optimism be found or hope garnered? I
- [Rest stop](https://www.realisa.org/rest-stop/) - As you drive I-75, they announce the rest areas. They warn you that there is not another rest area for "X" number of miles. This knowledge reassures us, there is no uncertainty about when we can pull off the interstate safely to escape the weariness of the road. While you can pull off onto the
- [Jose Gonzalez](https://www.realisa.org/jose-gonzalez/) - I went back to the NPR Archives thinking my discovery of Jose Gonzalez was from a piece new music or artists. Nope. I downloaded Veneer last year and have listened to it in rotation with Elvis Perkins, Elbow and Josh Pyke. On Wednesday night while sitting at my desk, my son played Red Dead Redemption
- [Frugality](https://www.realisa.org/frugality/) - Nature is frugal. Frugality is resourcefulness. It is an economical method of existence. Nature is not wantonly wasteful. Many people confused frugality with plainness and simplicity. Creation, at its very core belies a willingness to be extravagant; how else do we end up with octopii, both single and double humped camels, the giant blue whale
- [Revive](https://www.realisa.org/revive/) - News arrived yesterday that Al & Tipper Gore are separating after 44 years of marriage. A friend's pithy statement was, "Who would have wagered Bill & Hillary over Al & Tipper?" It made we consider both of these couples and what makes a successful marriage. The Gores vocalize for the media their internal dialogue. Who
- [Courage](https://www.realisa.org/courage-2/) - Today is one of those days when I consider the purpose of adversity. Hardship can send us to our knees begging for pardon. It can also give us a crystalline focus on the abundance of the love that surrounds us. Fifteen years ago, we moved to Gainesville. We bought a house, we had a three
- [Seven Things](https://www.realisa.org/seven-things/) - I have long been a believer in serendipity, providence or karma. Call it what you wish, but the universe has a funny and ironic way of folding back on itself and handing you things just when you need them. I am not talking about answered prayers or acknowledged petitions. I mean seemingly random gifts that
- [Vocabulary words](https://www.realisa.org/receptive/) - There was a recent piece on NPR about dementia and how it develops. There is a corrolation between the the profundity of descriptive vocabulary, cognitive ability and the ability to predict decline. The researcher used Agatha Christie's novels as the barometer since she was a prolific writer and most likely had dementia later in life. The discovery was
- [Power Puff Girls](https://www.realisa.org/power-puff-girls/) - I was once asked to describe myself the way other people likely see me. Yesterday, I was asked, "How would you describe your childhood?" Do you want the sanitized version, the Op-Ed piece or the diplomatic dossier? My instant response yesterday was lonely. There was just enough age between my next older sister and I
- [Permission](https://www.realisa.org/permission/) - A clever, reproducible study was done recently. It's goal was to assess why people get hungry and what effects hunger. The fed snack bars to college student volunteers. They told one group the bars were "healthy and high in protein and fiber", they told the other group they were "tasty snack bars". There was a
- [Steps](https://www.realisa.org/steps/) - In the wake of the high demand responsibilities that accompany most adult living comes the potential for ease. When you ski behind a boat, there is a smooth, almost glassy, ridge in the center of the wake. Stick to that central track and the skiing is easy. Swing out to the left or right and
- [Happiness Index](https://www.realisa.org/happiness-index/) - Tina Brown was interviewed on NPR this morning. The piece was about looking behind the appearance of things for the TRUTH. She talked about recently published magazine articles. But, this thread clings to my mind, snapping and sparking like static. Why are we so easily accepting of appearances? We flip through magazines and look at models
- [Beauty is as beauty does](https://www.realisa.org/beauty-is-as-beauty-does/) - When I have taken the Myers Briggs test or other quasi-similar profiling tests to assess my fundamental personality type, to my surprise, I do not have a strong predilection for any"side". I test both introvert and extrovert, depending on the day. My centrist swing continues: sensing vs intuitive, thinking vs feeling, judging vs perceptive. Long
- [Sinful](https://www.realisa.org/sinful/) - I bogarted this recipe from Smittenkitchen to make chocolate donut holes. I forgot the 3 tbsp of butter when I made the batter last night. No one noticed. These are yummy. Next time I will make them larger and leave them plain for dunking.
