The second of my three goal words for 2009: self-trust. This one is very tricky to get right. Go overboard on self-trust and you're cocky (ugh!). Too little and you never get anywhere. Just the right amount, and you have can-do-ology and destuckification galore. (Oooh, galore">galore--there's a yummy word for you!)


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College students may consider Facebook an amusing distraction (see Alice Mathias’s take on what she refers to as Fakebook), but for me it has been an unexpected breath of friendly fresh air. I am a member of what Mathias calls the “rapidly assembling adult population” convinced that Facebook “is a forum for genuine personal and professional ( Read more... )

For many, many months I thought I didn't have anything more to write about. I had nothin'. I missed Leona fiercely. And then there's menopause and really bad seasonal affective disorder and no energy and everything is pretty much just blah. It's been a rough year. But I'm here and still swinging. And ready to let my fingers do the keyboard dance ( Read more... )

My wonderful kitty, Leona, who has been my constant companion for the last 17 years (she's 20 yrs old) will be put to sleep tomorrow. We've had a rich, loving time together. She and I have been together longer than we've lived in Madison and longer than Tom and I have been together. She's such a fixture in my life that I'm not sure I'll know ( Read more... )

What's in a name? Quite a lot, as a matter of fact. For most of my life I have either loathed or completely ignored my middle name: Marjorie. Yup. That's me in all my fullness: Mary Marjorie Ray Worley. Marjorie was my father's twin sister, and my feelings about my name have been all tied up in how I feel about my aunt and how I feel about my body.
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I was born the fourth out of three children on August 5, 1956. Family legend has it that I was to have been a Fourth-of-July baby, so my mother and I didn’t get off to a very good start, seeing as how I wasn’t supposed to have been born in the first place and then I wouldn’t even cooperate enough to show up when expected. My reputation for ( Read more... )