Raquel Martina Martinez

HoneyBunch and I decided to take an online class on “how to build your own website.” HB is semiretired so he let his business website expire.  It listed items he no longer sold and the prices of the remaining items needed to be readjusted to the times.  This blog is the only thing linked to my website, so we need help. He graduated at the top of his class from college and I consider myself quasi-intelligent, so we figured we could teach ourselves the ropes of website building.  How difficult could it be? The first lesson explained some basic terms and asked us to create and save a folder on our desktops.  We needed to clear/ignore Rich Text Commands in HTML files.  No biggie.  Easy peasy. We both made 100 on our first quiz and we waited for Lesson Two. We were introduced to some basic tags and asked to use those tags while creating a simple page of text. This is where we ran into trouble. Let me just say your websites are safe.  Instead of envisioning us as the Bonnie and Clyde of HTML…

I know what date it is; it is mid-January.  I am just now getting around to announcing my NY resolutions when most everyone else has already abandoned theirs. See, that is the thing with resolutions – they should be resolute and not just wishful thing.  They should affect change. When someone chooses “to lose weight” as a NY resolution, what they are really saying is that they “hope to” lose weight.  They announce it to the world, rush to the grocery store, stock up on fruits and veggies, and sign up for Zumba classes. A few weeks later, all that elation hits bottom.  Expensive produce turns to ooze at the bottom of the vegetable bin and their gym membership card lays forgotten at the bottom of their abandoned gym bags. Their bottoms hit bottom. Their “resolution” was really nothing more than “wishful thinking,” right up there with pinky swears, winning the lottery, and the odds of stealing a Hollywood hunk first-named Ryan from his hot Hollywood wife. I prefer to make resolutions – d…

Listen to the sweet rondo a partner sings each night, a lullaby camouflaged among snuffles and snores, moans and groans.  Instead of annoyance, this joyful noise provides comfort, a succor of peace and love and protection. Listen to the splendorous cacophony when family gathers. Baby babbles, a jumble of vowels and consonants, accompany the lisps and invented language of older siblings.  The timbre of adult voices synthesizes with the innocent giggles and shrieks of baby song. The irreplaceable value of such a crescendo is never appreciated until the swell subsides, family leaves, and silence takes its place. An unexpected phone call and the voice at the other end warms us with smiles and memories. A baby giggles with joy and heart strings thrum a chord. A song plays on the radio and melody and lyrics pierce our soul. Nature offers a symphony.  The cold seasons’ sonatas, howling winds and the soft snowfalls, complement the cantata rhythms of the warm half of the year. Owls call to eac…

There’s the linebacker, the man with no patience.  He came to the grocery store to hunt and gather and no one or nothing will keep him from his objective. He has no patience with the coupon-toting mama or the comparison maven.  He Mad Max’s his way down the middle of the grocery aisles, oblivious to any rules of the road or kindness. He doesn’t care of the mayhem he created in pursuit of a deli chicken and a six pack of beer. There’s the rooky, the first timer. He didn’t grab a basket on his way in and now is standing in the middle of the aisle.  He holds a grocery list and his cell phone in one hand, and he is balancing several bulky items in the other.  He yells into the phone that “they all look alike,” as he studies all the boxes on the shelf. One young mother reaches around him and grabs a box. A woman who could be his mother grabs another.  He shrugs and shoves a box of the same unto his arm with his cell phone and grocery list hand and runs off.  Maybe the next time he takes on …