Tag Archives: my stolen diaries

The Teri Tome–My 2021 Hits and Misses

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If anyone would have told me when I first launched The Teri Tome back in 2015 that I would be writing this post while holed up in my house waiting for a pandemic surge to peak…

Well, you know the answer to that one.

Last January, which seems like eons ago, I had myself convinced that this “thing” would be over by mid-2021, so by summer, I was trying to get back to some semblance of a new normal.

But then came November, and it was Groundhog Day all over again. An unwelcome repeat of a repeat of a repeat.

As someone with an addictive personality, it’s not good to have so much time on my hands, so thank God I love to write.

And although a part of me cringes when I go back and read some of my more personal posts, I can’t stop baring myself.

It’s my only relief—my only way up and out. A written record of Teri that I don’t want to write, but it practically writes itself.

And anyway, what the hell else do I have to do with my time?

2021 was one big stay-at-home blur for me. I went to Target once, the food store three times, and out to eat eight times. I saw my sister twice and the grandkids four times. Those visits with the grandkids were for sure the only thing that kept me going over those twelve long and mostly solitary-except-for-my-husband months.

I had a severe case of writer’s block back in 2020 and then couldn’t stop writing in 2021.

I was obsessively writing it all out—I mean like 24/7, and yet I only published 17 blog posts in 2021. And while those 17 posts collectively amassed over 60,000 page views, the bulk of my Teri musings remained unpublished and will probably never see the light of day.

Ironically, the posts that brought in all the eyeballs—over 500,000 page views—were written way before 2021. I gained a bunch of new readers in 2021, so I’m relieved my lack of recent material didn’t affect the traffic to my blog.

Anyway, here are my top three best-performing blog posts from 2021. I threw in the blog post with the fewest views because I’m hoping you’ll read it.

And since the older posts brought in most of my traffic, I’ve included the #1 hit of all Teri Tome time (2015-2021).

I’ll start with the blog post hardly anyone clicked on in 2021:


He Was Arrested for Alleged Sexual Abuse: This post garnered over 1,000 page views in 2021, but I was discouraged that it wasn’t as widely read as I wanted or thought it should be. Perhaps it’s because the MeToo movement is still a misunderstood and struggling work in progress, just like me.       

And now for my Top Three 2021 posts:

#1 HIT IN 2021


My Stolen Diaries – Chapter 7: A New School With a Side of Baptism: To be honest with you, I wrote this back in 1992—pulled from my unfinished novel titled My Stolen Diaries, which I’ve been writing ever since. I hope that the thousands of hits that this 29-year-old chapter garnered will give me the push I need to keep posting the book on my blog.

#2 HIT IN 2021


The Pam Project: I was thrilled to see that this post about my cousin Pam garnered over 10,000 page views. In honor of Pam, I have been building and furnishing a dollhouse for a most remarkable young lady in California. And this post is still in the works because I’m just now finishing it up. I can’t wait to share the final photos of the happy home with my readers, but mostly looking forward to making a beautiful little girl smile.

 #3 HIT IN 2021


Dinner Party Playlist: This blog post is different from anything I have written. It’s a part playlist, part Teri history, and part fond memories of my late great musical mentor Sally White of Westport, Connecticut.   

#1 HIT OF ALL TERI TOME TIME (2015-2021)


Wedding Centerpieces that Can Save the World: My #1 blog post of all time (2015-2021) is about wedding centerpieces that could save somebody’s world. I was ecstatic to see that for the first time since the 2015 launch of The Teri Tome, my “Bullies Are Cowards” post did not take the #1 spot. At almost 300,000 page views, I wonder how many brides actually took my advice?

So much for 2021.

My 2022 New Year’s resolution is to leave 2021 behind, but most importantly, to leave my house! And 2022 might just be the year that my FOE (fear of everything) gets resolved. I want my FOMO back!

I want to wish my readers a happy, healthy, and safe New Year.

And I also hope that 2022 brings you wellness, equality, and political peace.

My Stolen Diaries – Chapter 7: A New School with a Side of Baptism

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CHAPTER 7

A NEW SCHOOL WITH A SIDE OF BAPTISM

January 1961

Mem, Mom, and Mere Germaine huddled around the kitchen table, whispering to each other. I was supposed to be asleep, but I snuck out of bed to try to hear what they were saying. Mom was doing all the talking, and it was mainly in French. I tried my best to figure out what was going on, but I was confused.

Mom was telling Mem and Mere that for me to go to St. Ambrose Elementary School after Easter break, I needed to get baptized.

Wait. Was I going to a new school? Nobody told me that. And I had no idea what a baptized was.

Mom went on to tell Mem that she would have to pretend to be my mother because the Catholic school wouldn’t accept anyone from an excommunicated family. Mere said that she didn’t want Mem to lie, but she had to agree with Mom that the only way I would get into St. Ambrose was if they pretended that I was Mem’s daughter and Mom was my sister!

