Articles written by Valerie Zwald

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About me - Valerie Zwald

I am married, in my 30's, a mother of three, and chubbier than would be considered cute by many. All of these characteristics, along with the crazy path along which my life has chosen to meander, has filled me with lots and lots and LOTS to talk about. Of

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Creative Writing > Poetry Poetry: Cancer: 13 of 105

My grandmother called it "the animal" She would say it was eating her Feasting on her From the inside out She was angry, my grandmother, not a willing host It did not matter The animal did eat her, did devour her No one else saw the violence in her death Only I knew the gruesome truth As she lay, calm and still in her coffin...
Creative Writing > Humor Humor: The future: 2 of 15

My vision of the distant future has always been half "Jetsons," half "1984." I can't imagine that humans would ever let go of our love for technology and new ways to be lazier than ever before. That is the Jetsons part of the picture..... hover cars, robot maids, dinners that appear with the push of a button.....I don't know...
Creative Writing > Poetry Poetry: Writing: 62 of 464

Imperfection Participles dangle, Infinitives are split; Sentences run on and on and on and on and on and - It matters not a bit Negatives are doubled Punctuation lacking Speling is a problem The topic barely tracking Organization is messy, Supporting sentences fray Really not worth your time.... But you read it anyway!
Relationships & Family > Family Life Raising happy kids on a budget: Clothing: 2 of 5

One of the joys of having a new little baby in the house is the trip through the clothing department....all those cute little outfits, cozy pj's, teeny socks for sweet little feet. How can a parent NOT go just a little bit overboard? Fast forward about eight years. That sweet little baby has gone through twelve sizes and twe...
Creative Writing > Humor Humor: Childhood: 46 of 78

It is not as if our parents knew any better - they didn't. Or maybe they did, but it wasn't important to care about those kinds of things back then. There were other things to worry about, like the cold war and gas prices and having enough aluminum foil on hand to insure good reception on the television. So somewhat obliviou...
Creative Writing > Reflections Reflections: Memories: 58 of 93

It is among one of my earliest memories - I was maybe three or four years old, and I was on an outing with my parents and grandparents. We were out for a drive along the North Oregon coast, not an unusual occurrence in our family. Not having much in the way of money, taking a drive was our pastime of choice on most weekends....
Creative Writing > Memoirs Memoirs: Family: 32 of 51

Family The very word evokes such images - emotional, flash memories of sights, sounds..... There may not be another word so pregnant with meaning, with intense joy and depth of sorrow. For me, the image that is conjured is complete, a full 360-degree virtual reality movie in my head, complete with Smell-O-Rama, Tactile Repli...
Creative Writing > Satire Satire: Divorce: 2 of 3

Divorce was this big scary thing when I was growing up, the cancer of the family unit - deadly, or at the very least crippling. It was prevalent in every stream of pop culture - movies and TV shows were written about it, songs were composed, and I think Judy Blume built her entire writing career around it. The fact that my p...
Creative Writing > Humor Humor: Sudoku: 2 of 3

As a child, I was a whiz at word games and puzzles - crosswords, search-a-words, scrambles- I never met a cipher I could not decipher. Until I tried similar puzzles with numbers. They just didn't "click" in my mind like the word puzzles did. Oh well, I told myself, no worries....everyone has his or her strengths, and numbers...
Creative Writing > Humor Humor: Finding bugs in the house: 47 of 70

Yesterday I was sitting right here at this very keyboard, typing blithely away in that charming hunt-and-peck way that I have, when my six-year-old son Andrew announced "I see a bug." This news would not have caught my attention so quickly had he not been standing right beside me, looking just past my head to the wall that l...