BOSSY BETTY

Betty Checks In

2012-05-26T06:31:00.003-07:00

Yes! I have been checking on the swallows this year!

They are back and very busy!

More pictures to come!

Hi Blogging Buddies!

I thought the start of summer would mean more blogging time for me, but I had an institute all last week and this week I am jetting off to Kansas to see friends and family. I may get a chance to check in, but I may not. Just wanted you all to know I am thinking of you and will be back when I can!

--BB

Graduation!

2012-05-22T05:49:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody!

Last week was graduation!

It is always a great time to celebrate.

One thing I had to celebrate was having incredible colleagues.

Some of these folks saw me through the toughest year of my life.

They were so generous and supportive.

I am so lucky to have wonderful co-workers!

The day of graduation was beautiful!

I always love seeing all the students in their gowns and their proud families in the stands.

Here I am with my students Gairon and Moises.

They completed my Literature class and may have even learned to like poetry (a little).

(I am not really that short. They are both basketball players!)

Life is just a series of graduations, isn't it?

Some we celebrate with publicly and some we celebrate privately.

Here's to flipping that tassel to the other side and heading out into life.

Congratulations to all the graduates!

Monday Morning Flowers and Weekend Update

2012-05-21T04:00:00.000-07:00

Good Morning, My People!

Sorry I have been AWOL for a little bit from the Blogworld.

I have been a little preoccupied with a Certain Very Nice Man who came to see me this weekend.

Enough about me.

Here are your weekly flowers.

OK, now back to me.

I had a great weekend!

The major event was the repair of the ledge just outside my kitchen window.

As you can see, it needed some major work.

AH! Who came to my rescue?

A Certain Very Nice Engineer who happens to do tile work as well.

The (almost) finished product!

THEN, we went out for dinner and had this for dessert!

Didn't I say it was a good weekend?

The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.

--Chuck Palahniuk

Hazelnut Chocolate Chip Cookies

2012-05-16T04:00:00.000-07:00

Yowza, Baby!

You know any cookie recipe that includes Heath Bars has got to be good!

I made these babies for the office wing the other day and they got excellent reviews.

Enjoy Life.

Eat More Cookies.

Hazelnut Chocolate Chip Cookies

Recipe courtesy Giada De Laurentiis

1/2 cup old fashion oats
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 ounces English toffee candy (recommended: Heath or Skor bar), finely chopped
1 cup hazelnuts, toasted, husked, and chopped
1 (12-ounce) bag semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

Line 2 heavy large baking sheets with parchment paper. Finely chop the oats in a food processor. Transfer the oats to a medium bowl. Mix in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugars in a large bowl until fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Add the flour mixture and stir just until blended. Stir in the toffee, hazelnuts, and chocolate chips.

For each cookie, drop 1 rounded tablespoonful of dough onto sheet, spacing 1-inch apart (do not flatten dough). Bake until the cookies are golden (cookies will flatten slightly), about 15 minutes. Cool the cookies on the baking sheets for 5 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack and cool completely. (The cookies can be prepared 1 day ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.

Hope you have a great day!

2012-05-15T21:39:00.001-07:00

Poetry Tuesday: "Clock" by Linda Pastan

2012-05-15T04:00:00.000-07:00

Clock

Sometimes it really upsets me—
the way the clock's hands keep moving,

even when I'm just sitting here
not doing anything at all,

not even thinking about anything
except, right now, about that clock

and how it can't keep its hands still.
Even in the dark I picture it, and all

its brother and sister clocks and watches,
even sundials, all those compulsive timepieces

whose only purpose seems to be
to hurry me out of this world.

--Linda Pastan

Monday Morning Flowers!

2012-05-14T04:00:00.000-07:00

Good Monday to you all!

Hope your weekend was a great one.

Here's your Monday Morning flower delivery.

Two more days of finals, then graduation, and then summer begins!

Yahoo!

What are you looking forward to this week?

Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the

two most beautiful words in the English language.

--Henry James

Happy Mother's Day!

2012-05-13T04:00:00.000-07:00

Happy Mother's Day!

Here's a special warm hug to my own mother and the two wonderful boys who gave me the honor of being a mom.

I love you all.

Happy Mother's Day to all who are mothers and all those who have mothering spirits!