- [Focus](https://www.realisa.org/focus/) - I have been a bit of a Scrooge the last few days: grumpy and stingy with my heart. It is not a place I like. It is absolutely not the energy I ever want in Realisa. It is not that this is a mock creation, a fabrication, an illusion or disingenuous. Quite the contrary. This
- [Biscuits](https://www.realisa.org/biscuits/) - Biscuits, made with White Lily flour. Biscuits with butter and honey. Biscuits with bacon and ham. In some places, biscuits with sawmill gravy. Biscuits made with Crisco of all ingredients. Crisco is as much a staple in southern cooking as the bacon drippings kept cold in the back of the fridge in a Maxwell House
- [Hope](https://www.realisa.org/hope/) - I want to have hope. To have a desire for something and to be reasonably confident that it will happen. Hope requires trust. Hope is beyond wishing. There is magical thinking in a wish. You wish on a four leaf clover and the shooting star. A wish is made eagerly but with a thread of
- [Just like that](https://www.realisa.org/just-like-that/) - And just like that it is Friday.....and as I packed my lunch and waited for the Elixir of Life to finished brewing in the magic machine on the counter, I had a spontaneous ticker tape of things I need or want to do this weekend: see Knight & Day make and can spicy mustard find
- [Treats](https://www.realisa.org/treats/) - Saturday mornings are a favorite. As a child it was Bugs Bunny cartoons...well, Saturday morning cartoons period. It was a time of three national TV channels, a local TV channel and PBS. TVs had antennae, or rabbit ears. Often, the rabbit ears had tin foil flags on them. I remember when my father put a
- [Pound](https://www.realisa.org/pound/) - Can people change? Does rehabilitation work? Or, is it true that once a killer always a killer? The Apostle Paul had a true change of heart and ways. He even changed his name. He laid down his persecution and brutality and followed Christ. He had been a killer, violent and cruel. He changed, transformed by
- [A few things](https://www.realisa.org/a-few-things/) - The quilt top is finished! Yeah! The new cookie recipe is a savory cookie: a cheddar flat.
- [Hunting season](https://www.realisa.org/the-wild-hunt/) - I have no pithy commentary on this early Monday morning. I feel I need a weekend of rest from my weekend. It is a sad fact that work may be less emotionally stressful than time off. If not for having the boys this weekend, the two days would have been brutal. But they ground me
- [Small](https://www.realisa.org/small/) - Childhood is filled with its own language. We have nicknames and pet names. We rename things and especially within a family there are made-up words for things. One of my childhood words is lo-los (pronounced low-lows). Lo los is oatmeal. My cousin Jay called hamburgers, hangeebergs. My niece Sarah called elephants, el kneeknees. Somewhere in
- [Props](https://www.realisa.org/props/) - When you are good at something, where is the line between confidence and arrogance? Do we excuse arrogance when someone is stellar? How far above the average competence must one be before they are permitted bragging rights? Muhammad Ali was the greatest at this and we all loved to hate his braggadocio. Michael Jordan and Lebron James
- [Little Dumplings](https://www.realisa.org/little-dumplings-2/) - I made ricotta dumplings again. This was round #2. I made them once before and followed the recipe exactly. This time....I made adjustments. I left out the grated lemon rind and added garlic paste and a pinch of rubbed sage. I added more sage in the butter when I pan seared them. They did not
- [Cherry Baby](https://www.realisa.org/cherry-baby/) - One of the tings on my bucket list has been to go to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and pick cherries. I have bought dried tart cherries from American Spoon Food's catalog for years. The July 4th weekend is the Cherry Festival. Needless to say, lots of people have made the cherry festival and the
- [Antidote](https://www.realisa.org/antidote/) - Some poisons have antidotes. Poisonous snake bites can be cured with anti-venom. The anti-venom does not act as shield of force field. Nay, the life threatening risk and excruciating pain must be endured, fought and overcome. The anti-venom only gives you a fighting chance. It is not a perfect cure or a magic, get-out-of-jail-free card.
- [Chocolate as antidote](https://www.realisa.org/chocolate-as-antidote/) - Could chocolate be an antidote? It is a known balm, a pacifier, a restorative, an energizer and a genuine pleasure. These muffins are the bomb! A mix from Ghiradelli called double chocolate muffins. They also make great cupcakes. Today, they are breakfast.
