I have a really good excuse for my long silence. At the age of 70 I find myself engaged. This u-turn came after having completely given up on love and romance. I always say when I’m wrong I’m really wrong. The more emphatic I am the larger my mistake. I was planning on living with just my furry husbands. We were happy and content and then came romance and scenes out of a romance novel. Clearly not me-this had to be some fairy tale I’d wandered into by mistake. Just to be clear I’m not referring to the your brothers are turned into swans, can’t speak while you make shirts out of nettles to get them back, giant slaying, etc. kind of fairytale. Or could be a romance novel with real people in it and not the dark mysterious stranger variety.
Very soon after calling family, our lives got taken over finding a ring, planning our ceremony and answering numerous questions. Then came our announcement to friends using a cute e- card. We lost complete control over the whole process. The excitement over our news plunged us into planning for more than we bargained for.
Finally, I will post the real last episode of Ants on the Blacktop: Weeds on the Hill. After that my normal progression of U-Turns will return.
Winding Stream Press 
congratulations and all the best to you and your significant one.
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Thank you and also thank you for the comment on the article. I especially like the last section because of the two student poems. These boys were both previously having difficulty in class and life. For at least the moments of time with me, their perception of themselves was turned around. A. J.’s father even came to the reading. This was huge because the grandparents had custody.
The joys of teaching-poetry comes to the rescue yet again. Jan
*Janice DeRuiter*
uphill we walk into rarified air here the air thins until all that’s left is breathing and short gasps of blue-green words
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