Christa Allan

Anne Lamott says that what often gets in the way of our writing is all the critical voices we hear everytime our fingers touch the keyboards. What I’ve come to learn as a writer-person is that I first have to quiet my brain enough to even hear the voices. I’m not sure if the [...]

Mortality. She’s a stone, cold witch, she is. Cares not about our beauty, our charm, our wealth, our power, our goodness, our evil. She grabs us all. She is without friends; nepotism would not become her. She dares us to drive too fast, to drink too much, to sleep too little. She beckons us with [...]

I am from hurricane swept houses and rain drenched streets, waking on lazy Sunday mornings to my father cooking bacon and scrambled eggs, green and green plaid pleated uniforms with blazers and black and white saddle oxfords, watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, afternoons at the kitchen table sharing cups of freshly brewed [...]

This weekend I will celebrate the 19th anniversary of my 35th birthday. I console myself with the notion that aging is at least a sign I am still alive. And this morning during my Bible time, I realized that I will never be older than God, so at least I’ll always be His child. Really, [...]

I tried dropping out. I dropped back in–but only after a year of painful introspection. Ripping away the familiar to expose the remnants. Pieces of me scattered over the years of my life. The soul-wrenching journey to finding them and gathering those fragments deemed worthy. People who know me now would not recognize the faraway [...]

Raise your hand if you think the title of O.J. Simpson’s book should have been : LIVING IN AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE: MURDER MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU’RE SORRY.
Title of a book out for the holidays: Cats Letters to Santa. I’m struggling with plots, conflicts, motivations, and lacks thereof—and there sits, in all its [...]

Abraham Lincoln, according to some source I read recently, was the president who made Thanksgiving Day a national holiday as a way to unite the country after the Civil War. Now, I certainly don’t want to bash ole’ Abe. Lord knows he had enough to contend with, a wife with serious psychological issues, the Civil [...]

20 November
I am adding to my (unresearched and purely subjective) list of things that I am certain were invented by men. First being those spiked high-heeled shoes given a euphemistic term I hardly want to admit to even knowing.
After this morning, I am including those machines used for mammograms. They must assume that [...]

Dear Mr./Mrs./Ms/Guardian/Life partner/Significant other :
Your son/daughter/stepson/stepdaughter/love child who is a freshman/sophomore/junior/senior is in danger of failing_______________(fill in the blank with title of subject) because s/he is experiencing the most profound peer pressure of his/her life, deciding if his/her membership should include Jews for Jesus, the Gay/Straight Alliance or the Bible Club. S/he sits in [...]

18 November
So, am I the only person who wonders how those two people in the Cyalis commercial managed to drag two bathtubs to the edge of of what appears to be a wine grove? No wonder the poor man needs some prescription help. He’s expending far too much energy in the wrong places.
No school for [...]

10 November
So, I am about to embark on yet another distraction. A blogger-wanna-be. Most of my hesitations in joining the blogging community were centered in feeling syntactically paralyzed by the inventively clever blogs, the artistically creative blogs, the visually stunning blogs, the intellectually amazing blogs, and then there would be……………..me. I suppose one might think [...]