Crazy About My Cats

2012-05-12T04:00:00.000-07:00

OK, I am a little nervous about writing this post, for I am about to declare my intense love for my cats.

I love them. I truly do.

Now, I joke in my blog profile about becoming the crazy neighborhood cat lady as being a goal of mine.

I just didn’t anticipate that it would happen so soon

I’ve always loved cats. We had a lot of them in my childhood home. In fact, somewhere there is picture of me at seven years of age, sitting on my bed surrounded by six cats, and I am absolutely beaming with happiness.

Except for a few years in college, I have always had cats. I married a non-cat person, and converted him immediately. He loved cats, especially my current cat, Zelda. Then he left. Hey, I can understand leaving your wife, but your cat? Never.

Anyway, in August, when my sons left for college and HOB left for his new life, I was left alone in the house except for these two precious cats of mine.

Now, I suspect it is this way for a lot of people who find they are living alone after the kids years of after a mate leaves, but I don’t just love my cats. I adore them. I depend on them.

They greet me when I get home from work. They sit with me as I eat my dinner. When I grade papers at the table, Mabel lolls around on the rug near my feet and Zelda climbs on a chair across from me, occasionally coming up to check out an essay and give her feedback.

When I climb into bed at night, they come with me. In the morning when I read my newspaper in bed, Zelda sits on my right side and Mabel sits on my left and I sit there in the middle, feeling like the Queen of Suburbia. They balance me as they sit on either side of me, and I feel their solid weight. I stroke their soft fur and am overwhelmed with gratitude for their company.

Mabel is the more practical cat. She enjoys affection, but I have to come to her, unless I am watching TV and then she climbs up on my lap and stays until my leg goes numb and I have to move her or risk permanent nerve damage. (See bottom picture and you’ll understand.)

Zelda, however, is the sweetheart who seeks out affection and returns it twofold. Incredibly, she senses when I am having a restless night. Even at 2:00 a.m. when I start tossing and turning, she comes up from her nest at the foot of the bed and nudges her way into my arms, until her body is snuggled against mine, her head in the crook of my arm. She stays there and comforts me until I fall back asleep.

These cats have become so dear to me. Let’s face it: I was not done nurturing when my house emptied out, and so I turned my attention to the remaining mammals.

As I said before, I suspect many people find that their pets get more important as they get older. I know it’s happening here, in a big way.

And just as soon as I get my little darlings to stay in their “Little House on the Prairie” outfits I have carefully made for them, we will rehearse the play we have planned for the neighborhood children and then we’ll have a nice tea party together.

OK, OK, It hasn't come to that just yet.

I was just joking.

Did you think I was serious?

Of course we won’t have tea.

We’ll have milk instead.

Tea might stain the little white monogrammed bibs I’ve made for them.

Tea instead of milk? Now, that's just crazy.

Finals Week!

2012-05-10T04:00:00.000-07:00

Here's the reason I have not been able to post or visit blogs very much lately!

It's finals week and the papers have been coming in non-stop.

These are just some of them, waiting for my attention.

(Let's not even talk about the online grading I need to do for two of my classes or the fact that the yellow folder will fill up tomorrow with 25 more research papers and 25 in-class essays.)

Tonight before I left campus, I put this note on top of the stack:

It was a note to remind me what I needed to do tomorrow, but then I had a thought.

Suppose someone comes to my office tonight, sees the note and grades them all?

Hummmm.....

I'll let you know if it works!

Happy Thursday, everybody!

Poetry Tuesday: "Not Forgotten" by Sheila Packa

2012-05-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

Not Forgotten

I learned to ride
the two wheel bicycle
with my father.
He oiled the chain
clothes-pinned playing cards
to the spokes, put on the basket
to carry my lunch.
By his side, I learned balance
and took on speed
centered behind the wide
handlebars, my hands
on the white grips
my feet pedaling.
One moment he was
holding me up
and the next moment
although I didn't know it
he had let go.
When I wobbled, suddenly
afraid, he yelled keep going—
keep going!
Beneath the trees in the driveway
the distance increasing between us
I eventually rode until he was out of sight.
I counted on him.

That he could hold me was a given
that he could release me was a gift.

--Sheila Packa

Monday Morning Flowers and Weekend Update

2012-05-07T04:00:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody!

Hope you had a great weekend and are looking forward to a wonderful week.

