Thanks for all the well-wishes, guys! I'm not back up to 100% just yet, but I'm getting there. If only I could just stop coughing........ But anyways, it's MONDAY! And you all know what that means... The name of the game is "Make It Up Monday," and the rules are as follows:

So sorry that I have been remiss in my posting duties. Not only did my life go absolutely crazy with business this past week, but I also got sick and have been trying to quell the person who has decided to open the faucet attached to my nose on at full strength. Post nasal drip is a bitch, guys. At any rate, my fever has now broken, and I'm feelind well enough to post the winners for this past week's Make It Up Monday! Belle wrote... Mr. Lee's wife started menopause six months ago. He now sits beside his apartment building watching the traffic and people go by. He enjoys it so much he wishes she had acted crazy years ago.   M.A.S. wrote...      “You think he’s as old as he looks?” I asked her. “It’s a hard life out here. He’s probably thirty.”      “I think he’s a thousand years old,” she replied. “He’s as old as the earth.” There was something disturbingly cosmic in her tone.      “Sixty?” I tried not to let the concern squeak out in my voice. But it did.     

The name of the game is "Make It Up Monday," and the rules are as follows:

My grocery store has a bulletin board for customer thoughts, and I love seeing the emotion and the quirkiness in so many of the comments. Here are a few I jotted down in my ever-handy notebook: I adore the chicken pesto sausage. Please keep them until I die. Please put a Whole Foods Market in Tampa, FL. Why are your bathrooms always disgusting??? The decision to discontinue the sale of live lobster and crabs is RIDICULOUS etc...... So the 5 minute writing exercise is this: in one to two sentences, what might the following characters write on a customer comment card in your supermarket? a harried young mother with twin toddlers who suffer from an allergy a retired diabetic on a strict budget an avid amateur chef an avid and extremely adventurous and accomplished chef someone who just found out that the favorite TV show has been canceled someone who just found this morning that they have won a law suit, and the settlement will add to their already substantial fortune a strict

June 27 "Only the Top Ten Nouns" According to Oxford University Press researchers (view the article HERE ) the top 10 nouns in the English language are: Time Person Year Way Day Thing Man World Life Hand The exercise is this: write something --- anything -- that incorporates these and only these 10 nouns. 1,2,3, GO!!! Ok, folks... I'm going to need a little bit of time on this one. So I'm going to post this early in the morning and then work through this throughout the day, posting my response as an update at the bottom of this post sometime in the evening. If you'd like to do the same, go for it! The great thing is that, even though we're all using the same prompt, we're all going to come up with starkly different things. Exciting, eh?? So, go! Write! You're pulling out your pen and paper now, aren't you? ... Aren't you?? Good luck, and have fun! Peace. Stef.

Here are my lovely winners for this week's installment of "Make It Up Monday!" Our Life in a Caravan wrote... Margo and Tilly couldn't watch as Lucy made herself into the shape of a bike rack and awaited her first paying customer. The things that girl will do for money! King of New York Hacks wrote... FLATULENCE...Always has its ups and downs. (SIDE NOTE: I'm a sucker for a good fart joke.) e.gajd wrote... Let me just say that, well, I'm not sure how to say this. I love my sisters. But... Do you have sisters? No? Well, then you probably won't understand how I can write that 'I love my sisters, but... ' Let me start by saying, you can't tell by looking at them, but they're twins. Being twins means that they always seem to have a secret connection. Well, that is annoying enough, but even worse, they love to laugh. They laugh at just about everything. And always they laugh, together, usually just after they look at me and then at

This is an exercise in making up similes, that is, figures of speech comparing unlike things. For example, you might say, a cup of coffee is like a slap in the face. Or, a cup of coffee is like a cup of sludge. Or, a cup of coffee is like a hello from the donut. And so on. Come up with as many similes as you can for "a drink of cool water is like..." 1,2,3, GO! A drink of cool water is like ... a slap in the face after a long, hot day a refreshing foot massage... for your tongue? CPR an oasis in the middle of an arid desert a swift breeze right before a thunderstorm ... ... ... And I'm completely out of imagery. Does anyone else have any ideas? Peace. Stef. P.S. Sorry for the uber short post. Homework beckons, and I've procrastinated long enough.

