Two nights ago I finally did what I had been avoiding for months: I looked for a blogging friend’s obituary. The sad news is I found it. Some of you might know Nancy Jo Anderson aka Zazamataz on WordPress. Her blog is still up at zazamataz.wordpress.com, but she has not posted since December 11, 2024.
According to her obituary, Nancy died on March 14, 2025. She was only 62. Nancy was open about her illness. In her post of April 24, 2024 (“I’m back. Again.”), she explained that she had both COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and CHF (chronic heart failure). My oldest sister Charlotte had both of these conditions, and it was the COPD that killed her. I imagine it was the same with Nancy.
I hadn’t known Nancy for long. I “met” her through Ally Bean’s blog The Spectacled Bean, and quickly came to cherish her friendship, her stories, her humor, her openness. She didn’t shy away from writing about being sad and depressed, her struggles to get proper care, and her many “visits” to the hospital.
Her humor was a gift. She would write about her hospital stays with such comedy that I’d often laugh out loud, forgetting for those moments the fear and pain she most likely felt while it was happening.
And she was generous. In May 2023, she organized the “the great moose giveaway.” It was a clever way to clear out her house and send out a little love to the world. I was game for anything that involved yarn (naturally). But what I got from Nancy was so spot-on, I was speechless when I saw it.
This ceramic bluebird is more precious to me than anything else Nancy could have sent me. I have it sitting on a desk next to the loveseat where I usually have my morning tea. Seeing the bluebird, remembering Nancy, is a nice way to start my day.
I could have “looked for” Nancy long before Saturday night. I thought of it often, but sometimes you don’t want to confirm what you already know.
Although she’s physically gone, I hope some of you might visit her blog. Her spirit lives on in her writing and in each of us whose lives she touched.
Hello, everyone! Spring has arrived here in north Florida, a real feast for the eyes this year. We credit a few long, soaking rains for the abundance of color.
Magenta blooms from an azalea bush.
Close-up of a variegated pink azalea bloom.
Fat carpenter bee sucking nectar from a dark pink azalea flower.
White azalea flowers.
All together: magenta, pink, red, and white azalea flowers along our front yard.
Elsewhere in our gardens …
Bulbine with small yellow flowers and a bunch of buds.
Woodland pholx: a bushy plant with purple violet-like flowers.
Blue-eyed grass (grass with delicate blue flowers).
Pink sorrel, a type of groundcover with pink, violet-like flowers. Grows wild.
Columbine, a delicate plant with red flowers that hang like upside down tulips with yellow fronds.
Close-up of a native pink azalea, petals not yet fully open.
A bromeliad plant with several red and yellow buds poking upward.
A red buckeye bush (or tree, I hope) with small red flowers on top.
While color is bursting out all over in my little corner of the world, I’ve been busying myself with writing (more or less) and various handcrafts. I’ve knitted two pair of socks. One pair (not shown) is mostly purple. The pair below was not intended to be “mismatched.” I apparently drew from the wrong end of the yarn for one, but I really like how these turned out. I might do this kind of mistake on purpose next time.
A pair of feet clad in striped socks, colors ranging from yellow to green to red to purple.
I also sewed the bag in this photo, finally finding something to do with the fabric remnant I bought years ago. It’s called a 4-corner bag (designed by Cocoknits) and was super easy to make. I have a fetish for bags and am enjoying this one so much I might make more.
A bag made of light denim fabric with a muted flower pattern and leather straps.
Finally, we’ve done a grownup thing and bought new living room furniture. The cushions and springs of our old furniture were fairly shot after 15 years of wear and the upholstery fairly destroyed after 15 years of tear by our cats. Note: Do not buy tapestry-like upholstered furniture if you have cats.
View of a brown leather loveseat and a brown leather sofa in our living room.
Raji and Wendy were quite put out by the loss of their beloved oversized scratching posts. We eased their adjustment by installing window perches behind the loveseat. We also covered the loveseat with a little-used comforter to protect it from the sun and make it more comfortable for our cats should they desire to stretch out.
Raji (ginger cat) and Wendy (Tortieco) on their windowsill perches.
No one can say that we don’t try to do right by our kitties.
I hope all is well out there among my far-flung online community. My writing is going well enough for me. My writing course is taking a break (as scheduled) until April 1 when we’ll start Session Two with new prompts among other goodies. Life is going well for us.
We did the other grown-up thing with updating our Wills, Living Wills, and Durable Powers of Attorney for Health Care. If I learned anything in the last couple of years, it’s that you don’t want to leave your loved ones guessing.
Flowers, potholders, and cats are three of my favorite things. Well, cats will always be at the top of my favorites, but flowers and potholders are running close.
