Widow Rings

 (Save it, Baby! Count me in!)

So, it goes like this . . .

 

When I became a widow five years ago, I too, was very confused.  After a long while, I decided to wear my ring around my neck on a thin black ribbon.  The ribbon was from a present that my kids gave me from a packaged candle “to help me light the way.” 

Poetic.

Then after another long while, I took the ring off entirely.  When that time came, it sort of released me.  And at that time it felt good. Someday it will feel good for you, too.

Breathe out.  Breathe In. Take one step. Then, another.

Be well,

Belle

S. Belle Karper, Author, Speaker www.BelleKarper.com
THE WIDOW WEARS BLACK – An Edgy Memoir from an Outspoken Survivor
Check out S. Belle Karper’s – Beauties and Beasts – Blog! Baby! Blog!
Belle Karper Face Book & the popular Twitter-Belle – all on Website
Save it, Baby! Count me in!

Sweep me off my feet, please . . .

 (Save it, Baby! Count me in!)

So, it goes like this . . .

 

I feel for you friends that are out there.

You wish that someone great would come along and sweep you off your feet, right?

Well, some days there is just no feet-sweeping. I hate to tell you, but some days are just full of stinky feet.

Men and women alike, I think ultimately, want to find that special someone regardless of whether they have been single most of their life or married. I wish I had good news to report but I don’t. Sometimes you think that you’ll meet some special someone, and then you don’t hear from them and you don’t know why. You didn’t hear from him yesterday, no phone call, no future plans.

Do you want to give up on the fairytale?

Heck no, kids! Persistence, man. You have got to be relentless.

Meeting someone is about as tiring as a full-time job. It’s a numbers game. You may be tempted to compare the people that you met with someone in your past.

Is it right, or fair? To the other person? To you? Would you really want to do the same thing over when you have this second, third, fourth, fifth, seventieth chance? Aren’t there some things that you ultimately want to change? I know it may have seemed perfect in the past, but maybe it was just perfect because it sits in the past. We have a way of idolizing things that we can’t touch anymore.

I understand this, because I am a widow.

I can’t touch my past. They are times when I look at it and I wonder, I really wonder, if it was as perfect as my memory paints it.

And, I have to tell you, that the past was full of wonderful times, but the past was also full of dirty socks, occasional bad breath, and moments when you just wish that you were somewhere else.

So, when you go on the next coffee date with a potential Mr./Ms. Wonderful, give fate a chance.

Let your toes dance on an unknown path of love.

Try someone new, something new, and maybe it won’t be the same as before, but singing in harmony with someone can be awfully pleasing.

Keep shooting for the goal . . . but in the meantime, just enjoy the game.

Keep those cards and letters coming!

Be well,

Belle

S. Belle Karper, Author, Speaker www.BelleKarper.com
THE WIDOW WEARS BLACK – An Edgy Memoir from an Outspoken Survivor
Check out S. Belle Karper’s – Beauties and Beasts – Blog! Baby! Blog!
Belle Karper Face Book & the popular Twitter-Belle – all on Website
Save it, Baby! Count me in!

Taboo – A Memory from the Dominican Republic

I saw her looking out from the doorway.

She’s young. Yes, very young. Too young for her job, for sure.

The little kids — brothers and sisters — run in the front yard. Pounding the dry dirt into their souls. The kicking the blue ball, and then hitting it with a broken stick. Someday they will be working, too. But, they don’t know it. Not yet.

She is barely older than they are, yet she has work to do. Her parents prepare her. She is, after all, the breadwinner for the family.
Her 13-year-old face is made to look twenty. The only money the family had was invested in her makeup, bought from the local farmacia. They apply a carefully, not to waste it. She has to work tomorrow, you know.

She’s leaning against the door jam. Eyes, bright only with the blue shadow on her lids. Otherwise, lifeless.

No mascara, though. Mascara is a luxury. Too expensive. Maybe next week with the money she makes. Rouge. Yes, rouge to make her cheeks look becoming.

But, most importantly her lipstick. So red. Her lips lay limp upon her face.

Her eyes looked down, as her ride drives up. Yes, it is time to work another night. Time to work another night of this so-called love.

S. Belle Karper, Author, Speaker
www.BelleKarper.com
THE WIDOW WEARS BLACK – An Edgy Memoir from an Outspoken Survivor
Check out S. Belle Karper’s – Beauties and Beasts – Blog! Baby! Blog!
Twitter-Belle – all on Website

BEA New York City 2009 – Installment 2

Hello again Dahhhhlings!

