athesaurus.com

…breathe deeply and often…

  • Summer Days

    Summer Days People ask me how I spend my summers. I have few human relatives near me, so Norris, Madam, and Opal Pearl are the immediate family. The true answer is I spend my summers doing whatever I want. I met two and a half goals this summer, and I rarely set goals. The first

    Read more

  • Collections

    Collections Inventory Dishes Antique furniture My journals Cats 2 Dog 1 Twins Lotsa boys Almost two books Two published things I’m in a writer’s permutation of life at the moment. I collect books about writing and writing advice. I have writing friends and their books. I go to writing conferences and groups. I write blogs,

    Read more

  • Defensive Secrets

    “You majored in theatre in college, in your twenties and thirties, you were active in community theatre and children’s theatre, you taught theatre, yet you never took your boys to a play or got them involved in theatre when they were little. Why is that?” the news anchor asked me. I had been expecting this

    Read more

  • Mom’s Roadtrip

    Mom lost her mind and married Roebuck. None of the kids could stand him, but she was entitled to her midlife crisis, same as anyone else. Since his house burned down on their first date, something about gunpowder gun cleaning equipment and an explosion, such a catastrophe, that they moved to Texas soon after they

    Read more

  • My Cloister

    Smile.  I biked to the cathedral in the spring. I was an overweight 40 year old American woman on a bike tangled in British traffic. The underpass near the roundabout before the cathedral was scary, traffic came from everywhere and all directions. I should not have survived the rides into town.  That’s the cloister walk.

    Read more

  • Dear Creativity

    Dear Creativity, It’s time we stopped piddling about and started dancing together. Since I was little, you’ve been working against me instead of with me. You and I have been out of time and one ingredient shy of success  since I was born, and you know it. You left me in the dust, or did

    Read more

  • “Turn in your papers.” “I’m not finished. You didn’t give us enough time,” said Jason. “You had two days to copy ten sentences correctly. That was enough time,” I said. “I wasn’t listening, that’s not fair. I’m calling my  mom,” said Jason. Pressure.  I wasn’t listening either.  I wasn’t listening half of the time when

    Read more

  • Leonard’s Top 10

    Leonard’s Top 10     My current favorite book is Elmore leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing. It might be my favorite. It has pictures. It is what a book should be. It is complete. It is auditory, visual, and kinesthetic, if you get the hardback, which I did. Twice. This book is special. My first copy

    Read more

  • I Can’t Sleep

    I Can’t Sleep written by: Devonne Brown @athesaurus1   I think. I thought. I have thoughts and prayers about this. I’m not brave. I can’t sleep over … I Can’t Sleep

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  • The Invitation

    Mania is an expensive disease of unspeakable joy. I missed a day of school and missed professional development trauma training with personal trauma self-care/ My world rocked. I took a sick day, ended up taking two without a fever. Sickness doesn’t always come with high temperatures, sometimes it looks like notions and I took one

    Read more

  • Testing

    he was “crushin’ on her bad. Read more

  • Zaftig Goddess

    Think Marilyn Monroe and the subway grate… Read more

  • Twirly Training

    You were flying…you didn’t need to fly into the rose bushes but you did fly. Read more

  • *Everlastingly-Updated

    “The mighty being is awake and doth with his eternal motion make a sound like thunder, everlastingly.” Wordsworth Read more

  • Take the Damn Trees Down Already

    I will never be mother, sister, friend, or decent human of the year because of stupid Christmas cards. Read more

  • Hope

    Moonlight Shadow, by Gabriele Corno I meant to get the chairs under the deck before winter came, I really did. I enjoy watching the ducks and geese on the pond so much that I just didn’t want to move the chair. My chair. I moved all the other ones under the deck, that should count Read more

  • Summer Days

    Summer Days People ask me how I spend my summers. I have few human relatives near me, so Norris, Madam, and Opal Pearl are the immediate family. The true answer is I spend my summers doing whatever I want. I met two and a half goals this summer, and I rarely set goals. The first