This past weekend I went to Descanso Gardens in La Canada, Flintridge (near Los Angeles).

It was a gorgeous day and the surroundings were magnificent.

Even the bunnies were out to greet us!

I went with a Certain Very Nice Man who was kind enough to take my picture here by a stream.

It was such a fun day!

Thanks so much to all my blogging buddies for all your support and love!

I appreciate it so much.

Hope you have a beautiful week!

A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.

--Arnold H. Glasow

Progress. It's Progress.

2012-05-04T04:00:00.000-07:00

I think we all want the process of grief, either from a divorce or from a death, to follow a sort of pattern, a recognizable schedule, a decipherable calendar.

I keep learning that this is not the case.

I’ll be buzzing along, working away, doing just fine and then out of nowhere a feeling of sadness envelops me. Who knows that brings it on? It’s often hard to say. It’s not so much a feeling of sadness over the loss of my marriage any longer. It’s a loneliness that falls some evenings around dusk, when I am sitting alone in my house.

I miss my kids. I miss the life that surrounded them and made this home an interesting place to be. I miss being an active mom. I miss another human heart beating in the house.

Even though I am rich beyond belief with the support of friends, I sometimes feel isolated when night is coming and I walk across the floors of my house, turning off lights, looking into empty rooms.

Those moments of sadness feel like a dip in the timeline, a sharp drop-off of the reliable graph on the neat grid, a U-turn on the road to normalcy.

Apparently, these moments are a natural part of healing, or so all the books say, but when I am in the middle of them, it feels like failure and the fact that I am surprised by the intensity of the emotion just adds to that feeling.

Tears come and even though I know I can call friends, I don’t because I am embarrassed.

I want to be as strong as they think I am. I give them no reason to call and check on me. Some may think if they do, or if they bring up the divorce, it will depress me or I may think they lack faith in me.

I keep reminding myself that though these feelings of loneliness still come, they do so more and more infrequently and with less intensity. I sometimes underestimate the progress I have made. And to be honest, this brand of loneliness is preferable to kind I felt in the last weeks of my marriage. Having another person in the house doesn’t mean a thing when that person is isolated and withdrawn. In fact, that kind loneliness is even more devastating and confusing.

Through this experience, I realize I have been guilty of rushing the grieving process for others in the past. I have not made the calls I should have made, have not checked in on people as much as I should have. I have wanted so much to believe that “everything is fine!” and that my friends have recovered quickly and without scars.

Now I know.

This mess of a procedure called healing in no way follows a linear pattern. It has its own path, and its own timing and its own moments of sorrow which follow no rules at all.

Above all, I am grateful for what this experience has taught me.

In the future, I will call people who are going the same sort of experience even though time has passed, even though they seem fine. With my close friends, I know it’s OK to bring up a sad event from time to time, to open the door to conversation and invite them to enter if they need to.

I also have to learn to accept my own dips into sadness and not see them as setbacks, but just a part of the ride that I need to go on at this time in my life.

After all, those dips make it possible to gain momentum so I can climb the next hill and, as always, I am eager to see what’s on the other side.

Potato Chip Cookies!

2012-05-03T04:00:00.000-07:00

!ALERT!

I need to you to stop whatever you are doing and make these cookies.

Seriously.

They. Are. Good.

Yowza!

Potato Chip Cookies

1 c. butter
1/2 c. sugar
2 c. flour
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 c. chopped nuts
1/2 c. crushed potato chips

Mix all ingredients. Roll into small balls; flatten with bottom of glass dipped in sugar. Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes.

Dip these suckers in chocolate or just smear some across the top.

I took these to work this week and I do believe my co-workers are now constructing a statue of me in the office wing.

You need to make these cookies.

Why?

Butter (Dairy)

Potato Chips (Vegetables)

Pecans (Protein)

Flour (Grains)

Sugar (for Energy)

Vanilla (better you get it here rather than chewing on a scented candle)

Really, it's a health issue if you think about it.

Enjoy!

Itching for the Spinach

2012-05-02T04:00:00.000-07:00

If someone would have told me a few years ago that I would be eating cooked spinach and enjoying it, I would have never believed it.

After all, this is the stuff I used to hide in my milk carton at lunch in 4th grade.

Do you remember the cooked spinach they used to serve us at school?

Bleech!

All it takes is fresh spinach, garlic, olive oil, and lemon.

