Something to be happy about ...

Marlene Terry

Don't know if you remember or ever saw the movie "Romancing the Stone" with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. But the beginning scene never fails to make me laugh. Not just because it's supposed to do that ... it's is an action/COMEDY film after all ... but because it's so much like ME.

As the movie begins, Joan Wilder ... Kathleen Turner's character ... is alone in a room at her house, busy finishing her most recent romance novel.

There she is without makeup, dressed in her PJs and slippers, typing as fast as her fingers will go, crying out loud and wiping away the tears with tissues from a near empty box of Kleenex. In her mind she imagines the happy ending of her story.  

It's one of those "the hero saves the girl and they ride off into the sunset" kind of scenes. The tears increase. She sighs with relief and finishes just in time to make her deadline and deliver the manuscript to her publisher.

Can't say I'm a romance novelist or even that I have a publisher waiting with bated breath for each of my installments. But I can tell you that there have been numerous Kleenex boxes I've emptied through the years. And it's all because writing takes me, without makeup and dressed in MY PJs and slippers, sobbing back to wonderful memories and experiences. ... And then ... there's also ... chocolate!

Can't imagine being able to tell stories of love, laughter and mishap without it. Those who know me well and from time to time gift me with a new brand, type or size of that addictive, pacifying candy, understand!

That's why I'm sitting here this morning enjoying part of a recent gift, Lindt/Lindor Extra Dark Chocolate Pieces and wondering how I've lived so long without it.  

Irresistibly smooth as it states on the package, that truffle-like candy is to die for!

Now I'm not going to bore you with the details of how chocolate, a vegetable and especially the dark variety, lessens brain damage caused by a stroke, improves memory, acts as an endorphin in depression (actually acts as an endorphin all the time for me) and although contrary to popular belief is actually GOOD for the skin ... really! But I will pass on the fact that in a recent study it also was found to reduce body mass!

... Don't ask me. I have no idea how that happens. ... I AM however, very happy about it!
 

♦ Hope you'll let me share your stories and photos here at my new residence "In a Nutshell." Email me at nutshellstories@gmail.com

♦♦ For one of my all time favorite "chocolate" recipes, click on Under the Nut Tree above. ... Enjoy!