- [Letters from home](https://www.realisa.org/letters-from-home/) - One of the beauties of the blogosphere is the accidental side trip. I read Tea & Cookies. She posts something a few days ago that absolutely moves me. She wrote a letter to herself...her 20 year old self. She got the idea from Cassie, who opened up the invitation to her readers and received many
- [Three ](https://www.realisa.org/three/) - In the spirit if 3BT and my deep and abiding gratitude for all my blessings, here are my three for the day: Salif Keita's album downloaded to iTunes after listening to an NPR music podcast. The guitar is wonderful. Spanish flavor, Arabic flavor and all things I love about world music. It makes me want
- [Summer bread](https://www.realisa.org/summer-bread/) - I followed the recipe posted on Lick the bowl good. I made a few adjustments for Florida and because I had not let the buttermilk get to room temperature. I microwaved the buttermilk for about 20 seconds. I used 2 1/2 tsp of yeast and when I set the dough to rise, I place it
- [The perfect fit](https://www.realisa.org/the-perfect-fit/) - Have you ever been window shopping and see the most luscious pair of shoes that are must haves? You go into the store and discover they don't have exactly your size? You want the shoes so badly, you consider buying the next size down or up. You can stuff tissue paper in the toes or
- [Get lost](https://www.realisa.org/get-lost/) - Have you ever gotten lost? Lost when you were little was a very disturbing experience, the fear creeps in fast when you can no longer see your Momma. As an adult, getting lost is a little harder. Modern conveniences make it seem nearly impossible to get lost. Garmen talks, cell phones have mapquest, cars have
- [Going nowhere](https://www.realisa.org/going-nowhere/) - Some weekends arrive on the heels of a ragged week. We eagerly welcome the ease of tension, obligations and harried pace. Some weekends arrive and we dread the solitary time, more content for the productivity and distraction of work during the week. Some people beg for a traditional weekend because their calendar weekends are filled
- [A curious thing](https://www.realisa.org/a-curious-thing/) - What is that saying about curiosity?
- [Sweet!](https://www.realisa.org/sweet/) - When Cameron was born, he was three weeks early. He was tiny (6lbs) and I was ill, more ill than anyone suspected. In a matter of days my blood pressure spiked and I had protein and everyone murmured pre-eclampsia. For a person with a normal blood pressure of less than 100/70, everyone charted my blood
- [Clutter & Purge](https://www.realisa.org/clutter-purge/) - I have been an undisciplined writer as of late. I give myself slack since I find it a massive stretch of the truth to categorize me as a writer. And the logic follows that if I am not a genuine writer, then I cannot be held to the gold standard of writers. There can be
- [Y marks the spot](https://www.realisa.org/y-marks-the-spot/) - The universe will give me what is needed. This I believe. I know that I only get what He knows I can handle. This has been, to this point in my life, truth. In the middle of chaos, one cannot imagine that they have the capacity to endure or overcome. The difference is that we
- [Presents](https://www.realisa.org/presents/) - Henri Nouwen said, "When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.” Some wounds don't heal. Some
- [Small treats](https://www.realisa.org/small-treats/) - Small is beautiful. Simple is lovely. Solving a problem is a great satisfaction. Finding that perfect thing to make with those over ripe, just past prime fruits or veggies is divine. And so, I made a not-so-elegant peach gallete, a rustic tart. It is, for lack of any other description, an excuse to eat pie...fresh
- [Three second delay](https://www.realisa.org/three-second-delay/) - I am a good sleeper. I suppose I should qualify that statement. Once I decide to go to sleep, I am a good sleeper. It is the going to sleep part I do poorly. I don't think Ambien or Valium will get my ass out of my chair and direct me to brush my teeth
- [Take Care](https://www.realisa.org/take-care/) - I am reading this tiny little book by Henri Nouwen called Out of Solitude. It is thin enough to be a tract, handed out by knocking religious types: 61 pages. It might as well be Moby Dick. Sometimes the simplest of things carry tremendous weight. It is not dense or a cumbersome. Nouwen's words are
- [Mini trip](https://www.realisa.org/mini-trip/) - I spent the day with my sister, Chrissy and our sons. We took a mini-road trip over to Jacksonville. My little car, Teacake, needed his front passenger eyeball replaced. Gotta love that bumper-to-bumper warranty. Also have to love the dealership giving full tanks of gas when you bring it in for serve. I had the
- [8 Things](https://www.realisa.org/8-things/) - After reading Magpie Girl's post, I have been thinking of family vacations. I am thinking of the vacations of my childhood and making my list of the 8 things that remind me of the excursions. My parents had the 1970's equivalent of a condo time share, but their time share was in a Winnebago. Every
- [31 days and counting](https://www.realisa.org/31-days-and-counting/) - Some bloggers will set a personal goal or challenge. They enlist other bloggers or their readers to participate in their challenges. I like some of these. I have done Loobylu's Wednesday What's Hot and What's Not. I have morphed that into Thankful Thursday. Today I did my first 8 Things with Magpie Girl. Someone new

