A toast

As a writer, I’ve come to understand the reality of cliches. As a writer, you try to stay away from them. However, there’s a reason situations become a cliche–there’s some truth to them. That’s how I felt the week before my wedding. One. Big. Cliche. I was a stressed-out-bridezilla. There are so many meticulous details [...]

The preamble to proposal

This was something I wrote a few months ago when Jon and I first returned from Oregon. It’s remarkable how things grow:) MARRIAGE TALK We have now talked about marrying one another more so than I have with any other suiter….combined. This morning we discussed what weddings meant to both of us while nibbling on [...]

God speaks through a wasp

I sat on this random pew in the hallway near the receptionist’s office at the Jesuit Spirituality Center. I was here on a women’s day retreat with my mother and aunt. The first lecture talked about acceptance and how to cultivate happiness. I had just finished my first week of teaching curriculum and some of [...]

Saintly Faith

I wrote a few entries ago about how I’m trying to understand my own version of faith. There are a few recent situations that have caused maturation in this process. The first occurred on December 7, 2009 when my second niece, Catherine Grace Marcotte, was born. My sister Meggan was diagnosed on October 10 (our [...]

Drifting through memories

I have sat in a cubicle for four months. Like the song “Little Boxes” on “Weeds,” I feel like I’m made of ticky-tacky and we all look just the same. I have drafts for three children’s books. I have more ideas than time to make any of them happen. And somewhere in the Internet, I [...]

Vegas. Day 2

SO I woke up and tried to remove the stick from my derriere and thought to myself, “I’m in Vegas, let’s have some fun.” Fun turned into us eating breakfast at McDonald’s because that was the cheapest place in our hotel. For $3 I got coffee, a parfait and apples. Not too bad. We didn’t [...]

The Grand Canyon…or the Glorious Conversion

We woke up like it was any other day How was I supposed to know I would be changed today? The drive was an hour and a half to the Grand Canyon. We drove through mountains of lush pine trees and entered the south end of the park. I was really surprised to see so [...]

OKC Memorial

When I said I was in Oklahoma City, almost everyone I talked to asked if I had visited the memorial. Honestly, I had completely forgot about the bombing of April 19, 1995. I was really in the capital to visit Kayla. She had never been to the site either, so we decided our last day [...]

Subject to Change

Sunday morning began with service at the OKC Unitarian church. The only masses I normally attend are in Catholic churches and this was definitely a different type of ceremony. The church itself is quaint and old. The walls were stark white and absolutely bare, unlike my normal affiliation with statues and crucifixes. The order of [...]

Elise: Graduation

Everything is not as it seems. I had all of these expectations about what would happen at graduation. The graduation ceremony was classic. All 142 graduates of the college of General Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette seemed to be on the professional student / Van Wilder track. As soon as we marched [...]

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.