Pamela Foster's Blog, page 11

Remember the Sheepdogs.

Everybody and their trained dog is posting today, 9/11. Here’s my contribution to the internet chaos.

Remember watching those planes fly into those buildings? Remember the firemen, and the jumpers, and blood, and terror on the faces of the running people?

In the days after the attack, did you, like me, report an abandoned Hello Kitty backpack or study squinty-eyed fellow-passengers on a cross-country flight or two?

Okay. Go back to that day, sitting in your arm chair watching that blue, bl...

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Euripides Got it Wrong

Euripides wrote Greek tragedies, so it’s no surprise he opined:

“Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness.”

While I am known for my respect for old dead white guys, (yes, that was satire) Euripides is full of donkey crap.

Trouble is a given in life, while happiness takes me by surprise every time.

I crave witnesses for these miracles of joy. Oh, I’ve had more than my share of happiness occur when no one else was around to witness the event. Turtles hatching in the warm...

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Writing and Toads and Mermaids and Acrylics

I come from a long line of funny, haunted, creative, intelligent, crazy women.

My grandmother tamed the toads on her property. It was my joy when I visited to feed them trapped flies. She traveled all over the country, in a time when women did not do that kind of thing alone, selling her chicken teapot cozies and rooster potholders and hand-quilted place-mats. Grandma also binge drank and had weeks where she was simple not available.

Nothing is simple, or all good, or all bad in my famil...

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Somersaults

I’ve spend most of the last few weeks in the final edits of two books. Two books. That’s kind of a big deal. My Life with a Wounded Warrior, a collection of personal essays about living with and loving a man with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Clueless Gringos in Paradise, a funny romp with this same warrior and me on our re-location to Central America with two humongous PTSD service dogs.

You’d think I’d be proud of my accomplishments, wouldn’t you? I’ve set things up so that a fe...

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Fear and Granny Panties

Fear.

This weekend I’ve done a lot of thinking about fear. C. Hope Clark spoke at Ozark Writers League in Branson, Missouri on Saturday. Hope opened her talk on The Shy Writer by asking us to write down our three biggest fears. I understand from Kim and Duke Pennell and Linda Apple and a host of other people I sat beside in that auditorium, that the rest of Hope’s talk was wonderful.

Personally, I have no idea. I spent the entire morning trying to come up with my three fears. I raised t...

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Vacation vs Travel

The other day a friend made the observation that vacations seldom live up to our expectations. We more often return having spent three times as much money as we planned, being disappointed by nearly every planned event, and end up shaking our heads and vowing that next year we’ll stay home and sleep in and relax in the comforts of our own home.

That got me thinking.

As Dad used to say, ah oh, smell the smoke. I still have no idea what that means, but like so much else from my childhood,...

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Love is Patient and Kind. And this is a major challenge.

A pastor had a church member, let’s call him Paul, who ran a concrete business. You know, sidewalks, foundations, patios, whatever. And this Paul loved young people. He taught Sunday school and was always right there with the donation for camps and field trips and whatnot. So, one day the pastor happens to be meeting someone near a project Paul’s working on, and the pastor drops by to see this loyal and generous member of his congregation.

Well, the pastor can hear Paul yelling before he...

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Free Advice. Worth Every Nickel.

Every day, every single freaking day, I receive between four and eight emails from people eager to share with me their expert opinions about marketing my book. Go ahead, Google it. Type in–How to market your book. Bookmark this post first so that, ten years from now, when you’ve finished reading all the helpful information, you can click your way back here.

When I was a kid my mom would shake her head at me and say, “Well, Pamela, as usual, you’re as happy as if you had good sense.”

Li...

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Horny Resurrected

My sister, Vickie, and I had a lot of strange animals when we were growing up. The usual assortment of dogs and cats, of course, but also a porcupine named Ouch, a gray squirrel with long yellow teeth, rabbits that periodically disappeared as though lifted up into heaven. The night after one such bunny assumption, my sister lifted the fried leg of an oddly configured hen in the air over her head and announced, “If this is a chicken, he was kneeling.”

My point is, we had a lot of peculiar...

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Big Brass Ones

Friends are fond of asking me to teach a class on how to grow balls. Which is silly, because all it takes to be honest and straight-up is to not give a damn.

Well, okay, let me qualify.

I love my friends and my family. Spending time with them, wallowing in their love, brings me joy and peace and fun and provides lots of funny stories at their expense. But, if I’m not ME, if I hold back and second guess and fret that I’ll hurt their feelings, well then. . .is it really ME they love?

So, t...

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