Me, Marsha Marie

  Dear Journal,  Today I want to talk about one of my favorite pictures of all time. Aside from my own children's baby pics of course, I can stare at this pic of my mother all day long. She was only 17 and was editor of her high school newspaper in Columbus, Ohio back in 1961.  Come appreciate a few details of this pic with me.  Firstly, take a look at those pin-curls. My mother had straight-as-a-nail hair; and would sleep with pins in her hair to get that full poof in the front. Well done Mom!!!!  I don't see any make-up, but my mother had a natural beauty about her. And that skirt!!! Is to die for?! Pencil skirts are still one of my favs to this day. Oldie but a goodie.  And did anyone catch a glimpe at that typewriter? Wow! That is vintage, isn't it? Look how big it is. (You know I have to say it........that's what she said. LOL) It is amazing to look at my adorable mother frozen in time, doing something that she loved---writing and paying close attentio...

  Dear Diary,  Let's take a trip back to 2006 in Islamabad, Pakistan. I was a beautiful mid-summer day and I had accidentally ran my car into a wall. Yeah. A wall. Not sure what I was thinking. I guess I was distracted and just didn't break in time. I was only going about 10 miles an hour so it wasn't too bad.  My young daughter was in the car with me and it shook both of us up a bit. I felt something trickling down the side of my face. It was blood. When the car his the wall, my head slammed into the roof handle. I was bleeding from the gash. My daughter started crying and I felt so bad.  The police came to document the accident and I called a friend to come and take me to the hospital. The hospital was a nice one. I remember it being clean and everyone was so nice. In order to keep my daughter calm, I made fun of myself and would laugh aloud and joke with the nurses. My thinking was, if I laugh then my daughter will see that I am okay. I did not want to scare her a...

  Dear Diary,  If I could write a running news tag, I would warn others not to believe everything that they read online. Despite who is writing it, you just cannot 100% trust them. Make sure to vet everything yourself. For example, I myself have read two things online about me in the last year that totally floored me. Let's look closely at these two times so you can see what I mean.  The first story was very funny. One day I was Googling some friends from my past. You know how you look up folks that you went to high school with, right? Just wanted to see how they are doing now. Surely, I am not the only one who has done this. Well anyway, I put in one of my best friend's name and was so saddened to find out that her father had past away. I clicked on his obituary and started reading the family statement. As I read thru, floods of memories came to me. I really love that family. I continued reading of my friend's siblings and their spouses. Until I got to her brother. And m...

 Dear Diary,  Today I want to take you back to my very first memory. As you can imagine my first memories are blotchy at best. But this is how I remember my oldest-oldest-one. (Yes, I know I said the word "oldest" twice. It just seemed to fit here. Okay, grammar police?!) I figure I must have been lying on my back and a man looking down at me. Just past him, I could see a horse with a chain that seemed to be floating in the air. I don't remember any sounds or smells. Just seeing this man with bushy hair on each side of his face, with some more on top of his head.  You know, I find it interesting that I'm using vernacular that I would use today if I were to describe a scene in my everyday life. But let's try explaining it as how I really remember it--- childlike . I thought it would be fun to describe this first memory in a stick-figure-drawing. Again, blotchy at best.  And this is what I came up with.  Well, as you can see, there is a man, or an alien (which wou...

(Me, with my new family in Kalu Kalan, Pakistan. 1992. We’re standing directly in front of the kitchen and the torn down room where Zain was born. Sponge rollers? I say, never leave home without them!) Ancient Ruins   (Excerpt from Bangles, My True Story of Escape, Adventure and Forgiveness, by Marsha Marie ) Another twelve hours in flight and we finally arrived in Pakistan. There seemed to be a thousand people at Islamabad Airport. The terminal was unwelcoming: brown walls and a metal ceiling. The roar of an unknown language swept through the congested area. Several luggage carousels filled the center. Zain said that we’d have to be quick getting our bags so that they wouldn’t be stolen. I kept a tight grip on both of the kids and followed him very closely.  We walked outside of the rustic terminal to an ocean of people. To be honest, I thought they were all there for us. I was in shock. How big is his family? Strangers from all different directions were grabbing me and hugg...

Holiday greetings to all, This week I have writing on the brain. Have you ever wanted to just write something, but thought, Nah! I can't write . I know exactly how that feels; I used to think like that. Even though I had had several magazine articles published in UAE, and then a self-published memoir, Bangles (Book 1) under my belt, I honestly didn't think of myself as a writer. It wasn't until I heard Big Magic on audiobook, that I let go of my own inhibitions and decided, YES! I AM A WRITER. Do I write just for myself? Not always. Most of the time I write because I want to share some kind information or knowledge with the world. (You know, leave the world a little bit of a better place than when you found it.) See, by nature, I love helping and encouraging others, and so, I attempt to do this thru my writings. True, there are times when I just want to rant on about something stupid, irritating or even petty, but after all, I...

    Hi guys,   Today has been an extremely colorful day for me. So much so that I just had to blog about it. To start off with, I arrived at my warehouse job at 3:30 in the morning and sat down in the break room to have some coffee. Like a klutz, I knocked over my cup and my coffee went everywhere—table, chair and floor. “Dang it!” (Who wants to clean up spilt anything at 3:30 in the morning?) Once I was finished cleaning the mess up, I said,”Hey, it’s almost time to clock-in, and I still haven’t had my coffee yet.” I walked over and got another cup full, and blimey, it spilled over onto my hand. “Ouch! You know, I don’t think I'm meant to have any coffee today.” “That's what I'm beginning to think too,” said my friend brave enough to stay seated across the table from me. Well, after I clocked-in, and started at my work-station, things were just fine. Now as you may remember, from my previous blogging, I started working at Amazon’s warehouse in ...

Hi Everyone, Halloween is here. And although it's not one of my favorite holidays, I'm still very interested in its history and how it got started (Here is the link to its history just in case your're interested too. http://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween ). Kids never think about--or even care for that matter--how this colorful day came about; I know, CANDY was all we ever cared about as kids  🙌🙌🙌🙌 .....right fellow Generation X-ers??? I am so thankful that I grew up in the days when we treaded the entire half-a-mile-radius for those bite-sized delectables, and then jumped over to our best friend's neighborhood for some more. Awe, the good ole days! When I was a kid, the most common costume was a home-made gypsy outfit. It was easy and fun. Not much thought involved really---all I had to do was raid my mother's jewelry box and borrow her red square dance outfit (I'm still not sure where the outfit came fr...

Hi Dear Ones, Today I would like to introduce you to one of my favorite people in the whole world, Peachy-Massy . Kind of a strange name, I know, but let me explain. When I lived in the Middle East, I had a horrible handicap: I just couldn't remember anyone's name. Be them strangers, or immediate family members, names were like slippery fish; I had them one moment, and the next they were just gone. So to help me decipher from the hundreds of my husband's relatives, I would attach English nick-names, this way I would remember the names by attribute-association. So how did I get Peachy-Massy? Quite logically actually. Peachy-Massy was my mother-in-law's younger sister. She lived in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, and would come to visit us as often as she could. I loved it when she came over; she would always bring chickens or goats over and give as gifts to my children. She was truly one of the happiest people I had met during my 17 years in Pakistan; when she smiled, her ...