Then Mem piped in that it was about time they baptized me Catholic anyway and that there was no reason I should be Greek Orthodox and risk going to Limbo. She blamed my dad for that.

Wherever Limbo was, it didn’t sound like a place I wanted to go. And no way did I want to go there with my father.

Then Mom said that if anyone at St. Ambrose asked, she would tell them that she was married to an oil rig worker stationed out of state and that Mem and Mere were widows. Mem and Mere bobbed their heads up and down like Mom was the boss of both of them.

They had always taught me that lying was a sin, so why was it okay for them?

The next day Mom sat me down and told me that because of Barbara Titone, I was going to a new school.

I was thinking about all the ways I could punch Tit out for causing me so much trouble. Mom scolded me for not paying attention.

Then Mom said that I had to tell everyone at St. Ambrose that I was Mem’s daughter. When I reminded Mom that lying was a sin, she told me to “shut it.”

It was Mem who told me that right before Easter, I was getting baptized. I wasn’t crazy about getting a pile of water dumped on my head, but what could I do? Mem promised me that she would take me to Howard Johnson’s for a banana split afterward, so I was excited.

Every time I saw Tit at school, I gave her the rat face, so she stayed far away from me, but so did everyone else because they thought I wasn’t right in my head.

While I waited to get baptized, I focused my attention on the top outside corner of our back porch, where two small birds were busily making a nest using dried leaves and twigs.

Soon, the birds had a baby! Mem called them Oiseaux, which means birds in French. The mommy bird peeked her head out of the nest while the daddy bird watched their wobbly baby hop around on our rotting rail. I knew which one was the mom because she was smaller than the dad. I asked Mem if she thought their tummies growled like mine when they were hungry. She said she didn’t know. My belly was always growling from hunger, and I was afraid that they were hungry too.

But mostly, I was afraid the hungry rats would eat my new friends. I asked Mem if rats ate birds, but she didn’t know that either.

There was a window in our kitchen, close enough to the nest for me to watch them. I put a small pot of water on the rail and laughed with delight when the birds took turns dunking their tiny heads in it. But Mem took the water away, explaining that it would bring other things, and I knew exactly what she meant by that. Every time I pressed my face against the windowpane, I prayed to God to make sure the rats didn’t eat my birds.

On the day of my baptism, Mem dressed me in all white. Mom couldn’t come because she had to work, so she sent one of her friends who came as my godparent, and Mere was a witness. Mem lied to the priest and told him she was my mother. Mere kept quiet and didn’t say one word. The priest was rough, and the water he poured all over my head and face was ice cold. Some of the water went up through my nose, and I started to choke. The priest forced me to keep my head back even though I was having trouble breathing. He told me to be strong for Jesus and that the Holy water would save me.

On the bus to Howard Johnson’s, Mem told me that Catholics were against divorced people. She explained that both she and Mom were divorced because they both married bad men. She made me promise not to tell anyone about their divorces, or I would have to go back to school with Barbara Titone. I told Mem I never wanted to see Tit again, but I also didn’t want to lie. She responded that I shouldn’t give her any trouble and just do what I was told.

On the first day of school at St. Ambrose, the kids were friendly, but the nuns were strict and grumpy. I made it my business to lie, lie, lie, and told everyone I met that my dad was a famous oil rig worker who worked far away and that I lived with my mom and older sister, even though nobody asked.

When I got home that day, daddy bird was lying limp on the porch. I poked him, but he didn’t move. Then I noticed the empty bowl of rat poison in the corner. I dragged a kitchen chair outside and climbed up to the nest, where I found the baby and mommy dead.

I took them out and laid them next to the dad. Then I poured water on their heads to baptize and save them, but it didn’t work. I gently placed my bird family into the bowl of poison, hid them underneath the bottom level of the porch, and prayed to God for Him to make the rats eat them and croak.

Click here for Chapter 8: What a Difference a Mother’s Day Makes

A Novel on a Blog

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I had all but given up on my unfinished novel titled My Stolen Diaries, which I began writing in 1992.

In early 2015, my book had 168 pages and 117,653 words, and I wasn’t even close to finishing it, so I decided to put my novel on hold and instead concentrated on creating a blog.

In March 2015, I launched my blog, The Teri Tome.

In April 2015, I only had 328 visits to the blog, but by March of 2019, The Teri Tome had over 27,000 monthly visits.

With that kind of monthly traffic, it seemed like a no-brainer to revisit My Stolen Diaries and analyze whether or not it made sense to add chapters from my book onto my blog.

In July 2019, I wrote an article about the pros and cons, and shockingly, the post has to date been viewed over 10,000 times. [You can read To Blog or Not to Blog My Novel here.]

Writing the blog post was incredibly useful in that it helped me figure out a format for excerpting from my decades-old unfinished book. And the many thousands of page views I received from my post solidified my decision to add chapters of my novel to my blog.

