Some months ago I was at the store and a very well meaning clerk gave me a tip that changed my life–but it wasn’t for the better. She recommended a great product called Shiseido Facial Cotton. They are lovely, perfect cotton pads for make-up or swiping the face with toner. They were a great recommendation.
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I want to share myself through writing. I want the essence of who I am to sneak through the words and onto the page. Tiny bits of me tumbling through the letters and sentence structure to transmit a little bit of me to people who stop by to read what I have written. I want my voice to sing, I want my words to touch and inspire, I want my hands to touch the keys with love and transfer the emotion to the world that is in my heart.
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I was hanging out with a crazy Brit named George when I first had the idea of the bookii. I had been working on writing a book and was finding it incredibly 2 dimensional. I wanted multiple topics and more visual than I could accomplish in print. I wanted my reader to be able to explore my book rather than reading it one page after the other. In a conversation with George we were talking about an online technology called Prezi that allows you to explore deeper and is a more flexible presentation platform than Power Point. Somehow talking about that helped me start to visualize a dynamic memoir that had pictures and color and video and wasn’t bound by the boundaries of a printed book. Prezi didn’t end up being the medium, but the concept stuck with me. What makes it a bookii? Well, it is a book that you read electronically It is written by one author and instead of purchasing a book, you purchase an annual subscription to a bookii. My bookii is creative non-fiction–a lifestyle, but I hope there will be lots of bookiis that are both fiction and non-fiction combined. I imagine being able to read my favorite authors and about their characters while simultaneously being able to look up what they were thinking about when they were writing about it or what their inspirations were by exploring their bookii. The Crucible Bookii is my bookii. It is the world’s very first bookii. It is rich with interesting articles about the stories that make up my life. I hope you will become a member and share this journey with me as I create this interactive real-time memoir. Melanie shares how the bookii idea...
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A couple of mornings ago we were all hanging around in the kitchen during breakfast and my son Xander said, “I don’t want you guys to ever get divorced.” He has been asking questions lately about step-parents and would he ever have step-parents and I know his little brain is trying to figure it all out. My husband says, “Melanie are you in for never getting divorced?” I said, “Are you in?” “Yes,” he replied. And I could tell he really meant it. “Me, too.” I said. “Let’s shake on it,” he said. And so we did. There was an intimacy to all this in front of our children that was much like declaring our love in front of 125 friends and family. It was sweet, it was current, and in many ways it was deeper for me than any vow I have ever made. Mel and I aren’t prone to big displays of affection but this little exchange darn near took my breath away. I walked out of the kitchen wondering what had just happened. It was an unexpected moment of incredible intimacy. The Crucible Bookii is my story as it continues to unfold and how I see the world from my perch on the edge of the Crucible…because falling in love changed everything. To read more about our story, may I suggest Our Gay...
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I have been feeling really tired lately. Too tired to be effective. I can explain it–I have been busy. I had a coaching call about a month ago and I kept saying “If I can just get to vacation, then I will slow down…” Then I got to March break and worked really hard at my parent’s house (cleaned out their pantry, helped with taxes, helped clean out part of the garage) and I got even more tired. I came home and I added more exercise to my program and I got more tired. I felt like the more tired I got, the more my home life was spiraling. Things were messy and dirty and I was too tired to deal with it all and I just couldn’t keep up. But yesterday my daughter gave me a gift. It was one of those moments when we started cleaning one thing and then did another and then 4 hours later we had reorganized the whole kitchen. We went through almost every cupboard and moved things to new spots that work better. We got rid of things and made it work. She had strong opinions, I had strong opinions, we talked to each other and we listened and no one got angry or upset. There was kindness, there was gentleness and there was much needed progress forward in our home. I went to bed feeling both tired and very satisfied. I also realized just how much I helped my mother. Having another pair of hands and eyes in the decluttering was amazing and incredibly helpful. Thank you to Sela for the lovely gift of helping me in the...
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