Category: Jeanne Marie

The Ants and The Housewife

women who think too much's avatarWomen Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie

1364614150085
The ants were watching the housewife. Zoe, their Queen was dead. Boric acid and sugar. They had delivered it to their Queen in all innocence. Princess Zia was leading them, because without a leader they were helpless, but she was so young. She was trying to take her mother’s place but she hadn’t even begun training for her own nest when her mother died from the tainted sugar.

The ants waited, silent, deadly, hungry, watching the housewife, hoping she would release the grains of white sugar from the container that they couldn’t breach, the big white plastic gallon with the ant proof, tight blue cover. Then they could eat and regain their strength before the battle.

Oh yes, there would be a battle today.

They watched as she drank her coffee and started to pull down items from the food closet. They hated her. She had killed so many of…

View original post 1,414 more words

Beach Sunrise

women who think too much's avatarWomen Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie

10687136_300212176829376_418608304334361211_n10616138_300212090162718_8903350823581036887_n

View original post

Catching Sunsets While The Moon Watches

women who think too much's avatarWomen Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie

edcc

View original post

My New…Old House. June, 2018


June, 2018
Mold, black mold; not Texas Tea Black Gold, but in my closet black mold, growing behind four layers of wallpaper, scraped off one at a time, layers of black mold in between each layer, black mold, all the way down to a cement wall that had black mold. We did pay a home inspector, but this was a hidden mess.
When I first saw the closet walls, gunky stuff was on the outermost layer of wallpaper. I decided to scrub down that wallpaper because I was thinking, maybe somebody sprayed a can of Pepsi all over the walls. That took a few hours that I will never get back because as the wallpaper got moist from the warm dishcloth and fell down, I found my first identifiable layer of black mold. Thick and thriving, unaware its life was about to end.
Spraying each layer with bleach, returning when it was dry, scraping each layer off with a knife/chisel, vacuuming, spraying bleach again, not just because black mold is toxic, but because I am blessed with OCD and then me, showering. Often.
I bought a ventilated mask when I began this week long, no end in sight project and I dutifully put it on for every adventure into the closet from hell.
I couldn’t breathe for the rest of my adventures without inhaling hot steam that I’d exhaled just a second ago, but it made me feel safer somehow.
I say somehow because I hadn’t thought about getting safety glasses or a hat and the black mold showered down upon my head and in my eyes pretty consistently.
So after each adventure in the closet, I stepped into the shower with everything I was wearing and it all got washed.
I decided after the first day that I needed more safety equipment and my husband was delighted that we needed a trip to Harbor Freight. I bought safety glasses, some better scrapers, a worker’s jumpsuit and a huge straw hat.
We also stopped for a gallon of Salted Caramel ice cream.
A week later and one gallon of Kilz and that closet was the cleanest space in this century-old house.
There was only one fatality. The vacuüm cleaner choked to death.

Dandelion Wishes


Along our travels, we made a pit stop for food and I walked outside to get some fresh air. I found a field of dandelions gone to fluff and I picked a bouquet.
I spun around and around in my butterfly covered sun dress and let the fluff cover me as I made wishes.
I could feel the magic surround me.
The magic didn’t come from the dandelion fluff, it came from believing in dandelion wishes.
I’ll never forget that moment.
I tucked it in my heart to save for a rainy day…

Born Blonde? Nope!

women who think too much's avatarWomen Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie

fuzzyboo

In the last 30 years as hair dyes have become available to the nonprofessionals, we’ve learned to color or bleach our own hair. In the first stages it seems so innocent. We can go to the drugstore or Wal-mart and select just about any color we like! It started simply enough for me. I was fourteen with drab, brown hair and I wanted to jazz up my hair a little. So, I bought a package of Flaming Red dye. When I un-capped the bottle and got my first whiff of peroxide, I was hooked.

