Shelly D Templin

Last Friday was a special day for me. It’s the day my high school English teacher and I connected after 34 years! I tracked her down and sent her a letter last week. Why? Because I wanted to thank her for believing in me as a writer. When I was in middle school, I had a teacher who made us keep a journal. I sort of liked it and so I continued writing in spiral notebooks for a few years. I’m sure they were filled with teenage angst and if I find them, I will be sure to burn them. But the Keep Reading...

I cleaned my daughter’s apartment when she was moving out after her first year at school and I found black, dried up bananas on the top of her fridge. I didn’t immediately recognize the fruit. The sticker on the stick-like, black mass helped solve the mystery. The bananas were right next to onion skins. A whole bag of onion skins. Just the skins. The onions that were once inside the skins had rotted, shriveled, dried up and disappeared. Disappeared. The only thing left was a bag of onion Keep Reading...

Tonight as I slathered on the cream from a jar that is supposed to keep me from feeling my age and cream from another jar that is supposed to hide my wrinkles, I see two other jars that are filled with “good for me” things. The other jars don’t offer promises of youth. They are healthy. The others jars are gummy vitamins! Chewable, gummy vitamins. When I was in my 20’s and my grandmother was diagnosed with osteoporosis, I was told I needed to take large amounts of calcium. I ordered the Keep Reading...

I kind of live in the country. By “kind of” I mean that I live in a neighborhood with land between my neighbors and a bit of a drive to “town.” Well, it’s only four miles away but I drive past pastures to get there so it seems further and feels like the country. It is quiet in my neighborhood so I was a little shocked when I heard what sounded like a helicopter flying low over my house. It sounded like it was going to land on my house. I ran outside to see what was happening. Nothing. No Keep Reading...

I loaded my suburban - my suburban with 220,000 miles on it – for a fifteen hour drive to Colorado. At 10:30 in the morning, one of my daughters' friends arrived at our house and added her bags to our pile before starting the actual loading process. We stuffed the luggage carrier on top of the car first then fit the suitcases in the back like puzzle pieces. The four of us and two dogs backed out of the driveway on time. Woohoo! On time. We drove across town, picked up another daughters' Keep Reading...