BShallue

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  1. Hair, or the lack thereof

    9/12/11 7:47pm by BShallue
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    Not wanting to be seen by anyone I knew, I ducked into a store quite a distance from our house, heading straight for the product I sought. I had been eyeing it for years, but until this moment, couldn't rouse the courage to actually buy it. Tucking the box under my arm so the name wasn't obvious, I grabbed a few more items to further hide it and headed to check-out, trying to act nonchalant about my purchase...Tom was cutting my hair. He would touch a section with scissors and then pull back, comb another section, let it fall.I sensed his frustration. "What is it?"  Read more >

  2. Faithful Place: Not Your Average Murder Mystery

    8/24/11 11:42am by BShallue
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    Author Tana French hooked me with the opening paragraph of Faithful Place; her wistful and mysterious prose throughout the book kept me turning pages at a pace I haven’t maintained in decades. “In all your life, only a few minutes matter.”  Read more >

  3. What Happened to Goodbye: A Story of Divorce Through the Eyes of a Teenage Girl

    6/28/11 5:30pm by BShallue
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    In What Happened to Goodbye, author Sarah Dessen takes her readers by the hand, leading them through the land of divorce as seen through the eyes of Mclean, a teenage girl who is still trying to find solid footing two years after her parents’ unexpected split.  Read more >

  4. A Jane Austen Education: Learning About Love From a (Much) Older Woman

    5/23/11 6:30pm by BShallue
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    I hesitated reading A Jane Austen Education. For one thing, I've only read two of Jane Austen’s six novels. I loved the light wit and humor of Pride and Prejudice and immediately spring-boarded into Sense and Sensibility, expecting more of the same, but was so disappointed with it that I didn't even bother picking up any of the others.  Read more >

  5. Caleb's Crossing: Historical fiction at its best

    4/27/11 8:35am by BShallue
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    With Caleb's Crossing, Geraldine Brooks reminded me how wonderfully painful a good book can be; this is the kind of story that reaches out and pulls you in, swallows you whole, the kind that allows you to walk along inside of it with the characters, only climbing out reluctantly when life (real life) requires it, but returning as soon as possible.  Read more >

  6. Empty Nest - again

    1/18/11 7:56am by BShallue
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    It was while standing at the kitchen counter first thing this morning, pouring water into the coffee pot and still mostly asleep, that I glanced up and spotted the open door.And I remembered: She's gone again.After weeks of being mostly here, of holidays and work days and carpools and visits to the library and sharing chores and bumping into each other in the kitchen ... now she's mostly gone.  Read more >

  7. Gray Skies and Peace

    1/11/11 7:47pm by BShallue
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    A gray day spent dealing with frustrations over computer glitches, rude people, and staff who are so quick to deny responsibility for a problem that they fail to listen or offer productive advice (their job - what my money is paying them to do.)  Read more >

  8. To the Young Mom in Aisle 7

    9/16/10 6:00am by BShallue
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    Stressed mom

    I wanted to tell the mom to hang on, to keep it in perspective and take it a day at a time. Heck, a minute at a time, if necessary. I wanted to tell her to soak up her kids' joy and sense of adventure instead of letting them zap her energy -- it's possible! -- because before she knows it, those two are going to be grown and she's going to be walking the aisles selecting things she thinks they'll like to eat because they're coming home to visit for a weekend.  Read more >

  9. Twelve Years at a Chemical Plant: What Fear Teaches You

    2/23/10 8:00am by BShallue
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    Leaning on the metal railing of a platform high above the ground, I lift my hard hat to slick my sweat-soaked hair off my forehead. I yearn for a breeze. The summer sun is pounding me into the grating. In the distance, construction workers scramble around an ethylene unit being built next to our syngas plant. Dust clouds swirl behind bulldozers. The huge furnace structure looks like a medieval castle among the tall columns and round, spiked tanks surrounding it.  Read more >

Barbara Shallue

Full Name
Barbara Shallue
Member Since
December 2009
About Me: 

Let's see ... what should I say about me? Well, so far in my 52 years I've been a librarian, a welder's helper, chemical plant operator, newspaper reporter... ah, the rest are pretty boring.  They brought in a paycheck, but aren't worth mentioning otherwise.

Over and above it all, I'm a writer, a mom, a wife, a friend ... you get the picture. Those are the important things to me.

I'm an Empty Nester, living in my little corner of Paradise we call Long Hollow with my husband, two dogs and Frankie, the guinea fowl. and loving it. (Update: we recently lost Frankie. Man, do I miss that funny bird!) I write about everything (seriously ... everything!) in my blog, Long Hollow and now post photos from my latest obsession, photography, at Confessions of a Photography Addict.

But it all adds up to one thing: Life is one Big Adventure and I can't wait to see what's waiting around the next corner!

 

One little known fact about me: my husband proposed just two weeks after we met and we were married on a Friday the 13th. Yes, we're still married, going on #29.

Location Tags: 

Austin

Employers: 

NameStormers

About Me Tags: 

empty nest, parenting, family, friendship, midlife, writing, screenwriting, midlife college, country living, health, marriage, pets, spirituality

 

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