The fun didn’t stop there! I tried every shade of red, before my addiction progressed to blonde. As a teenager, the reds seemed to satisfy my thirst for color. However, as I hit my twenties, I began to roam the streets searching for a beauty operator who would bleach my hair blonde. I begged and I…

View original post 658 more words

Clutter

Clutter

I’m Beautiful…

I’m Beautiful

Pink Puff Tree (Mimosa)

women who think too much's avatarWomen Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie

wonder3

View original post

We are not Chip and Joanna. (Flip This House)

My husband and I tore up a rug in a small room that we wanted to turn into a bedroom.
There was a 100-year-old hardwood floor under the rug and we decided that we were definitely not going to sand it, but we thought about putting a finish on it, so we went to Lowe’s.
We were shopping in different paint aisles and when we met in the middle, we definitely disagreed on what to use on the floor.
I had picked out a porch floor stain and he picked out floor stain.
He said that we couldn’t use my outside porch floor stain because it would smell too bad in the house.
After going back and forth between his gallon and my gallon, I let him decide.
I did ask him to go check with the girl at the paint counter and make sure that it was the safest thing to be using in the house.
Being a man, he quickly scanned the label and decided it was definitely safe and it was the right product.
He even bought the correct brush sponge for applying stain, long handle and all.
We went home all excited and happy, looking forward to our new project.
He opened the can and as he poured the stain into the roller pan, the stain splashed up the side of the wall.
I ran for the bleach wipes and scrubbed most of the dark brown stain off the wallpaper. It left light brown blotches, but as I looked around at the rest of the room I realized it matched the blotches that were part of the pattern. How lucky could we get?
He read the first paragraph of instructions and started to spread the stain.
It smelled pretty bad, but we figured the over powering odor would fade when the stain dried. It didn’t.
By ten o’clock that night, we had matching migraines and he was reading the instructions.
“It’s advised to leave the house for at least a week after applying this product.”
When he read that sentence to me, I almost passed out on the floor; but then again, maybe it was the fumes.
So after a week (they were right) we were able to move our bed out of the dining room and into the little bedroom.
We are not Chip and Joanna.

The Little Bedroom

On Aging Disgracefully

So yesterday, I put on a sun-dress and all I could see was my skinny, saggy arms and my skinny, stick legs and no boobs, so I changed. I put on stretch pants because they look good on skinny legs and a big t-shirt which hid the no boob situation.

But it was too late.

I had already seen myself in that sun-dress and as I’d I removed it I’d thought; this may be the last time I put on a little sun-dress because I look like a crazy cat lady wearing little girl clothes.

Which is why I’m advising you to think carefully before you lose weight when you are over sixty…

I lost twenty-five pounds and the first thing to go was my boobs. It wasn’t long before my unlined face bloomed with wrinkles from hell. Then the neck caught up to the face. I’m not kidding. I think one of the worst days was when I looked down and saw that I had saggy legs with wrinkles at the knees. My skin was hanging like a loose pair of pantyhose…and oh ya, the last thing to go was my big tummy…

I actually looked better at a hundred and thirty-five pounds than I do now at a hundred and ten pounds. I have bounced between being skinny and overweight, mostly overweight, for the last thirty years but every time I lost or gained, my skin behaved…not this time.

When I was thirty, I found out I had rheumatoid arthritis and it seems like every decade since then, something in my body goes haywire.

When I turned forty, I got trifocals and in my fifties, I had five surgeries with only one of them successful and that was a hysterectomy.

Two years before sixty, I got a brand new shoulder…so I hoped that would satisfy Decade Fate. Obviously, it didn’t. I thought I had slipped untouched through the turning sixty, but nope it was just waiting to surprise me at sixty-three when I first lost weight.

Artificial joint fell out of my right big toe at sixty-four. Surgery.

I’m sixty-five now and on the plus side, I look cute with my clothes on. For now.

I always knew I that I didn’t want to get old.

I was sure that I wouldn’t like it, but I really couldn’t figure out how to not get there and now I’m here.

I was right, I don’t like it.

 

I watch the old woman next door…

I watch the old woman next door. I can’t help it. She has no curtains and as I sit with my coffee, my eyes are drawn to her as she hobbles around her kitchen each morning, staggering with pain, holding her back as she tries to walk, sometimes bent in half with the effort.
I don’t want to watch her, but it’s impossible to look away.
She was young not long ago, not alone, and she raised a family.
Little ones she rocked to sleep, diapers she changed, clothes she washed, shopping for teenagers, parent’s meetings and thousands of meals cooked.
A husband who had dinner on the table every night, years of waiting on people, taking care of people, loving people, and now she’s alone.
Walking is such an effort for her, it hurts me to watch. It takes her hours before she can straighten up.
I don’t know how to help  her.
She’s very stubborn.
She won’t use a cane or a walker. She won’t go to the doctor to see if they can fix her back because she doesn’t want anymore surgeries, she’s had so many.
Every morning she just prays that the pain is not going to last, and by the time the mail comes, she’s usually standing tall, limping a little, but standing tall, and she praises God.
That’s her morning.
I watch the old woman next door. I can’t help it.