## Pages

- [Home](https://www.realisa.org/) - ~ Living an authentic life Reflections on faith, creativity, grief, gratitude, and the quiet pursuit of becoming fully real. Recent Posts: The Real Thing Rejoice Joy is not the same as happiness. Even in seasons of health and abundance, we can lose the ability to delight in small things. Writing became my way of remembering
- [Contact](https://www.realisa.org/contact/) - Let's talk I’d love to hear from you! Just fill out this form and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. First Name Email Message Send a Message
- [About Me](https://www.realisa.org/about-me/) - Becoming real I did not set out to write a blog. I set out to understand myself.Realisa is a quiet space born from the belief that being real is not a personality trait but a lifelong practice. For years, I moved through the world striving, achieving, pleasing, performing. Somewhere along the way, I began to

## My Templates

- [Single Post](https://www.realisa.org/?elementor_library=single-post) - Single Post February 25, 2026 by Lisa Share Article Ash Wednesday shared with Valentine’s Day. There is resonance with that pairing. Like siblings that share the same cleft in the chin or a widow’s peak, Ash and Valentine share love and sacrifice. Two days later, it is the first Friday of the Lenten season, and
- [Elementor Loop Item #8934](https://www.realisa.org/?elementor_library=elementor-loop-item) - Elementor Loop Item #8934
- [Posts Archive #2](https://www.realisa.org/?elementor_library=posts-archive-2) - Blog Come in and linger awhile—these reflections are an invitation to pause, notice, and live more honestly. Adorations Creativity Faith Sand & Pearls Telescopes & microscopes The Real Thing All The Real Thing Reread The Real Thing Step 1 The Real Thing Tackle The Real Thing Mystery The Real Thing Atmosphere The Real Thing Try
- [Footer](https://www.realisa.org/?elementor_library=footer) - Content area
- [Health Blog](https://www.realisa.org/?elementor_library=health-blog)
- [Search results](https://www.realisa.org/?elementor_library=search-results) - Search results Telescopes & microscopes Taking a vacation and going nowhere Thankfulness Giving thanks The Real Thing Relearning how to play The face of my child Painting toenails People who listen « Previous Page1 Page2 Page3 Page4 Page5 Next »
- [404 Page](https://www.realisa.org/?elementor_library=404-page) - 404 Sorry, we can’t find the page you’re looking for. But, we can direct you to the right place. BACK HOME
- [Header](https://www.realisa.org/?elementor_library=header) - Content area
- [Posts Archive #1](https://www.realisa.org/?elementor_library=posts-archive-1) - Posts Archive #1 #Mindey @mindey
- [Default Kit](https://www.realisa.org/?elementor_library=default-kit)

## Categories

- [The Real Thing](https://www.realisa.org/category/authenticity-integrity-honesty-veracity-discover-selfawareness/)
- [Sand & Pearls](https://www.realisa.org/category/adversity-growth-evolving-development/)
- [Telescopes & microscopes](https://www.realisa.org/category/perspectives-vantage-considerations/)
- [Cornucopia](https://www.realisa.org/category/faithfulness-trust-commitment-submission/abundance-scarcity-blessings-providence/)
- [Thankfulness](https://www.realisa.org/category/faithfulness-trust-commitment-submission/thankfulness-gratitude-blessings/)
- [Faith](https://www.realisa.org/category/faithfulness-trust-commitment-submission/)
- [Adorations](https://www.realisa.org/category/pets-animals-gadgets-trinkets-whimsy-nature/)
- [Creativity](https://www.realisa.org/category/creativity/)

## Tags

- [Leisure](https://www.realisa.org/tag/leisure/) - Ways to waste time
- [Whimsy](https://www.realisa.org/tag/whimsy/)
- [Ponder](https://www.realisa.org/tag/ponder/)
- [Blessings](https://www.realisa.org/tag/blessings/) - All things for which I am thankful
- [Satisfactions](https://www.realisa.org/tag/satisfactions/)
- [Thinking](https://www.realisa.org/tag/thinking/) - My own version of back porch philosophy
- [Home Sweet Home](https://www.realisa.org/tag/home-sweet-home/) - Following the process of building a house and making a home
- [gardening](https://www.realisa.org/tag/gardening/)
- [My Sons](https://www.realisa.org/tag/my-sons/)
- [Cutler Ridge](https://www.realisa.org/tag/cutler-ridge/)
- [My Family](https://www.realisa.org/tag/my-family-of-origin/) - The family I grew up in….my parents and my sisters
- [Parenting](https://www.realisa.org/tag/parenting/)
- [Traveling](https://www.realisa.org/tag/traveling/)
- [adversity](https://www.realisa.org/tag/adversity/)
- [faith](https://www.realisa.org/tag/faith/)
- [Cooking & Food](https://www.realisa.org/tag/cooking-food/)
- [listening](https://www.realisa.org/tag/listening/)
- [Connections](https://www.realisa.org/tag/connections/)
- [The Real Thing](https://www.realisa.org/tag/the-real-thing/)
- [Beauty](https://www.realisa.org/tag/beauty/)
- [creativity](https://www.realisa.org/tag/creativity/)
- [gender](https://www.realisa.org/tag/gender/)
- [Contemplations](https://www.realisa.org/tag/contemplations/)
- [music](https://www.realisa.org/tag/music/) - Music I find and love often including my sources.
