{Originally Published on BHJ}

I’m in no hurry. You know that guy on the highway? You can’t get into the left lane because it’s a swarm of caffeinated speedsters and you’re trapped behind some fool going 5 under. That’s me. Good morning.

I had a friend. Skip. Every time we parted, without fail, he’d say “Take it slow”.

My path to work winds through a cluster of yawning mountains. Just before the sun rises, the top, just the bare tip, of the jagged horizon’s all lit with the glow of a faint orange hum that aches to be something – looks like the mountains are about to have a big idea, like something’s about to happen. You know what I mean? You know that weird feeling you get when something’s about to go down? Your kid is walking with a glass of juice. A man stares too long at a woman’s purse. You take the first drink. Something’s about to happen.

There’s a subtle negotiation between the black sky of last night and the sleepy orange morning waiting for its time. A deep staggering blue, stumbling, confused. Sometimes it’s blood purple. In some vague space between words, it doesn’t know what it is. But it’s not bothered by this. It’s in no hurry.

I may have missed my calling as a cab driver. Can you imagine? I would look in my rear view, check out my passengers, write little stories about their pasts and futures. That guy. He keeps checking his watch and calling someone who doesn’t answer. I’m taking him to a part of town where only a couple things happen. The crying lady. Going to the airport. And those two, kissing, groping, wearing wedding rings that don’t match. Everyone’s going somewhere. They start out here. I take them there. But me? I spend my days in between. Lingering between what just went down and what’s waiting to happen.

{Originally posted on Slouching Past 40.}

Carol was prissy.

Years of living alone had cemented the fact. Without Charlie around to raise his eyebrows, a bit mockingly but largely affectionately, she’d begun to give in to some of her more obsessive tendencies — like taking Charlie’s shirts to the dry cleaners every so often so that they wouldn’t smell dusty. She could not abide that smell of disuse. Or washing the car once a week, even if she’d used it only once, when she’d had to take Penfield to the vet for his shots.

Charlie had brought levity to her table, that’s why she had married him, and without him, she’d grown rigid. A prankster, Charlie had been, and though now and then his immaturity had caused her to throw up her hands, secretly she adored it. He’d always made her feel young, and light.

Until that evening in September when he’d groaned at the dinner table. Thinking he was joking — he always was! — Carol rolled her eyes and issued her standard, “Oh, Charlie.” But for once he wasn’t fooling around. He died right there, still in the middle of eating his pie, and only fifty-six years old. When Carol flashed on the scene, she didn’t see Charlie. She saw his pie, and the forlorn way Mrs. Smith’s apples sat on the plate never failed to make her weep, even now, almost a decade after Charlie’s passing.

She was in the supermarket inspecting eggs for cracks when Charlie’s unfinished pie came to mind. The image, unbidden, unwelcome, still so vivid, flustered her. With trembling hands she picked up egg carton after egg carton but couldn’t find one that had twelve perfect eggs, eggs without fissures or breaks, eggs that didn’t look half-eaten like Charlie’s pie — damn him, couldn’t he have just finished that pie? She was breathless and red in the face when she felt someone behind her. She turned to find a seventy-something man, his beard and hair salt-and-pepper, his eyes bright and mischievous, his physique not trim, exactly, but no worse than her own.

{Originally posted on Schmutzie.com}

Over one year later, I am still discovering the shape of my grief over the loss of my uterus.

I miss a thing I could never see. I have no documentation of its existence. It does not show up in family photo albums. My clothing fits as it did before the surgery. I never touched it with my hands. I cannot trace its outlines in pictures or where it is no longer on my body.

The only evidence that it was ever here is a pregnancy test that I keep pushing to the back of the bathroom cupboard behind the cleaning supplies.

I do not like that it was cut up into tiny pieces and vacuumed out of me. I do not like that it became medical waste. No part of any body should be made into medical waste. Our bodies hold far too much power, far too much meaning, to be so degraded.

I am angry that I could not take it with me, that I could not find my own place to put to it to rest. I hate not knowing where its pieces are. I imagine it having its own sapling beneath which it could rest and feed its growth. I need to imagine it being less alone.

The shape of this grief is little more than a chronological line between two points, from there to here. It has yet find its flesh.

The chocolate-smudged face of Blog Nosh Magazine is in the process of changing. For the better. We are loosening our belt to make room for more delectable goodness, and eyeing some snazzy new pants with an elastic waistband.

In other words, the response to our call for new channels and new Channel Editors has been overwhelming and we are moving forward with a move to WordPress, complete with a new layout and easier navigation.

