Living Proof

Why are you staring at me? What do you want? You beg me for words; yet your cursor blinks at me as though it’s tapping its fingers on a table. You wait for any thought to come pouring out on you; any memory to come tumbling onto your page. You expect my opinionated mind to overbear you with words that may seem controversial. You haunt me. You make me feel guilty for leaving you alone; leaving you with only a shade of white. It’s my blank mind vs. your blank page. I got nothing. Three quarters into my second book, and I run out of fuel. Did the story end? Do I leave you here with just the remains of what’s been done? Incomplete. The word that sometimes describes my life. The incomplete book just reminds me of so many unfinished projects. Isn’t that a sign of bi-polar disorder? I think it’s one of the side effects of having A.D.H.D. as well. I’ve been over-diagnosed and overly sensitive to everything and anything. Incomplete. Let’s go back to that word that explains so much. What’s missi...

Saturday evening, my girlfriend and I went to go see our good friend Alyssa play with her new band. She was formerly a member of Replica . Alyssa is a talented musician, plays guitar and has a voice that is comparable to Janice Joplin, Melissa Etheridge and Joss Stone. We walked into the place, and to my surprise, they were all set up and ready to go—two hours before they were supposed to play. She has three other talented men playing with her. There’s a keyboardist, a lead guitarist, a bass guitarist and drummer, plus Alyssa playing acoustic and electric---which she switches, to suit any particular song. The band also interacts with the audience, making them even more entertaining. They had people getting up to dance, and had the whole bar practically mesmerized by their performance. Usually, when I go out to see a band, everyone is doing their own thing, and not paying attention to the stage. This was quite different. I'm very proud of Alyssa who came a long way to get where she...

“Deb, let’s go see your sister today.” “Okay, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” “We’re only going to her house; you don’t have to dress up.” “Ma, I’m in my pajamas working. Let me go get dressed.” I quickly scrambled into the bathroom to take one of those ~quick--get the hell outa’ here~ showers. I dried off, threw on an old sweat shirt and a pair of jeans with a huge scarf. It was cold outside! I smeared a glob of foundation on my face, so it didn’t appear as though I just woke up from the dead. I also had to draw my eyebrows in. Yes, you read that correctly. I am one of those ‘over pluckers’, where I have to fill in the blanks. If I leave my house without drawing some sort of line where my eyebrow used to be, I will be without expression. Or look like a white version of Whoopi Goldberg. Seriously. When my mother and I got to my sister’s new house that she and her boyfriend just purchased, we got to see the grand tour. It was beautiful, very large, but warm— not cold looking at all...

Don’t even try to pick a bone with me. I fell. It was hard to maintain a long period of time without my alcohol. Am I frustrated? Yeah, somewhat. I’m kind of relieved in a way, due to my persistent ‘look out’ of not falling off the little red wagon. “Hmm. I can’t go there, because that’ll tempt me to have a glass of wine. Hmm. I can’t go there either, because they all throw back a few beers when they hang out.” My favorite time of the day is around 3pm. I’m done working. I usually have a light lunch around this time, and enjoy a glass of red wine. It calms me down, and I destress automatically. While I was on this ‘no drinking rule’, I would make myself some green tea and try to relax. Somehow it didn’t do the trick. Not only because it wasn’t wine, it’s due to the fact that green tea has caffeine in it. More caffeine and less alcohol--I wasn’t pleasant to deal with. My mind is constantly going. Thoughts of ‘what ifs’ ran through my brain more than ever. Back in the day, I mean hundre...

No fly—no shoot zone at the White House has been tampered with. By what? As they officials say, “An unidentified plane”, which somehow was a ‘blip’ on their radar that magically disappeared and was no longer detected. On May 12th, 2005, this is exactly what happened. Officials sprawled all over the area like wildfire in case they needed to shoot down the aircraft, in case it was terrorists. The scare was brief, and so was the ‘hype’. No one ever talked about it after that day really. President Bush was rushed to an underground bunker. How do they know it was a plane? How does a plane flying near the white house get undetected and lost? “Oh it was just a plane flying too close to the grounds of the white house.” End of story. Was it really 'just a plane'? Or was it something else that government is keeping from us? Back in 1965, witnesses saw an unidentified object flying over the western part of Pennsylvania. It appeared to have crashed in that area. The military rushed out and...

Another editing blunder? Editing has the same letters as dieting. They both suck. Just when I thought my book was on the press, my editor calls me up to explain that there were formatting errors. Okay, so it wasn’t an editorial blunder, it was a formatting issue. Fine. Eight whole hours fixing corrections, and another eight long hours of Madelene proof reading was another fiasco. Don’t editors do these things? They want approval from the author. Go with it! Take it—leave me alone now! I was getting so frustrated that I almost said, “Listen, I’ll just blog the fricken book.” I decided not to get upset or angry, and let these agitated feelings subside. I sent the book on its way to my editor for the final revisions that needed to be fixed. I said a prayer and let the book fly. Yesterday, at 1pm, I decided that my day is officially over. “Ma? Let’s go out to lunch, my treat.” “Really? Great. Come down in an hour or so.” We headed off to the place I used to bartend at. We sat down at the b...

Even as a child, I always created music. I picked up my sister’s big acoustic guitar, and started strumming a bunch of nothingness at the age of four. When I started going to school, I dabbled into other instruments, playing saxophone, keyboards and then eventually the drums. I was in the school band, playing my saxophone by ear. I couldn’t read music. It was all Greek to me. My love was the guitar. My mother always bought me those little toy guitars, but I always broke them in half somehow, and begged for another one. I was more interested in an electric guitar back then. I was ten years old at the time. One Christmas morning, my mother brought out this huge box wrapped up in a red bow. It was my very first guitar. Then she came out with another big box, which was the amplifier. That was it! I didn’t want to open another present. I rushed to the outlet to plug this thing in, and started playing horrible music. I remember my sisters all looking over and hearing their thoughts ---“Ugh, ...