Chop up the spinach some. Then heat some olive oil and a clove of garlic in a skillet.

(As you can see, I use frozen garlic blobs. They're great!)

Add the spinach and saute lightly.

Don't overdo it!

You know how you get.

Control yourself.

Serve immediately and squeeze some fresh lemon over it.

This is yummy stuff! Who knew?

Here's to trying new things!

Poetry Tuesday: "The Coming of Light" by Mark Strand

2012-05-01T04:00:00.000-07:00

The Coming of Light

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

--Mark Strand

Monday Morning Flowers and Weekend Update

2012-04-30T04:00:00.000-07:00

Happy Monday, Everyone!

Hope you had a fabulous weekend and are planning great things for the week ahead!

Last weekend, A Certain Very Nice Man invited me to go on a garden tour in Los Angeles.

Racy, right?

Some of the backyards had creeks running through them and bridges like this.

Of course there were lots of gorgeous flowers too.

These are some I picked out for you.

Here I am, pretending to be patient as I wait for the dinner held at the mayor's house which was included in the tour.

I am pretty sure I didn't fool the Certain Very Nice Man, especially when he eventually saw me head toward the table full of pies at top speed.

The dinner was held on the tennis courts. Here are the tables in the process of being set up.

There were geraniums on every table.

It was beautiful!

Hope you have a great week!

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Betty's First 5K

2012-04-29T04:00:00.000-07:00

Thanks everyone for your encouraging words on my post yesterday!

My first 5K was SO much fun!

I am ready to do another one!

It was a gorgeous day.

The energy was great!

Here I am with fellow runners and walkers from my college.

I am so glad I took a chance and did something new!

What's next?

Running With (Not Away From) Life

2012-04-28T04:00:00.000-07:00

Today I am heading over to one of the local colleges to participate in my first 5K Fun Run/Walk.

Now, most of my friends will tell you I can walk 5K with no problem. In fact, some mornings I go out and walk that on a regular day. So what makes this event special?

Well, when I signed up for it last fall, I was still aching with pain from HOB's decision to end our marriage. I sat in my office at work, feeling weak and overwhelmed.

At that time, I was not even sure I could make it to my car at the end of the day, let alone around a 5K route. After thirty years of being with the same person, living the same kind of lifestyle, I couldn't fathom my future.

I was depressed, confused and full of self-doubt.

When the invitation to to participate in this event came, I stared at that date, April 28th and wondered what my life would be like then. It would be in the spring, I thought. Renewal. A fresh start. Sounded good. It took effort and a sort of forced faith in the future, but I put my name on the application. It felt good to put a pin on a date in the future. I would use it as a benchmark.

Walking has always been a big part of my life, and I turned to it for my recovery. That was fine but some days when I was walking, I would be absolutely overwhelmed with anxiety.

Then, I would start running. It was not a healthy kind of running. It was a lunging, gasping, madly determined kind of running. It was clear I was running as fast as I could to get away from all of the thoughts that invaded my brain.

As I ran, I literally I shook my hands to get all of the mire and pain that I felt hung on my very being. I ran faster and harder than I ever have in my life. Looking back, I can see it sometimes gave me momentary relief, but overall, it didn't feel good. It just felt desperate.

Soon, my body decided it had had enough. It went into revolt. My feet were the major messengers. Through extremely painful achilles tendentious and other serious foot problems, I was finally hobbled, sidelined, forced to listen to the quiet inner voices that had been trying to get through.

Slow down.

Deal with what you have to deal with.

You can't outrun this.

You have to sit, center yourself, work through all the emotions, all the pain.

Believe me, I resisted. I tried running again. Nope, my body said. No way. So, I did what the inner voices urged me to do. I slowed down. I stopped. I had to. I had no choice. I got into therapy. I faced my fears, my demons, my shortcomings, even my role in the disintegration of our marriage. Exhausting? Yes. Painful? Yes. Debilitating? At times, yes.

But I got stronger.

As soon as my feet got better, I slowly got back into walking. Then one day, there was an extra kick in my step. I felt especially light and spontaneously went into an easy jog. It felt great. I stopped after about a block, walked anther half mile or so and then ran a little ways more. Over the weeks, I built up little by little.

Now, I would not claim the title of runner but more often than not, I run at some point in one of my walks. The difference in the way it feels now, compared to the way it felt back then is amazing.