The past couple of weeks have been like the previous weeks, so-so with an occasional meltdown. Sure, I’m still grieving, but I do get tired of it. I have so much to do and not as much time left (and less every day, of course), so I get impatient with myself. I enjoy being creative, but I often hold back because I can’t share my creativity with my sisters, especially Shirley.
Every time I think I’ve rounded a corner, find myself practically skipping with glee over the flowers blooming in our garden, some time later I’ll again find myself in a deep gloom. The heat hasn’t helped. Today (this morning) is the first time in weeks that I didn’t feel like I was being scalded when I stepped outside. And yet, I am so lucky to be here and not Maui or Phoenix (sorry, Luanne). I could be luckier and be in upstate NY or (preferably) the West Coast, but best to count my blessings and not push my luck.
Reading and book reviews are high on my list of things I must do. The reading is ongoing, the book reviews are in my head. Right now I’m reading an advanced copy of Love in the Archives by Eileen Vorbach Collins, a compilation of essays about the loss of Collins’s teenage daughter Lydia to suicide. I’ve read some of these essays before, but Collins’s writing is such that I always find something new in her words, her insight, her humor, and her heart. Collins’s words stitch together a delicate balance between horror and humor–not laugh-out-loud humor, knee-slapping humor–but that wry, dry, honest humor that comes with living with grief. Her words make me cry and yet they are a balm. Love in the Archives will be published in October but you can preorder a copy at Amazon or (my preference) Bookshop.org.
In the meantime …
I have been enjoying the amazing blooms in our garden. These are flowers I’ve often admired elsewhere, never thinking I would ever enjoy them in my own backyard.
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I also managed to make a number of potholders and “mug rugs” or coasters in the past two weeks. The lavender and silver potholders came out of a kit I bought from Acorns & Twigs, a small family business that offers a huge assortment of crafty things. I used rectangular rings for the end loops because I could not find circular ones (seriously, I checked both Joann’s and Michael’s and only found ugly plastic rings). I like how these look, though.
Lavender and silver potholders.
This next collection was made with wool loops from Carol Leigh’s Hillcreek Fiber Studio. Carol uses natural dyes with the wool loops so the colors have slight variations, making the designs look that much more interesting and attractive. Hillcreek is another family-run business, and the only one I know of that offers wool loops for weaving. Cotton loops are easy to care for: I machine-wash mine and then air-dry them, but I could probably machine-dry on a low setting. The wool requires handwashing, but I love the feel and weight of these potholders and mug rugs. Usually, I weave in the last loop, but I wasn’t able to do that effectively with the mug rugs so I used buttons to finish them.
Four mug rugs in color combination of reds, pinks, blues, and purples.
Close-up of mug rug in colors of reds, pinks, blues, and purples.
Two potholders in a color combination of light blue, reds, pinks, and purples.
Finally … cats.
Here’s Raji in his favorite sleeping position.
Raji in full sleeping mode.
Junior has been causing us a bit of a concern lately. His left nostril has something blocking the opening. You can barely see it in this picture.
Junior wondering why I’m taking his photo when he would rather eat.
The bad news is we don’t know what it is, and it’s response to steroid nose drops has been so-so. Sometimes it seems to shrink, sometimes not. A few weeks ago, the mucus was tinged with blood, so we made an urgent visit to the clinic, and, for the time being, we’re now stuck with a newbie vet. He’s a very nice, young man, but he didn’t waste time in suggesting that Junior might have a tumor pushing through his nasal cavity aka cancer. Of course, tests would need to be done, but we’re holding off for now.
Junior is at least 15 years old, more likely 16, and we really don’t want to put him through a lot of poking and prodding, anesthesia and complications. At his last recheck, he did show signs of improvement so we’ll have another recheck in a couple of weeks. The good news is, other than the nose-thingy, he’s well. He’s always early for his meals, eats everything, and is generally alert and affilitative. Yes, he sleeps alot but who wouldn’t in this heat, and he is 16, fairly close to my mom’s age. So, we’re putting off the big conversation for now. Fingers crossed the steroids work their magic.
And now truly finally, I have a 100-word story up at Friday Flash Fiction, titled Invisible. Interesting thing about this story. I worked a much longer version for a SmokeLong Quarterly Community Workshop, then pared it down to about 150 words for a workshop with Meg Pokrass, and then further edited for Friday Flash Fiction to fit their 100-word limit. To be honest, I think I should have stuck with the 150-word version. Que sera sera.
After months of berating myself for falling behind in blogging—both writing and reading—this afternoon I made a concerted effort to “catch up.” Usually I work on my main computer, a laptop hooked to a 20-inch monitor. The large monitor allows more flexibility than working off my iPad, and I prefer to type rather than hunt and peck with my index finger. Yes, I have a separate keyboard but it’s old and finicky. (Excuses, excuses, I’ve got a million of them.)
