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December 28, 2008

I am a morning person.  I wake up read in bed then take a shower. and get dressed. Now at that point between getting up and showering I think I have my biggest surge or creativity.  My brain is absolutely percolating.  For instance this morning in my head I began an entire dialogue for a short story.  I thought it was clever, engaging and really good.  Well as soon as i dried myself off I most have smothered my creativity and poof it was gone.  I can try to get into it now , but its ten in the evening and I am tired.

Even the subject has gone from my head.  I think it was about the trials and tribulations of being a writer.  How the first sentence, the grabber is the one that has to receive the most deliberation otherwise it might not be good enough and no one will read further.  Its kind of like building a house of cards.  Each word stringing around like popcorn  trying to become  a sentence–a clever sentence that becomes if lucky another sentence and then another until it can be called a  paragraph–then of course there’s another paragraph full of sentences and and another until there unfolds a chapter.  Now if you get someone to read that far you have talent or a great story.  The sad thing is that many of us have  great story but cant write for their lives.

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December 22, 2008 I am blue today

I am blue today.  Sometimes my decision not to get remarried after my husband passed away can backfire.  I did it for my children.  I wonder how many women say that? Well it’s true.  Now when my older daughter is married with two children and my younger one in college I am lonely.  I need, no crave companionship, love, everything–this is so terrible. Then there’s the economy–it  seems to have caught up with me.  I have been struggling for years now and going now where.  I shouldn’t complain I have managed to keep my home, just barely, and that’s better than most, but now it’s at a critical point and I am getting worried–badly.

I have been trying to develop  a game plan for a year now and nothing seems to be working.  In the beginning ( after husband Eli died) everything seemed easy, but then it really wasn’t.  I used my credit cards to live on and take care of my younger daughter, Alexi and now I am in trouble.  I need one more year to get her through college and then I will be fine.  Although I think I keep on saying I need one more year for years already.  I can’t seem to do anything right anymore.  After I took my mother in with me, which by the way was a great thing to do . One I wouldn’t have changed for the world.  But I stopped painting and started to write about our lives together and I have seemed to have lost my confidence.  Everytime I look at the words on my carefully typewritten pages it doesn’t sound right to me.  I don’t even have anyone I can truly trust to  give me advice.  Everyone in the writers groups I belong to give me totally different advice and they arent me.  I just dont know right now who me is.

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December 22, 2008

Lynne

It’s amazing that one day can change a life.  For the past two weeks I was sad, worried, tense and on edge.  Then election day came and Obama was elected and everything changed.  Well not everything. I’m still a single parent struggling while trying to give my younger daughter the great education and life that I missed out on.  I have no money in the bank and I am try harder then ever to find a way with my writing and art work to make a living.  Believe me it’s hard. So many of us on the brink of despair are counting too much on Obama.  Will we be disappointed? I don’t think so.  I wouldn’t be so emotional about it if I didn’t believe in him.  We needed change and our calling was answered.  The best man won.  Easy and simple.  From what I hear on the television he is biting at the bit to start the change he promised us.  I love that man.

My daughter Alexi-Rae My younger daughter and a junior in Syracuse University.  I miss her terrible.  Her major is in advertising art and a minor in fashion.

My daughter Nicole is married with two great children.  Aidan five and Sophia Rose 3.  Pictures will be posted soon.

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“My Mother is Coming to Live With Me” A Memoir by Lynne Cheson

I flew to Florida in the middle of  January, 2006  for my mother’s  uterine cancer operation.  Although the operation was considered a success,  it was  obvious that she wouldn’t be able to take care of herself much longer.  I never suggested she should think about an assisted living facility or senior citizen hotel.  Instead I started preparations for her to move in with me.  Mind you, she was not thrilled about the decision.  She loved Florida, her friends and the  weekly poker game.  Mom had been independent all her life, but after her second husband’s death, she was more than content to live alone.  She insisted upon it. (…)

Then things began to change.  She found it hard to get around.  Her friends drove her where ever she wanted to go, but the long walk shopping the aisles in Publix became too much for her.  The same with WalMart and  CVS.  She fell at home once and crawled to a telephone for help. Then she caused a small fire in her kitchen.  After much consideration, she put her condo up for sale.

When her place in Plantation sold, I flew to Florida once again. this time to take her home to New Jersey.  During the time I brought my mother to live with me on July 8, 2006, I found her  more frail than I had remembered, seven months ago. I watched her slowly maneuver with her Rolls Royce walker, and noticed she had to stop and rest  more before.

A few days after the move I realized  it was imperative for me to write down everything that happened  between us each day, for reasons that will unfold.  My Mother is Coming to Live With Me is the results of that unforgettable, at times funny, somewhat turbulent, always poignant and unfortunately dark  memoir I have written covering that period of time my mother and I had together.

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