    Read more

  • Collections

    Collections Inventory Dishes Antique furniture My journals Cats 2 Dog 1 Twins Lotsa boys Almost two books Two published things I’m in a writer’s permutation of life at the moment. I collect books about writing and writing advice. I have writing friends and their books. I go to writing conferences and groups. I write blogs,

    Read more

  • Defensive Secrets

    “You majored in theatre in college, in your twenties and thirties, you were active in community theatre and children’s theatre, you taught theatre, yet you never took your boys to a play or got them involved in theatre when they were little. Why is that?” the news anchor asked me. I had been expecting this

    Read more

  • Mom’s Roadtrip

    Mom lost her mind and married Roebuck. None of the kids could stand him, but she was entitled to her midlife crisis, same as anyone else. Since his house burned down on their first date, something about gunpowder gun cleaning equipment and an explosion, such a catastrophe, that they moved to Texas soon after they

    Read more

  • My Cloister

    Smile.  I biked to the cathedral in the spring. I was an overweight 40 year old American woman on a bike tangled in British traffic. The underpass near the roundabout before the cathedral was scary, traffic came from everywhere and all directions. I should not have survived the rides into town.  That’s the cloister walk.

    Read more

  • Dear Creativity

    Dear Creativity, It’s time we stopped piddling about and started dancing together. Since I was little, you’ve been working against me instead of with me. You and I have been out of time and one ingredient shy of success  since I was born, and you know it. You left me in the dust, or did

    Read more

  • “Turn in your papers.” “I’m not finished. You didn’t give us enough time,” said Jason. “You had two days to copy ten sentences correctly. That was enough time,” I said. “I wasn’t listening, that’s not fair. I’m calling my  mom,” said Jason. Pressure.  I wasn’t listening either.  I wasn’t listening half of the time when

    Read more

  • Leonard’s Top 10

    Leonard’s Top 10     My current favorite book is Elmore leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing. It might be my favorite. It has pictures. It is what a book should be. It is complete. It is auditory, visual, and kinesthetic, if you get the hardback, which I did. Twice. This book is special. My first copy

    Read more

  • I Can’t Sleep

    I Can’t Sleep written by: Devonne Brown @athesaurus1   I think. I thought. I have thoughts and prayers about this. I’m not brave. I can’t sleep over … I Can’t Sleep

    Read more

  • The Invitation

    Mania is an expensive disease of unspeakable joy. I missed a day of school and missed professional development trauma training with personal trauma self-care/ My world rocked. I took a sick day, ended up taking two without a fever. Sickness doesn’t always come with high temperatures, sometimes it looks like notions and I took one

    Read more


  • Familiar Strangers

    “Do I know you?” they both asked simultaneously, then laughed. Susan stepped backwards two steps. That laugh of his was more familiar than his face and all the warmth and funny drained out of it. She didn’t like the way she felt at all. She held a smile on her face. Maybe it wasn’t him.…

  • The Appointment

    ***Warning! Trigger warnings. Contains thoughts of suicide and mental illness. Possible School Shootings. “Do suicide hotlines keep a record of who calls when and why?” Bob talked suicide over with the shrink at his last appointment.  “Probably,” she was taking fast notes on the computer as well as on the notepad beside her. Her soda…

  • Remembering Elouise on Her Birthday

    Elouise, tall and elegant, shrank to five foot nothing by the time she died at seventy-seven. Her youngest daughter, Dagmar, stayed all night with her the day before she died and dreamed of Grandma, Elouise’s mom, that night. She called me that morning to tell me all about it.  “I dreamed about Grandma last night,”…

  • Fin

    The sequel to Norris Tales is written, twenty-five thousand, one hundred nine words. Norris Lives. It’s a book of short stories and vignettes about Norris, the seventeen year old cat that I’ve fought and lived with for a long time. Hey, this is a big deal.  I have two more big deals to go, formatting…

  • Some thump

    “What the fuck? It’s three a.m. and my kitchen is as nasty now as it was when I fried chicken at noon today,” thought Tess. Something had woken her up out of a sound sleep. Some thump. “What the fuck?” She found the fuck passed out on the couch in the living room. How dare…