When here’s another entry on the BEA that happened in New York City just a couple weeks ago. I just wanted to give you a rundown of the conference schedule everything began at 8:30 AM like I told you novelist Karin Slaughter gave a beautiful keynote address.

That was followed by our first breakout session that started at 9:30 AM. These panels included:

1. The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass — he spoke about learning techniques to master exceptional impact for your novel writing. These things included how to build captivating heroes, action scenes and the use of micro-tension. He spoke about having passion on every single page. He is releasing his new book by the same name as the panel name above.

2. Putting Flesh on the Bones: How to Write Great Gharacters by N. M. Kelby — this was a panel that was handled by the famous author that has just recently written the Constant Art of Being a Writer due out in September 2009. This panel was created so that you will be able to write memorable characters that your potential editors will love and your readers devour.

3. Get Known Before the Book Deal: a platform primer by Christina Katz. Becoming visible is almost a necessity when landing a book deal anymore, agents and editors expect this in every expertise of the publishing industry her book, known by the same name, issue insight on how to create a successful platform.

4. DIY Publishing: how to publish yourself for greater exposure and success by Jane Friedman. Online community publishing models are free and easy to use, she says, and can help your career began easier than ever. She spoke about popular websites and tools and how to use them in real time.

5. Ask the Editors Panel: several authors brought their questions about writing and publishing to the table for these experts to express their views on. Panelists included Chuck Sambuchino, editor of Guide to Literary Agents;, Alice Pope, editor of Children’s Writers and Illustrators Market; and Jessica Strawser, editor of Writer’s Digest magazine.

That’s it for now, Darlings! Sorry that you missed such a wonderful event, but I thought that this might just give you an idea as to what happened during that time.

Maybe we’ll see each other there next year!

Keep those cards and letters coming!

Be well,

Belle

S. Belle Karper, Author, Speaker www.BelleKarper.com
THE WIDOW WEARS BLACK – An Edgy Memoir from an Outspoken Survivor
Check out S. Belle Karper’s – Beauties and Beasts – Blog! Baby! Blog!
Twitter-Belle – all on Website

Ouch . . . Nail Guy

So here I am, sitting in my nail salon having my nails drilled down to the micro-bit. I think there’s just a nano-distance bit of cellular nail fiber film between his drill and my awaiting pain and doom. I look at him while he wears a mask, so that he does not inhale any of these carcinogenic dust flakes that he’s creating as he is whizzing my nail down to a mere memory.

Why don’t I have a mask? Are my lungs not entitled to the same ridiculous standard ─ considering that I am paying for this service?

He resumes his irritated glance and bats my hands down because they are moving too much. And, I am thinking, “If you want a tip, baby, you better not hit me again.”

He’s frigging expensive, man.

He responds by yelling something in a foreign language to Mary, my pedicure girl who working diligently on my toes. I’m sure that it’s a compliment to my fashion prowess. And, I am also sure that her real name is not Mary.

Why do I put up with this? I will tell you why . . .

He and I have gone through this dance for more than 14 years now. My daughter is 16 and I have been coming to my “Nail Guy” since I moved here when my daughter was two. You’d think that we’d have a better relationship than we do, but he is socially inept and I am impatient. I put up with him because he is literally the best.

He is THE BEST “Nail Guy” this side of the Mississippi.

My nails can go unattended, even brutalized by my lack of care for four weeks, or more if I am away, and they look completely natural. There is no line. Yes, He is THAT GOOD.

Do not even try to e-mail me to try and get his name, or his telephone number or where he works.

I will not give out this information. Period.

I would tell you my best friend is sleeping with before I divulge the name of my beloved Nail Guy.

Let’s face it. I do not want his time booked up. I want him to succeed, but I want his rude remarks and hand battings available to me whenever my schedule allows. So, don’t get any ideas. If you take my spot on the calendar, I will hunt you down and rip off every one of your perfectly manicured acrylic nails and shove them up your nose.

I’m mean, a girl’s got to do what girl’s got to do. I need my acrylics perfect, and my toes like little red rubies dotting the tops of my sandals. Please don’t get in my way. I have priorities and high heels. I know how to use them.

I must like his torment. After all, it has been 14 years of this carcinogenic conversational banter. For example, “You work busy today?”

I respond, “Yes.”

That’s the end of this impressive conversation until I am asked to pay up.

