Raquel Martina Martinez

The last chapter of one’s life does not necessarily have to be the end of one’s story.  Like the three acts of a play, Act III can usher in a new beginning, a sequel, a spin off.           I have often wondered what happened to Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy after she accepted his marriage proposal.  Did Sam and Annie ever date after they met at the top of the Empire State Building? Are Baby and Johnny dancing somewhere in a retirement community? Did Scarlet she ever win Rhett back? The end of their story on paper or film left us expecting more. I am in my third act and it is not The End just yet.  I expect great things in my Act III. I believe in reinvention. I love to learn and the best way to do that is to seek people and places that feed my curiosity. Reinvention is what keeps me “young.” I like people of all ages. Because I like to learn, almost all of my mentors are younger than I. They know the latest trends in technology, social media, and information.  I like to read and v…

(A found poem is made from an already published piece – an essay, a newspaper article, a journal, someone else’s poem.  The “poet-to-be” selects words, phrases, or lines that strike the poet, then restructures that collection into a new, free-verse poem.  I took my journal where I track my daily food intake for my WWs diet to create the following “poem.” It is made from food entries, their point values, and thoughts. As you will see, the diet started off religiously but soon gave way to temptation.)

Week One ·Thirty Daily Points Total. ·¼ c oatmeal – 2 points. ·Greek Yogurt – 3 points ·WW cheese stick – 1 point ·One serving of cod – 1 point Week Seven ·Track More. Don’t Lie to Yourself. ·Office donuts! ·2 T RF peanut butter – 6 pts ·McD’s Egg White Delight (sandwich only) – 8 pts ·Strawberry dessert – 5 pts ·Hair done ·Size 12 pants! ·2 HM chocolate grahams – 5 pts ·Whataburger Jr. – 11 pts ·2 IHOP Harvest Grain pancakes (no butter, no syrup) - 12 pts ·Small bag of chips – 5 points ·Yikes!

I was going to write the weekly blog about something funny.  Maybe about husbands or diets or my allergy to milk and what it does to my social skills. I was going to write the weekly blog about TV shows, summer reads, or how to write a steamy love scene in your next romance novel. I was going to write the weekly blog about my persnickety ways, my attempt to be alluring, my dislike for boiled okra. I was going to write the weekly blog on something outrageous, maybe about how nothing over a size 16 should be called petite or iffy body piercings for women over fifty or a dozen nifty things I found on Pinterest to do with old pantyhose. But I usually write my blog on Sunday mornings and post it on Mondays at 6 am and I woke up this Sunday to find the world had gone crazy again. Some lunatic took it upon himself to rid his part of the world of people he did not like and took the lives of over fifty people just because he deemed himself  better than them. Some loser who aspired to a radical …

I have ingested liver and enough steel-cut oatmeal and rice cakes to choke an elephant. I consumed a grilled cheese sandwich once where both the “diet butter” and the “diet cheddar” refused to melt. I have wrapped myself in Saran Wrap, tried an electrode belt around my waist, and I bought a Thigh Master from Suzanne Somers.            I have done The Grapefruit Diet, the Hard Boiled Egg Diet, and the Cabbage Soup Diet. If the plan had a number in its title, I waded through all of them – 3-Day, 7-Day, 14-Day Diet, etc.  I did Adkins and South Beach, Nutrisystem and Jenny Craig.             All of this in the pursuit of thinness. I started this odyssey in the late seventies after I packed on thirty pounds of “baby weight” after birthing my three kids.  My family doctor suggested I try a 1000-calorie diet, handed me a mimeographed sheet listing a handful of boring foods, and sent me home with a prescription for some fat, black pills that the FDA has since banned.  I took the pil…