Then, I was running away from turmoil, trying to escape the mental and spiritual work that needed to be done. It felt heavy, desperate and depleting.

When I run now, I am filled with a lightness, an energy, an appreciation of my body and the way it carries me through this life.

So, April 28th has arrived--that date I looked at on that flier all those months ago. I wondered what my life would be like and now I know. It's good. It's very good.

So today, I'll join a whole group of people on that starting line and run as much of the route as I can, walking when I need to, and enjoying every single minute of the journey.

After all, I am no longer running away from life.

I'm running with it.

Sour Cream Cookies!

2012-04-25T04:00:00.000-07:00

Hello, My Blog Friends!

Sorry I have not been around too much lately.

School has been crazy and my weekends have been very busy...in a very good way. Details to come!

I made these cookies for my department meeting the other day. My colleagues liked them very much. Hope they don't remember just how much they liked them because I am never making them again. I am just not a rolled cookie gal. I nearly killed myself off trying to roll these out. There was flour all over. It was not pretty.

You are probably more patient and talented, so go for it!

SOUR CREAM CUT OUT COOKIES

COOKS.COM

3 1/4 c. flour

1 c. sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. soda

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 c. sour cream

1/2 c. butter

Sift together: flour, salt and soda. Combine, in different bowls, butter, eggs, sugar and vanilla, mix. Add sour cream and 1/2 of flour and blend. Add rest of flour. Put in refrigerator 20 minutes. Roll thin and cut out. Bake in oven at 350 or 400 degrees until done (light brown). For softer cookies don't roll out thin.

Don't the cookies look pretty?

Yeah, well...

Here's what my sweatshirt looked like after the battle with the dough.

How do normal people make cookies without making a mess?

Monday Night Flowers

2012-04-23T21:42:00.002-07:00

Oh! This delivery is SO late!

I am sorry!

I wouldn't blame you if you withheld my tip this week.

Hope you all had good days!

Life is an adventure in forgiveness.

--Norman Cousins

Jubilate Agno, Fragment B [For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry] by Christopher Smart

2012-04-17T04:00:00.003-07:00

Jubilate Agno, Fragment B [For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry]

For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in
his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant
quickness.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For he purrs in thankfulness when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him, and a blessing is lacking in
the spirit.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.

--Christopher Smart

Monday Morning Lilies!

2012-04-16T04:00:00.000-07:00

Happy Monday!

Did you have a good weekend?

Hope the week ahead is fabulous.

Here are some yellow lilies to get it started!

If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.

--H.G. Wells

Lemon Cornmeal Cookies!

2012-04-15T04:00:00.002-07:00

Hello, My People!

I don't know about you, but I get a real charge out of cornmeal. It's corn. It's meal. It's cornmeal. It's sunshiny yellow and reeks of goodness and heartiness. I can't get enough of it and there just seems to be very few opportunities to use it in everyday life.

So, when I found a recipe for Lemon-Cornmeal cookies, I went a little cuckoo and made up a big batch for the office wing gang.

This is not the exact recipe I used. I used one that called for refrigeration of the dough for a whole six hours. However, this required delayed gratification which is not a character trait I care to exercise when it comes to any part of the cookie experience. My original recipe did not include ginger, but I think it sounds darn good.

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour (about 4 1/2 ounces)
1/3 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
6 tablespoons butter, softened
1 large egg
1 tablespoon grated lemon rind
Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350°.

2. Lightly spoon flour into a dry measuring cup, and level with a knife. Combine flour and the next 4 ingredients (through ground ginger); stir with a whisk. Combine sugar and butter in a large bowl, and beat with a mixer at medium speed until light and fluffy (about 5 minutes). Scrape sides of the bowl occasionally. Add egg; beat well. Beat in grated lemon rind. Add flour mixture to butter mixture, and beat at medium-low speed just until blended.

3. Spoon about 1 1/2 teaspoons batter 2 inches apart onto 2 parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake at 350° for 12 minutes or until lightly browned and almost firm. Remove from oven. Cool on pans for 2 minutes or until firm. Remove from pans. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Betty's final note: Being the demanding woman I am, I needed even more sweetness than this cookie originally gave me so I slathered on some icing.

Yow-Wow! These were good cookies. Hope you try them and enjoy them!