So, you can understand my need of the highly fingered stack of magazines which include People, “Cosmo,” InStyle and O (Oprah).

And, I HAVE to read them all.

There is nothing else for me to do to distract myself from the dremel buzzing my nail beds into obscurity. Otherwise, I am likely to throw up on him out of fear that he might actually transcend the layer of cutonic matter and dive into my poor little nail “moon” that is just idly sitting there minding it’s little own nail-business. Right?

There is a brief moment, where he dust off his desk with a large purple brush, which of course drives all those white particles off his working stations and onto my nice black linen pants. Great. It looks like I have dandruff issues below the belt. Not nice, kids. Like I said there’s this brief moment where he has to do a little housework on his desk, and I now have a chance to look down at my all buzzed nails, only to see that they are thinner than the one-ply toilet paper that I just used on my refined derriere when I went to go pee.

Each time when I get this ridiculous urge, I think I’m going to faint when they see how thin my nails are. You’d would think that after 14 years I would learn not to look at my fingers at this stage of this salon service. That I would just continue to read about “all the sex that I am doing wrong” in my July 08 Cosmopolitan. 2008? Hello? However, curiosity gets to the better of me on these bi-weekly visits, and I continue to almost keel over at the blatant and frail condition of my pinchers.

“Blaaaaah! Don’t look, you idiot,” I say to myself.

Okay, now, okay. Breathe in. Out. Everything’s fine.

He slams his hand down on the table two times. This is his charming attempt at communication to have me put my hands back on the table. Like I said, he and I have a ritual, I didn’t say it was nice.

Without any argument on my part however, I am quick to get my nails “filled” again so that they will not fold backward when I am shoving a taco in my mouth. We do live in Southern California. And, I do love tacos. I promptly respond by putting my hands on the platform and try to smile in a charming, pale kind of way (since I was just about to pass out) that I had just been reminded of just how much I need him for my day-to-day survival.

When all of the stock markets went to hell, I had a brilliant thought that I might try to save money by not getting my nails done every two weeks. So after about six weeks, my nails started to split at the top and then break off. Layered little peelings of these acrylic wonders started shedding themselves, revealing the fragile state of my actual nails. I tried for four weeks after that, where then my “real” nails were breaking below the skin with vertical cracks. Ouch. I could barely pick up a tampon, much less put this “thrill stick” in, without the looming expectation of 10 fingered agony.

So, I guess it took me only 10 weeks to figure out ─ one week for each dangerously painful regressing nail bed on each of my beloved food pushers. Yes, it became quite evident, that I needed my “Nail Guy” in at least ten unbearably stinging, splitting and throbbing ways.

Let’s just say it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that my nails were more important than putting shoes on my kid’s feet.

We all wear flip-flops now, but my nails look great . . .

Go figure.

So, let this be a lesson to you ─ the market can go to hell, your husband can complain of tuna salad sandwiches for the 7th dinner in a row, your children can wear what we affectionately used to call “flood pants” (while convincing them that this is the current style . . .), your “Nail Guy” can bat your hand hard enough that you could actually allege physical abuse and have a case, and that your lungs aren’t worthy of the even the lowliest Home Depot-style facemask ─ but, all of that is unimportant if you don’t keep your priorities straight.

Regardless the cost, your nails must remain beautiful.

Yes. I just got them done. I am staring longing at their beauty, and begin the fear my upcoming appointment at 1:30p.m. in fourteen days. Until then . . . nailed bliss.

And, no, I repeat, I will not give out his name.

You’ve got to out and find your own “Nail Guy.”

Good luck. I’m thinking about starting up a website called “NailGuyMatch.com.” Until then, happy acrylic-ing . . .

Keep those cards and letters coming!

Be well,

Belle

S. Belle Karper, Author, Speaker www.BelleKarper.com
THE WIDOW WEARS BLACK – An Edgy Memoir from an Outspoken Survivor
Check out S. Belle Karper’s – Beauties and Beasts – Blog! Baby! Blog!
Twitter-Belle – all on Website

Hard times . . .

When someone dies, such a loss cannot be expressed with words. I wish you a thoughtful journey. One that has light even in the darkness.

Be well,

Belle
—
S. Belle Karper, Author, Speaker www.BelleKarper.com
THE WIDOW WEARS BLACK – An Edgy Memoir from an Outspoken Survivor
Check out S. Belle Karper’s – Beauties and Beasts – Blog! Baby! Blog!
Twitter-Belle – all on Website