On Journals and Blogs...

I thought about this after reading Dorothy and Thomas Hoolber's The Monsters - a book about the Shelleys, Lord Byron and their unusual households.

The summer that Mary Godwin ran away with the married Percy Bysshe Shelley, she and the poet wrote a journal together. Many people wrote a journal - many of those journals were written during travels and were eventually published - since most people couldn't travel, these journals gave them a sense of the world.

Biographers owe their information to journals. Interestingly, the Hooblers note that many of the pages in Mary Shelley's journal and her stepsister's journal (Clair was a paramour of Byron and possibly Shelley) had been removed - time periods and notations of things that could have shed more light on the intricate relationships of these creative people.

After his death, Mary Shelley spent time reviewing her husband's journals and letters, expunging any parts of his history that would not have lived up to the aura she was building. As a free-thinker of the beginning of the early Victorian period, Percy Shelley's life needed expunging.

Blogs are the journals of the 21st century with one huge difference: blogs go public immediately. No one will be expunging anything I've written here. It's already published to the world - or at the least the world that cares.

Trust me. I write with that knowledge

Sixth Anniversary...

...of this blog.
Six years ago my posts were long and full of angst - mostly because I'd just been dumped and my daughter was planning to move to Seattle. Can you say "rejection"?
Times have changed: Heather's found a good life in Seattle and I found Morgan.
Result:
Shorter posts with less angst.
And every so often a post that means something.
Go to www.witchlit.blogspot.com if you want more intellect.
Here, it's just plain old Witchy-poo.
Six years older and an awful lot happier.

Seventy Years Ago Today

October 9, 1940

Happy 70th, John.

Why I Heart My Kindle

Because I never know what I'll want to read tomorrow.
It could be a true crime, or a mystery or a Gothic (with a capital "G") or a romance or a biography...
And there they all are at my fingertips - literally.
Literally and figuratively at my fingertips.

The Sun is OUT

And, can I say it?
Should I say it?
Is it possible that I'm getting better?
Maybe not coughing quite as much?
Maybe?
I just want my life to get back to normal - whatever that was.

Being Sick

Forty years ago I was living alone in a small apartment and working as an RN in a hospital. I hated my job and called off as often as I could without getting fired. You see, I never wanted to be a nurse - but that's an old story.

Fate stepped in one day all those years ago and I got very ill - high fever, cough, the works. I imagined that Robert Kennedy was in my apartment taking care of me. Since he'd been dead for several years at that time, maybe I wasn't imagining it.

Eventually I got better. Eventually I also got married and became a mother. And the major breadwinner of the family. Those days of calling off on a whim were over. I had to work.

Something must have switched in my brain. I began to work overtime. I worked when someone else called off. The money was good but it was as if I'd changed. I still didn't want to be a nurse. But I had responsibilities.

Now it's worse. I feel guilty when I'm really sick and not working. I go in, cough, and try to stay away from everyone else. But that's not doing me any good. At 63 I don't bounce back as fast and relapse quickly.

I promised Morgan that I would not wait to go to the doctor like I did this time. I could be over this now if it wasn't for my stubbornness.

I have to switch something in my brain again - to focus on me, not work. I think it's about time, too.

The Three Rs on the Weekend

Reading
'Riting
Relationship

I love all of the above but find at times I only have the energy to do one or two a day. Yesterday was a day for "the relationship". I do love being with Morgan. We have a lot in common and just enough differences to make it interesting. But he's retired and I still work, so our "Morgan and Mitzi" time is on the weekends. "Mitzi" time is also on the weekends. So I'm finding that I have to almost fight myself for time to do the things I want to do - which is everything.

And today my URI was a bit worse - mainly because I tried to do too much too early - so 'riting took a backseat to the Fourth R: Resting.

Of Soars and earplugs...

I just came home from Soars' Record Release party in Bethlehem.
I loved their sound live and even more in the confines of my car, listening to the CD on the way home. The music is haunting...something that stays with you.
However, I'm not an objective observer. My nephew, Chris Giordani, is the lead singer and guitar player for the three-man, one woman group.
I've never been to a Record Release Party and was thrilled to be included - the oldest one there.
The groups before Soars, Arc in Round and Lower Berth, were great. After the first set I realized why there were earplugs at the entrance. As a veteran of many concerts, including three Beatles concerts with loud music and screams, I scoffed at the earplugs. Any damage to my ears was done almost fifty years ago, thank you. I listened bare-eared.
I listened and I enjoyed and I remembered, in a room filled with people less than half my age, that my heart is a heart of rock...and roll...the louder, the better.