Amen…

Amen…

Spirit Whispers 4

Hold still my child.
You’ve been running too much and you’ve been thinking too much.
Hold still. Just breathe.
What do you feel?
Do you feel me in the air you’re breathing?
Do you feel me in the soft breeze that’s kissing your face?
Do you hear me when the birds are singing to you?
Do you see me when the butterfly lands on your shoulder?
I’m all around you.
Hold still my child, feel my presence.

Jesus, all I know…

When the pain reaches a point
that I think I’ll explode if I let out one breath
what do I do?
Jesus, all I know is to give it to you.
When the pain builds up until
there is nothing else left
Jesus, all I know is to give it to you.

It’s December

It’s December.
We start out searching for the perfect presents for our kids and we spend our lives trying to find them something they will love, so that we can hand it to them and watch their little faces light up.
Like the Cabbage Patch doll that was impossible to get,  but we got one and the Transformer that was not to be found, but we found one.
Presents that just for a minute, light up their eyes.
It’s December and there is not much time left to find the perfect presents.
I have so many presents, but they are spread all over my house and all tangled up in my mind, and they are not wrapped pretty.
I don’t know if I’ll have time to put on the ribbons and the bows before I leave.
I want to leave them self-confidence and emotional  security.
I want them to know that they were loved unconditionally by their mama.
I want them to be strong, without me.
I want them to keep all the good that I have given them in their hearts.
I want them to know that I was a person too…not just their mother.
I want them to forgive me…I know I made mistakes and I take responsibility for those mistakes.
I want them to forgive their own mistakes and not regret them every night, as I have done.
I want to leave them my boxes and boxes of  writing, all neatly edited and put together, but I don’t think that will ever happen because I write too much.
December has come so quickly.
I don’t know where the other 11 months went. One day I was 17 and now I’m 65.
One day, I had no wrinkles and suddenly they have appeared all over my face and neck, and I as look in the mirror, I say, “Wow, you are old, young lady. You may be young on the inside, but your body shows the time.”
My presents are not wrapped, but I will wrap what I can before I go, and I pray that it is enough to light up their faces when they remember me.
It’s December.

This moment…

This moment…

Sometimes At Night…

women who think too much's avatarWomen Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie

20130902_195440

The scars of abuse, any abuse, are permanent. Like a tattoo, they may fade with time, but they will always be there, just under your skin.

SOMETIMES AT NIGHT…

Sometimes as I drift off to sleep, my mind wanders back in time and I’m a little child again. The last conscious thought I discern is my voice calling, “Mom? Mom?” She doesn’t answer now, just as she didn’t answer back then.

In reality, I’m fifty-five years old, but as I fall asleep I lose track of time and I feel eight or nine. Terrified. Alone. A jolt of fear runs through my veins and I struggle to pull back from the drifting darkness of sleep where I’m trapped, helpless and afraid.

Losing the battle, I fall off the edge of awareness, tumbling through sleep’s doorway. The faces I see are familiar, but I fight the memories. I can’t bear to see…

View original post 1,431 more words

You are my sunshine…

You are my sunshine…

Magic

Magic

Set it free…

Set it free…

Hope is

women who think too much's avatarWomen Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie

View original post

That shoulder is quicksand…

That shoulder is quicksand…

 

A Woman Who Thinks Too Much’s Family

My son and daughter-in-law received copies of my book, Women Who Think Too Much, yesterday and my grandson, Cole, called me last night.
He told me he was reading it and I asked him, “Are you old enough to read that?” and he said,  “Come on Grammy, do you know me? I’m very mature and I’ve been through a lot of stuff.”
I laughed. And cried.
He was so impressed with how professional the book looked and he loved the art. Thank you to my publisher, Michelle Marie, Creative Publishing for that accomplishment!
He went on and on about what an amazing, talented and creative writer I am.
Made me cry.
How incredible is that to hear that from your twelve-year-old grandson?
Then, he was reading me different parts of the book that he loved.
I am so blessed to have my family. Four kids, fifteen grand-kids and five great-grand-kids.

Women Who Think Too
A No Help At All Handbook
By Jeanne Marie

Buy Ebook Buy Women Who Think Too Much Ebook

Read Reviews for Women Who Think Too Much

More

More…