The name of the game is "Make It Up Monday," and the rules are as follows:

This post is to honor those that were lost, those that saved the people in danger of being lost, and those that united this country in a time of panic and fear. I salute you. To my American readers, where were you when you found out about the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon as well as the crash of Flight 93?  If you're not from the US, when did you hear about it? What was your response? I was in 9th grade, and I was sitting in Study Hall when my Math teacher from 8th grade came in, her face grave, and turned on the overhead tv, explaining that the Two Towers in New York City had just been hit by two planes in attack against The United States. The country was in a state of panic and crisis, and I was, I admit this shamefacedly, calm. I wasn't in New York. I wasn't in Washington, DC. This didn't affect me. It wasn't until, in front of our very eyes, the south tower collapsed. The reporter that had been talking in the background of the program cr

An American who was resident in Paris for many years gives a tour of the local art museum to some friends who are mighty impressed. Write the scene with dialogue. Impression: soleil levant by Claude Monet Ah, le français...Je l'aime. Vraiment... :) I'm actually taking French right now, and it's been nice to get back into it. I haven't taken it in several years and have, as a result, forgotten some of the grammatical rules, etc. But anyways... Let's get on with it, shall we?

Once again, there were some really great responses, and I had a really hard time picking out the winners. BUT! I came across a few that I honestly couldn't not list as the winners, and there they are!

If you remember from my previous post, " Mr. Perfect Is Out There..., " I mentioned that I might write a little ditty about the fabled "Mr. Perfect." Well, the time has come, folks, for me to unmask Mr. Perfect (or Mrs. Perfect, depending on who you are). Who is he? What does he do? Why the hell is he so hard to find? Ahem. drumroll, please... Notice the little key coming out of his back. Ah, the perfect man... He doesn't exist. I know, I know. Gasps all around, right? I'm sure most of you are probably going to think, "Man, this chick is totally jaded." But I'm not, really and truly. I am simply a realist. We are taught from day one by the media and so on that our perfect mate is out there somewhere in this land of beauty and opportunity, but the truth is that there is no such thing as a "perfect partner" or a "soul mate." In the words of Snow White, "Someday my prince will come..." except, he

In  Dreaming By the Book , a path-breaking analysis of how novelists instruct us to form images in our minds as we read, Elaine Scarry devotes an entire chapter to stretching, folding and tilting. The exercise is this: In a dentist's office, what might stretch, fold, or tilt? Simply make a list of as many items as you can, and very briefly describe the way in which these stretch, fold or tilt. 1,2,3, GO! There is nothing good about the dentist's office. Absolutely nothing. You sit in the little waiting room while your ears are tortured with the sound of drills and crying children. They try to cover up the horror with cheesy muzak, but it can't possibly mask the sounds of pure evil going on behind the examining room doors. But that's not what this exercise is about. It's about stretching, folding and tilting... the scary chair, of course, folds and tilts the overhead light does all 3, and quite menacingly, I might add the mirror thingy that they stick in your

The name of the game is "Make It Up Monday," and the rules are as follows:

You see an odd-looking man in a bar in a strange town. He has a cat on his lap, and he orders a cup of coffee, slowly spooning sugar into it. He strokes the cat's black fur and says, "This contact is illusory. The cat and I are separated as though by a pane of glass, because man lives in time, in successiveness, while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant." What do you say back to him? And he to you? What does the cat do? What happened to this man before he came into the bar?  1,2,3, GO!

On Friday morning, everything was super normal and fun. I woke up at 7:45, took a shower, and ate breakfast: a Kellogg's breakfast bar. As I gathered my things for my class at 9am that day, I couldn't help but notice a slight tingling going on in my mouth. For some reason, my tongue was itchy. Odd... But it wasn't just itchy. Less than 20 minutes later, my tongue began to swell at an alarming rate. At first, I was just mildly disconcerted, but when I began to have a difficult time breathing I started to panic. So I hopped into my car and made my way to the Vanderbilt hospital emergency room.