Betty Gets Her Brain Back

2012-04-13T04:00:00.003-07:00

Anyone who goes through a life event like a divorce will tell you that from the very beginning of the process, your life and brain are taken hostage for months.

You must go on with your life in some manner, but even as you work, pay bills, go shopping, take a shower, all the airspace in your head in consumed with the situation you must face.

It is as though there is a loud TV blaring in the back of your brain. The volume button is stuck on the highest setting and there is only one channel playing the same shows over and over again “Modern Divorce,” “Dancing With Divorce,” “Project Divorce,” “American Divorce,” “Divorce Road Show.”

You get the idea.

Many of the shows feature scenes from your own life—the night he left, the nice dinner you had just before he announced he was leaving, the conversations in the weeks leading up to his announcement that you didn’t pay attention to but now, too late, you do.

Re-runs, over and over again. In living color and at top volume.

And as the unwelcome, unstoppable television screams in the background of your life, questions like, “Can I make a life on my own? “How am I going to do this?” “What will my life be like?” "Will any one ever love me again?” dart all round in your cranium like crazed bats. Nocturnal, they are strongest at night, diving and swooping wildly, getting tangled up in the net of dreams.

You are, to put it nicely, quite the mess.

Scattered, fragmented, I was able to teach only because I had so much experience and because my classes were in one-hour segments with a lot of short exercises. I was able to grade, but only a few papers at a time. Conversations with friends were fine if they corresponded with the blaring TV and were about the divorce. Any other subjects, ones that required sustained thought were out. I just couldn’t focus or concentrate with the background noise in my head.

Reading has always been my refuge, my ticket away from reality and into other worlds. I had a stack of novels by my bedside I desperately wanted to read, but when I tried, the TV blasted out divorce news, reviews, and to-do lists, and I couldn’t concentrate. The only books I could read were about how to make it through a divorce. The authors of those books know their audiences; the chapters are usually about five pages long with bulleted lists and boxes to break up the text.

So, for months, you live with that TV on, with your calendar packed with meetings with lawyers, with accounts that have to be switched, with major decisions that have to be made.

You try to keep up with it all, running from your job to take care of all the details that must be taken care of.

Then one day, one very strange and emotional day, you sign your name on a line on some papers and as your pen reaches the end of that line, the final letter of your name pulls the plug of the blaring television from the socket in your brain.

It all stops. It all ends. There is no more to do. The television is silenced.

When that noise stopped in my own life, of course I was glad, but I was also surprised and stunned to find that it actually left a void in my life. Strange? Yes. But for seven months this process of divorce had hijacked my life. I had been forced into quick and sometimes frenzied action and then, it all stopped.

I was a little like someone getting out of prison. I was happy to be free, but also a little shaky. I was unsure of myself and what I would do with my life. I had hated every single minute of the divorce process and yet it had given me a purpose, things to do, places to be. When it was over, it left a space, it left time that I had to learn to fill. I no longer had the role of wife to fall back into and since my son had left for college, my role as mother had changed. For the first time in my life I lived alone.

I tried to get back to the things I loved like reading, baking, and writing, but it was hard adjusting to my “new old” life. Nothing clicked for me. Some nights I found myself at loose ends, just sort of wandering from room to room in this big house, waiting for bedtime. The bats still flew around my head, disrupting my thoughts when I attempted any activity requiring focus.

About three weeks passed and then one day I was at the bookstore café with a friend. It was a gloomy day outside, but the café was bright and cheery. We each had our warm drinks and were sharing a cookie. He was already engrossed in a book, so I picked one up from the stack on our table and before I knew it I was on page three.

That’s when I realized I was reading again. I was reading! My brain had been fully engaged with the page. It was such a familiar act, one ingrained in me from childhood, but one that I had feared my scattered brain and my shattered soul would never be able to enjoy again. And I was doing it!

I looked across the table and then across the café and saw other people reading too. It was amazing to be normal again. I wanted to jump up and shout, “I’m back! I’ve joined in again! I can read a book again!”

Of course, I didn’t.

Instead, I just smiled an incredibly wide and goofy smile at that friend (a certain very nice man) across the table, put my left hand on the stack of books between us, felt his hand over my hand, and went back to the book on my lap.

I went back to the quiet, solid, dependable, promising lines of print.

At that moment I felt ridiculously happy.