But this afternoon I decided to do things differently.
My main computer is an excuse to procrastinate; as in, “I don’t feel like turning my computer on and having to sit properly, as if I were at work.” You see, during my last year of paid employment, I worked from home and, even though that was over two years ago, I still experience some traumatic memories. That’s not my rant, though.
My rant is this: I’ve been unable to share any of the WordPress posts I read this afternoon to Twitter. Not a one! Now, I know my posts no longer automatically go to Twitter when I publish. But, at least on my main computer, I could easily share posts to Twitter.
Maybe it’s not important whether I share on Twitter what I read on WordPress. Goodness knows I’ve muted more people than follow me on that platform. But I’m a creature of habit. I don’t like it when I can’t follow my regular routine. So, who’s to blame. WordPress or Twitter?
I blame Musk for mucking things up to begin with. Never have I seen anyone who so acts like he wants to destroy a company.
Well, if it’s an app problem, then it is what it is. If it’s a Musk problem, then … life will go on.
Thanks for listening. Your reward is a photo of my brother-in-law’s newish dog, Bailey. No, she was not named after me. Bailey was my sister’s maiden name, and it’s a fine name for a dog, too. Only 4 months old and already pushing 40 pounds, she’s an energetic and lovable pup.
According to WordPress, I registered on WordPress.com 15 years ago. I wasn’t planning to post anything today, but when this image popped up in my notifications, I took it as a sign that I should write … something.
Alas, words do not pour out of me, at least not onto paper or my computer screen. They whirl around in my head like a cat chasing its tail. As soon as I sit down to write, they vanish, not even giving me a chance to corral some or even a few.
When I do manage to write, it’s with a clean slate and is almost always prompted by something I read.
I am by nature a mimic. I can’t seem to help myself. For example, many years ago when I was a quickly-going-insane-doctoral student, I had a professor whose speech was quite distinctive. She had a smoky drawl that, without intending to, I started to mimic for the pleasure of my husband and other students. One evening I was talking on the phone with another student, relating to her something that this professor had said to me. Before I could finish, the student exclaimed, “My god, Marie, you sound just like her!”
Oops. Unaware of what I was doing, I had slipped into the professor’s speech. From that night forward, I put all my efforts into suppressing my mimicry. This particular professor did not have a sense of humor and at the time, she also held the purse strings of my research assistantship.
My mimicry is not limited to speech. When I’m reading and I’m taken with a particular format or wordplay, I naturally try to imitate it. Not intentionally. I don’t say to myself, “Hey, I really like how that writer develops a sense of urgency with a series of run-on sentences so I’ll do the exact same thing.” No, I think I’m just inspired, but, still, I have to be careful to not mimic the writer. I want my writing to be original … at least as much as it can be given that my slate is never completely blank.
Another post with comments turned off. It’s not like I don’t want to hear from anyone. It’s like I’m going to be more off-the-grid than on-the-grid for the next couple of weeks.
When I’m fully back online, I promise I’ll turn comments back on, and we can have a chat. In the meantime, enjoy these pretty flowers that are blooming by my mailbox.
Thanks for flying with us. Keep up the good blogging.
My, how time flies. In truth, I have not been steadily blogging since I registered with WordPress on April 9, 2007. I “paused” my blog for a few years (and much later for a few months), but I’m happy to be chugging away steadily at it now … despite the new Block Editor.
Hello, friends. You may (or may not) have noticed changes to my blog. When I downgraded to the Premium plan, my WP theme reverted to its original theme, and so I’ve been searching for a new one. There are so many! I’m keen on the “Responsive Layout” which means it should look good whether you’re reading on your phone, a tablet or desktop computer.
This theme is called Notebook. Initially I didn’t like all the white space, and I wanted to showcase my photos more. For a few days I sported Cerauno, but today, after mucking about with the social media widgets which never quite want to work for me, I decided to switch again. For the moment, I’m enamored with this side image that Notebook offers and the ability to change it whenever I want. By the way, the side image is one of my photos.
Photo by Marie A Bailey
I took this photo a couple of weeks ago when my husband and I were visiting the storm water facility in our neighborhood, where trash and birds and wildflowers and all kinds of insects are in abundance. I was playing with a macro lens my husband had loaned me for the excursion. The original photo was at 4x magnification. This is the original blown up and cropped. I was so excited to capture such a nice photo of this little guy on a little flower.
Made. My. Day.
So for now (all of 60 minutes), I’m happy with this theme. I can showcase my photos as I wish, but still have a nice, uncluttered site. I’ve removed the social media widgets for now. I know WP would help me, but I’ve no energy to spare today.
