It was always ‘Gwynny and Nina’, short for Gwyndolin and Janina, since first grade. We’d become best friends and have stayed best friends throughout college and into our married lives. Although how long Gwynny will stay married will remain to be seen. It’s a troubled one, and due largely to Gwynny having turned into a real bitch.

The Doctor said, “Alas, but no,

The flu should now be done.

I suspect that it has slowly turned

Into an in-fec-ti-on.

For the next six days, you’ll need a shot

In your fleshy bum

As you wait to see what transpires -

You might want a shot of rum.”

Seven days ago, I woke up in the night with some powerful shivers

I felt I was riding an iceberg down many long rivers.

I was so cold my teeth chattered uncontrollably

And my body was shaking so bad I could hardly see.

What the hell, I thought, as the rapids grew worse

One of our heart-stopping Mexico adventures was when we decided to stay a night not far from the growing town of Bacalar, located on the lagoon side on the southern end of the coastal state of Quintana Roo, which is on the Caribbean side of the Yucatan Peninsula.

My husband Marty, our daughter Bella, and I had been traveling in our pick-up truck pulling our tiny RV along the southern coast of Mexico for a few weeks and had just come into Quintana Roo. We needed a place to stay for the night. In our ‘RVing in Mexico’ guidebook, we read about an RV park located down a dirt road just before Bacalar that had been dubbed ‘The Goat Farm’.

The feast we held was for our friend’s return

To our tropical home in wintertime, no fires to burn.

We go up north mid-spring, too hot here in the summer

We come back at winter; cause staying North’d be a bummer.

Our celebration of their return was going to be sublime

For we all felt the bliss in this wondrous tropical clime.

We had our table all set up with salad, lasagna and meat.

The smells were so darn good we wanted to plop in our seats.

"I thought that because both my wallet and phone were still missing, it was likely a somebody, not something, stole my things, and that made me feel very ill.”

I didn’t have very high expectations for the two-hour and fifty-five-minute musical, as I wasn’t a history buff like my husband, Marty. But we had heard many great things about it, and so I was eager to see what all the talk was about. I figured I could always doze off if the length got to be too much.

However, from the first few notes of the magnificent voices projected from the stage, the simple background settings, and the period-accurate — I imagined — costumes, I was hooked.

We thought we'd found our piece of paradise at an RV park in the tropics of the Yucatan; however, it didn't take long to realize that the 'paradise' part may be a myth.

“And so, when I heard a noise that woke me up, knowing that a bomb could go off and Clark wouldn’t hear it, I slowly opened my eyes to look around and was startled to see this huge man silhouetted in front of our opened patio doors.”

I don’t know why exploring an empty house excited me so much since I would likely never know who had lived there or any of its history. But I could make up all kinds of stories of a macabre nature to make the kids squeal in fright and even frighten myself to a point when we’d all turn and run out the door. At the time, it was a silly yet fun moment.

I looked out the window to check the atmosphere.

Was it misty, foggy, smoky or clear?

I wondered, upon arising that pre-dawn morn,

Knowing the smoke would make me feel quite forlorn

For those thousands of acres that had already burned

And breathing in smoke can be harmful, we’ve learned.

Unable to enjoy the outdoors this beautiful fall time...

Doing anything outdoors would be less than sublime.

The Pullman was jerked up from the corner.

"Oh, good God! What's this? I was happy living in my peaceful place in the attic. I didn't even mind the cobwebs. So now what? Nobody seems to want me unless there's a big trip coming up, and I'm getting too old for that. I'll likely be thrown around, shoved, and kicked, and will feel smothered until we stop if we're going by plane. I could be thrown atop a berth in a train car, which wouldn't be so bad. But I hope to God this won't be a road trip. I'll be dragged in and out, opened and closed a dozen times, getting no rest whatsoever, and I'll likely even land on some hard, sharp rocks covering some parking lot to a motel or at a campground. I really hate that."

I wrote this when I went back to college after my divorce several years ago, when feeling many different kinds of emotions about life at that time than I feel today, but this seems to make sense to me even now.

First of all, what is altruism? I have always understood it to mean that it is the practice of selfless or disinterested concern for the well-being of others or doing something for someone ‘just because.’

Once your creativity has taken hold and you feel good about the direction you are going, the hard part, all too often, then becomes when do I stop?

Picasso was credited as saying, “You’re never finished with a work of art, you just abandon it.”

That is true for me when I paint. It’s hard not to want to keep touching the paint, moving it around or adding more, which oftentimes ends up muddying the purer colors, and I think, why didn’t I just leave it alone?

The creative mind can be a blessing and a curse.

The 'blessings' are obvious, but the 'curse' comes when your mind conjures up so many magnificent ideas that it doesn't know where to begin with any of them.

From across the Pond, a friend came for some meetings

I said, stay with us, when I gave her our greetings.

I will watch your daughter, so lovely is she,

You’ll not have to worry about how she may be.

When Jasmin's attorney told the judge about the suit against her ex-boyfriend for unpaid money to her, Jasmin dabbed a tissue to her eyes.

Dear God! Here goes the theatrics. Helen murmured to herself then leaned into Will and whispered, "Do not look at her. She wants you to cave and feel sorry for her, just like the judge, but we both know it's just an act, right?"

Very pregnant Sara, riding the lumbering elevator to the 28th floor to her Midwife's office, had started contractions that morning and was both scared and excited. She glanced at the creeping numbers as she felt another stab of pain, wishing the elevator wasn't so slow.

Helen Richter studied her new client’s information carefully. She had a feeling about this man, Will Pliner, about him being a special kind of person. He was intelligent in his own way, but his kind heart was the big thing that drew her to him. He seemed not to have a harsh bone in his body.

Jasmin, one afternoon, knowing when the neighboring field workers would pass her house after finishing work for the day, timed her plan perfectly. After throwing gasoline on her house, she lit it on fire. She’d wanted the insurance money but didn’t want all her belongings to go up in smoke; thus, her evil-minded plan to have immediate help. When she saw the dust billowing on the dirt road from the vehicles heading toward her, she started screaming for help. She knew that when seeing a damsel in distress, as well as the smoke and the flames, the men would stop and assist. They did.