- [Half of the Glass](https://www.realisa.org/tag/half-of-the-glass/) - Shifting the perspective between pessimism and optimism, doubt and hope.
- [push-pull](https://www.realisa.org/tag/push-and-pull/)
- [AROS](https://www.realisa.org/tag/aros/)
- [Love](https://www.realisa.org/tag/love/)
- [family](https://www.realisa.org/tag/family/)
- [NPR](https://www.realisa.org/tag/npr/)
- [courage](https://www.realisa.org/tag/courage/)
- [birthday](https://www.realisa.org/tag/birthday/)
- [poetry](https://www.realisa.org/tag/poetry/)
- [etiquette](https://www.realisa.org/tag/etiquette/)
- [manners](https://www.realisa.org/tag/manners/)
- [identity](https://www.realisa.org/tag/identity/)
- [house](https://www.realisa.org/tag/house/)
- [tenacity](https://www.realisa.org/tag/tenacity/)
- [love](https://www.realisa.org/tag/love-2/)
- [pears](https://www.realisa.org/tag/pears/)
- [sand pears](https://www.realisa.org/tag/sand-pears/)
- [locavore](https://www.realisa.org/tag/locavore/)
- [canning](https://www.realisa.org/tag/canning/)
- [effort](https://www.realisa.org/tag/effort/)
- [lost](https://www.realisa.org/tag/lost/)
- [sarcasm](https://www.realisa.org/tag/sarcasm/)
- [work](https://www.realisa.org/tag/work/)
- [etsy](https://www.realisa.org/tag/etsy/)
- [sewing](https://www.realisa.org/tag/sewing/)
- [baking](https://www.realisa.org/tag/baking/)
- [cooking](https://www.realisa.org/tag/cooking/)
- [risk](https://www.realisa.org/tag/risk/)
- [agility](https://www.realisa.org/tag/agility/)
- [connection](https://www.realisa.org/tag/connection/)
- [sleep](https://www.realisa.org/tag/sleep/)
- [sons](https://www.realisa.org/tag/sons/)
- [motherhood](https://www.realisa.org/tag/motherhood/)
- [childhood](https://www.realisa.org/tag/childhood/)
- [dreaming](https://www.realisa.org/tag/dreaming/)
- [memories](https://www.realisa.org/tag/memories/)
- [napping](https://www.realisa.org/tag/napping/)
- [World of Warcraft](https://www.realisa.org/tag/world-of-warcraft/)
- [WOW](https://www.realisa.org/tag/wow/)
- [virtual world](https://www.realisa.org/tag/virtual-world/)
- [The House](https://www.realisa.org/tag/the-house/)
- [writing](https://www.realisa.org/tag/writing/)
- [sadness](https://www.realisa.org/tag/sadness/)
- [books](https://www.realisa.org/tag/books/)
- [fear](https://www.realisa.org/tag/fear/)
- [vulnerability](https://www.realisa.org/tag/vulnerability/)
- [authenticity](https://www.realisa.org/tag/authenticity/)
- [flowers](https://www.realisa.org/tag/flowers/)
- [quilting](https://www.realisa.org/tag/quilting/)
- [character](https://www.realisa.org/tag/character/)
- [gratitude](https://www.realisa.org/tag/gratitude/)
- [Fibonacci numbers](https://www.realisa.org/tag/fibonacci-numbers/)
- [math](https://www.realisa.org/tag/math/)
- [chaos](https://www.realisa.org/tag/chaos/)
- [free will](https://www.realisa.org/tag/free-will/)
- [providence](https://www.realisa.org/tag/providence/)
- [serendipity](https://www.realisa.org/tag/serendipity/)
- [integrity](https://www.realisa.org/tag/integrity/)
- [beauty](https://www.realisa.org/tag/beauty-2/)