Let’s see … I wrote a blog post a couple of months ago about my current state of employment. The title was Work, Work, Work #MondayBlogs #WFH #writing. Well, it’s still work, work, work. We hit the ground running on Monday and keep running straight through to Friday evening. I know some people joke that Fridays for state employees are more like Saturdays, lazy days where sometimes you take off early to go fishing. Ha. Ha. Ha. I want to live in that world.
No, for me, late Friday afternoons are when we usually get the data requests that need to be done “today,” as in before you leave (or log off your computer, in my case). Of course, I and my staff never mind working another hour or two on a Friday evening to justify someone’s last minute decision for data that they probably won’t do anything with for a few days [sarcasm].
We comply. We always do. Of course, I do it with a fair amount of cursing and cussing. One of the benefits of working from home is that I no longer have to keep my words to myself. I at least have the freedom to complain out loud because no one but my cats and my husband can hear me. Such was yesterday and, of course, I worked longer than my staff because it is my responsibility. At the least, I need to be available for them while they work their magic.
After two-and-a-half months in this position, I’m already burnt out. I haven’t been reading blogs because when I have time to myself, I tend to close my eyes rather than read. It might not stay like this. I’m in the process of hiring to fill my old position and, the gods willing, I’ll have another position to fill as well. Perhaps I’ll be able to manage my time better after that. Perhaps.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 and Hurricane Isaias. My heart goes out to everyone who has to manage this double-whammy.
Things are changing around here. Just baby steps right now, but so far I’m enjoying the process. As I’ve already written about here and here, I’m trying to give my blog a more professional appearance. At least more organized. I’ll settle for that. I’ve added a page for my publications (few though they may be) and a page for links to the book reviews I’ve written. I’ve revised my About Me page and my Contact Me page.
Whew, organizing always tires me out ;)
Some of you may be aware that I also write on Medium, a place to read and write big ideas and important stories (their words, not mine). If you’re a Medium member, or even if you’re not, you can find me there at @marieannbailey. So far writing on Medium has been an interesting experience. I’ve made some new friends and read some really interesting and well-written essays, stories, and poems. Recently, I was published in P.S. I Love You, a Medium publication: “Bonita: A Short Story.”
What’s not to like about all that?!
Well, Medium is a different experience from blogging on WordPress. Not a better experience, just different. I’ve been casting about for a way to describe how they differ when it finally hit me.
1WriteWay on WordPress is my home, mi casa, where my friends, mis compañeros, come to visit (mi casa es su casa). Likewise, through WordPress, I visit my friends’ blogs homes and hang out for awhile.
Medium is like the Barnes & Noble in my town, where sometimes I meet up with friends for coffee and to browse magazines and books. It’s like a community center where you can learn about writing or programming code (or writing programming code), photography and travel. Or listen to read ideas about politics, relationships, and sundry other topics.
Some writers use Medium as their only platform, the one place they express themselves. Medium does most of the work; the writer just needs to learn the different but limited formatting styles.
I believe in diversification, both in my finances and in my personal life.
On WordPress, we get to decorate our houses (or renovate as in my case here). We share ideas on themes, plugins, whatnots, and thingamajigs. We get to express our individuality in ways other than writing.
I was relieved when I thought of WordPress, or more specifically 1WriteWay, as my home and Medium as a community center. It fits with the introvert that I am, the homebody that I tend to be.
1WriteWay es mi casa y ustedes son mis compañeros.
In other news: my girls are driving me crazy.
Maxine has a chronic urinary infection that seems resistant to antibiotics. I’m grateful that she still has her appetite and seems no more cranky than usual for a sixteen-year-old cat with arthritis and in the early stages of kidney disease.
Ah, the life of a southern cat in summer.
Wendy went in for a regular checkup and came out with a diagnosis of bladder stones. She shows no symptoms of a urinary tract infection, no crying or straining when she pees. But we saw the x-ray and it’s there. Our vets tend to be conservative so we’re starting with a special diet but today she decided to go on a hunger strike. Sigh. War of the Wills. I’m hoping she’ll give in because our only other alternative might be surgery. Double sigh.
Wendy stretching her legs.
Fortunately (as I knock on wood), Junior (our toothless one) is disease-free and just happy to hoover the girls’ food bowls when they leave bits behind.
Junior can’t seem to keep his tongue in since his remaining teeth were removed.
How do you cope when your furred kids change their behavior and won’t say why?
In the past, I’ve known some writers who wrote both on WordPress and Blogspot so I’m not an anomaly. What are your thoughts on writing on different platforms?
Marie at 1 Write Way 