Stephanie Verni's Blog, page 104

Conversations With My Children

I was spring cleaning and stopped. My mother had called to say there was white smoke coming from the Vatican. I turned on the news and sat to watch. We are practicing Catholics, and at some point we’ll stop practicing and do it for real. In the meantime, I watched with excitement as the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square, goosies appearing all over my arms as I couldn’t help but get into the spirit. Who would be the new [...]

Thank You Time

My friend, Amy Nelson, got me feeling sentimental this morning with her post about nostalgic songs…So…This is a long overdue thank you to those of you who’ve helped, followed, and supported all my crazy endeavors over the last couple of years. Thanks to you, we’ve reached over 3,000 followers of the blog, and have received over 67,000 hits on The Scribe in addition to almost 39,000 hits on my dear friends’ international magazine website at Paperblog. I’ve met some cool [...]

My Hands Look Old

You can’t always tell how old a woman is by her face, but you can tell how old she is often by her hands. Hands don’t lie. In the winter, my hands look much older than they do in the summertime. They are dry and white and flaky. They need to be moisturized constantly. I miss my summertime hands. My summertime hands are tanned and glowing. My jewelry looks good on them, especially my new ring and my Michael Kors [...]

Why I Write, Part III, The Finale

One of my favorite authors is Kate DiCamillo. She writes beautiful, lyrical stories that you generally find in the young adult section of book stores. Her stories are somewhat mystical, and despite that her stories are geared to children through young teens, I believe they are wonderful stories for all ages. I recently watched a video of her where she was talking about becoming a writer. She mentions that she walked around for 10 years wearing the uniform of a [...]

Why I Write, Part II

“The rain was beating down hard, hitting the awnings over the kitchen windows. The leaves of our old magnolia tree were drenched and wilting. I wished I could afford a place of my own. My parents had been kind enough to let me stay with them until I save enough money to buy something, but I was beginning to feel anxious. But this I knew for sure—that my house would be just as cozy as my parents, and in the [...]

WHY I WRITE, Part I

George Orwell started it. His famous piece, “Why I Write,” has inspired writers of all walks of life to talk about whey they write. I’ve never done this before, and on this snowy day, I decided to take a little time to critically analyze why I write, the process, and why I enjoy doing it. It’s been something I’ve wanted to take the time to do, and after speaking about this very topic yesterday with one of my students, I [...]

Accepting the Versatile Blogger Award Today

Today, I am once again happy to accept an award given to me by Mandy Eve Barnett. She has kindly bestowed The Versatile Blogger Award to Steph’s Scribe, and I am grateful. Visit Mandy at MandyEveBarnett’sBlog by clicking here. She is a writer who sees the world in glorious ways. On her blog, she states that her writing is “drawn from the essence of several continents, which have left a trace of their essence on my soul. The heat and [...]

Lost In The Details —Weekly Photo Challenge

I really liked what Christopher Martin had to say in today’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge. As an amateur photographer, with a keen interest is “seeing things in spectacular ways,” I am drawn to using my camera as a tool in creativity. I am only 5’1″, so I tend to shoot low to high anyway (I’m coming back in my next life as a tall person), plus I like to play with angles. Here are four shots whereby I got completely [...]

Nostalgia

Reblogged from steph's scribe: Have you ever experienced one of those freaky moments where you ransack the bins you have in storage, the ones that house collections from your previous life, with previous friends and lovers, looking to see what you considered worthy of saving? There's the high school box, the college box, the "when I was a small child" box, the wedding box, the "I had my first kid box," all jammed into a room that houses items you [...]

A Comedy of “Goofy” Errors

We should have known better. We should never have taken the second trip. Our first vacation had been so amazing—everything ran like clockwork and all had been right with the world—why did we tempt fate? Because we were glutton for punishment. Like all seemingly well-meaning parents, we decided to take our kids BACK to Disney, because, well, once was not enough. And so we ventured back in the month of May because it suited our schedules. We had taken our [...]