- [cats](https://www.realisa.org/tag/cats/)
- [dreams](https://www.realisa.org/tag/dreams/)
- [hope](https://www.realisa.org/tag/hope/)
- [Gator Growl](https://www.realisa.org/tag/gator-growl/)
- [American University](https://www.realisa.org/tag/american-university/)
- [college](https://www.realisa.org/tag/college/)
- [health](https://www.realisa.org/tag/health/)
- [body](https://www.realisa.org/tag/body/)
- [play](https://www.realisa.org/tag/play/)
- [lent](https://www.realisa.org/tag/lent/)
- [lenten season](https://www.realisa.org/tag/lenten-season/)
- [sacrifice](https://www.realisa.org/tag/sacrifice/)
- [reading](https://www.realisa.org/tag/reading/)
- [Audible](https://www.realisa.org/tag/audible/)
- [racism](https://www.realisa.org/tag/racism/)
- [Mother Emanuel](https://www.realisa.org/tag/mother-emanuel/)
- [prayer](https://www.realisa.org/tag/prayer/)
- [Whimsy](https://www.realisa.org/tag/whimsy/) - Life needs frivolity
- [Ponder](https://www.realisa.org/tag/ponder/)
- [The Real Thing](https://www.realisa.org/tag/the-real-thing/)
- [joy](https://www.realisa.org/tag/joy/)
- [quiet](https://www.realisa.org/tag/quiet/)
- [grace](https://www.realisa.org/tag/grace/)
- [Just Thinking](https://www.realisa.org/tag/just-thinking/)
- [patience](https://www.realisa.org/tag/patience/)
- [pandemic projects](https://www.realisa.org/tag/pandemic-projects/)
- [art](https://www.realisa.org/tag/art/)
- [Switzerland](https://www.realisa.org/tag/switzerland/)
- [Restoration](https://www.realisa.org/tag/restoration/)
- [happiness](https://www.realisa.org/tag/happiness/)
- [contentment](https://www.realisa.org/tag/contentment/)
- [willingness](https://www.realisa.org/tag/willingness/)
- [diversity](https://www.realisa.org/tag/diversity/)
- [rebirth](https://www.realisa.org/tag/rebirth/)
- [share](https://www.realisa.org/tag/share/)
- [welcome](https://www.realisa.org/tag/welcome/)
- [abundance](https://www.realisa.org/tag/abundance/)
- [thankful](https://www.realisa.org/tag/thankful/)
- [wishful](https://www.realisa.org/tag/wishful/)
- [aim high](https://www.realisa.org/tag/aim-high/)
- [hopeful](https://www.realisa.org/tag/hopeful/)
- [whine](https://www.realisa.org/tag/whine/)
- [bees](https://www.realisa.org/tag/bees/)
- [beekeeping](https://www.realisa.org/tag/beekeeping/)
- [honesty](https://www.realisa.org/tag/honesty/)
- [knowledge](https://www.realisa.org/tag/knowledge/)
- [curiosity](https://www.realisa.org/tag/curiosity/)
- [responsibility](https://www.realisa.org/tag/responsibility/)
- [lumping](https://www.realisa.org/tag/lumping/)
- [sorting](https://www.realisa.org/tag/sorting/)
- [necessary](https://www.realisa.org/tag/necessary/)
- [pets](https://www.realisa.org/tag/pets/)
- [bitchitude](https://www.realisa.org/tag/bitchitude/)
- [snark](https://www.realisa.org/tag/snark/)
- [uncertainty](https://www.realisa.org/tag/uncertainty/)
- [reach](https://www.realisa.org/tag/reach/)
- [ask](https://www.realisa.org/tag/ask/)
- [let](https://www.realisa.org/tag/let/)
- [wonder](https://www.realisa.org/tag/wonder/)