Look for the relaunch of Blog Nosh Magazine the second week of September. In the meantime, I’d like to introduce you to one of the new editors we brought in before the open call and are eager to see what she will bring to the table:

Deb on the Rocks!

Okay, it sure seems like we keep bringing women in and still no men, but they are coming. Speaking of coming, let’s talk more about Deb. wink wink

(click title for more)

Less than two months in and Blog Nosh Magazine is growing by leaps and bounds, all thanks to you! In the pipeline, we have a very exciting site redesign with ease-of-navigation in mind, new channels (including Race & Ethnicity, Travel & Expats, and Personal Finance), dynamic new editors with even more diverse perspectives, and much more.

Today may be one of the biggest turning points for us, though, as we proudly announce that we are opening to private advertising! And for a very good reason:

Blog Nosh Magazine will soon introduce a quarterly print publication to complement our daily online magazine!

What serious blogger doesn’t dream of seeing their name in hard copy? Now is your chance.

Grab your piece of the pie!

One of the key elements of Blog Nosh Magazine is timeless content. As such, we plan to offer a quarterly literary magazine perfect for casual browsing-over-coffee-n-scones or in-depth reading during your daily (ahem) personal time. The ideal coffee table magazine that you can keep for years, so to speak.

Blog Nosh Magazine begs to have crumbs scattered across its pages, don’t you think? We do and we welcome you to be part of making this happen as an advertiser on www.blognosh.com!

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Hey, why no new posts today?

Because you didn’t send us any!

Okay, not really. This was an oversight on my part caused by distraction due to some major changes we are working on for Blog Nosh Magazine. Sorry about that. I really need some help…

Hey, you! Help me out! Blog Nosh Magazine thrives by your submissions so take a look at your archives and send us your best posts! We receive dozens of submissions a month, but it takes dozens of dozens of submissions to keep our pantry fully stocked.

Choose a couple of your best blog posts, browse through our editors for one to submit your work to in the appropriate channel, follow the instructions on our Publication Guidelines page, and SUBMIT! If you have trouble choosing an editor, you can send your posts directly to me, but be sure to include all of the requested information, particularly which channel for which it is intended.

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Blog Nosh Magazine has been live for exactly one month today. One month! Look at all that we’ve accomplished in one month. All the blogs we’ve introduced to new readers, all the new genres we’ve explored. It has been a spectacularly satisfying launch and I have no one to thank but you.

Thank you to our readers.
Thank you to our bloggers.
Thank you to our editors.

The way Blog Nosh Magazine works is that our channel editors scour the blogs in their genre and choose the most moving or entertaining or enlightening posts in the archives of those blogs. The hardest part is learning to click beyond the front page of a blog. That is, perhaps, the hardest part of reading blogs for all of us. Taking the great leap into the archives.

Then again, as a blogger, one of the hardest things is to convince our readers that we are more than our front page. That perhaps those posts we wrote in the first week of our blog’s existence are just as valuable as the posts we write today. More interestingly, perhaps those old posts are also the most true. You never know.

We change as writers with every post we publish. It is, at the very least, interesting to shed light on our archives from time to time. Whether we do it through the “favorite posts” sections of our sidebars, the self-backlinks within the context of our posts, or by allowing publications such as Blog Nosh Magazine to focus the spotlight for you.

Thank you to the 44 bloggers that have allowed us to shine the spotlight on their work in this, our first month of Blog Nosh Magazine.

Although we only published her yesterday, allow me to share with you the story behind the process of spotlighting just one of those 44 bloggers…

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Originally posted on Blogging Sueblimely

Words of wisdom from the world’s greatest thinkers are timeless
providing advice which is as relevant now as when first spoken. All of
these quotes could easily be applied to blogging:

Advice for Bloggers

1. They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. Carl W. Buechner
2. When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion. Dale Carnegie
3. Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It
   is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense. Ralph Waldo Emerson
4. The ability to speak eloquently is not to be confused with having something to say. Michael P. Hart
5. My opponent can compress the most words into the fewest ideas of anyone I’ve ever known. Abraham Lincoln
6. Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. Rudyard Kipling
7. You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. Albert Einstein
8. I don’t let my mouth say nothin’ my head can’t stand. Louis Armstrong

Research Tips

1. First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak. Epictetus
2. Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not
   believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do
   not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your
   religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of
   your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they
   have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and
   analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is
   conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and
   live up to it. Buddha

Writing Tips

1. What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. Samuel Johnson
2. Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they
   will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above
   all, accurately so they will be guided by its light. Joseph Pulitzer

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