After much thought, I decided my novel-on-a-blog should be called a Novelog. In January 2020, I posted a Disclaimer and the first six chapters of my novel.

I was reasonably sure the chapters would bomb, so the thousands of hits the posts garnered made my heart happy.

My blog traffic immediately increased by almost 50%, primarily due to the My Stolen Diaries chapters.

Of my 32 total posts in 2020, seven of them were chapters pulled from the novel.

And shocking to me was that when I calculated the traffic numbers for my top five blog posts in 2020, four of them were from my ancient rough draft novel!

It turned out my most popular blog posts were less of a post-mortem on what Teri was writing in 2020 and more about what Teri was writing in the 90s.

The Teri Tome generated over 300,000 page views in 2020, a whopping 47% increase from 2019, primarily due to the page views for my novel My Stolen Diaries.

The thousands of people who have been reading chapter after chapter has given me new resolve to pull out my book and take a fresh look at it.

Maybe, just maybe, my languishing novel has legs.

And 2021 might even be the year I finish it. In the meantime, keep a lookout for more chapters coming to The Teri Tome soon!

The Teri Tome–My 2020 Hits and Misses

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I can’t believe my blog, The Teri Tome, is five years old already. Wow, those years flew by way too fast.

Sitting here writing this blog post, I’m trying to remember back to 2015, and sadly, nothing earth-shattering is coming to mind.

Maybe it’s because my memory is shot, or maybe it’s because, in 2020, life interrupted my recollection of anything pre-covid.

And okay, maybe I sound like Trump when I say: Covid, covid, covid. Covid, covid, covid.

Stick me in the arm with the vaccine already!

I’m sure you would all agree that 2020 was a lot to deal with. Okay, it was a dystopic sh**storm. And I’m happy to say buh-bye to all 366 days of it. (2020 was a leap year, remember?)

But, to be fair, it hasn’t been all bad. Forty-three long weeks in quarantine has taught me a lot about myself and my definition of essential.

In the early months of 2020, I considered it my lost year.

Until I realized that 2020 was the year I found myself. I’m a changed and hopefully better person than when I naively rang in 2020.

I’ve questioned the fundamentals of “normal,” and going back to my pre-covid life as my pre-covid self isn’t an option.

Just to be clear, I haven’t locked myself down for the past ten months because I’m afraid covid’s gonna get me.

My reason for living like a hermit all these months is simple. Without my family and close friends, I have no reason to venture out.

Let me break down my pre-covid routine for you:

My standing nail salon appointment: I’ve perfected my mani-pedi skills, and my nails have never been healthier.

My monthly haircut and color: I’ve become adept at trimming my hair, and I’m okay with going grey.

Grocery shopping: I always despised shopping for groceries, so having them delivered works for me.

Clothes and shoe shopping: 2020 was the year I wore schlumpf clothes 24/7. Schlumpf is a thing. Look it up in the Urban Dictionary.

Going out to restaurants: Sitting outside in the brutal heat or the freezing cold is not my idea of fine dining. If I can’t go to Peter Lugar’s in style, I’ll wait until I can.

The last time I filled my car with gas was early February 2020, and March 7 was the last time I left my house. (Except for my flu shot and three doctor visits.)

March quickly morphed into July, then September, followed by non-Thanksgiving, non-Chanukah, non-Christmas, and non-New Year’s Eve.

And please don’t judge me, but during my endless months in quarantine, I found solace in all things 1:12 scale. Okay, I’m more like obsessed.

There were too many 2020 days when I wanted to miniature myself small enough to move into my newly renovated dollhouse.

When my head wasn’t stuck in a dollhouse, I baked some killer bread, grew potted veggies and herbs on my patio, spic-and-spanned my house, socially distanced in my frosty garage, and created some awesomely impressive meals.

And my fingers to elbows have never been cleaner! I’ve been singing the ABCs and Happy Birthday in my inside voice at least fifty times per day.

In 2020 I binged on mindless reality shows I would never have otherwise wasted my time on. Awful shows like 90-Day Fiancé (so creepy) and Married at First Sight (so desperate).

2020 was also the year I could barely string together a sentence because I developed a severe case of writer’s block!

And whenever I wrote, it was forced and mostly dark, which is why I’m only going to bore you with my Top Five blog posts instead of my Top Ten.

And okay, I’ll throw in the worst blog post of 2020 as well as the best of all time (2015-2020).

I do owe you full disclosure: Of my 32 total posts in 2020, I wrote seven of them eons ago—pulled from a novel titled My Stolen Diaries that I’ve been writing since 1992.

And shocking to me was that when I calculated the traffic numbers for my 2020 Top Five blog posts, four of them were from that ancient rough draft novel.

It turned out my most popular blog posts were less of a post-mortem on what Teri was writing in 2020 and more about what Teri was writing in the 90s.

The Teri Tome generated over 300,000 page views in 2020, a whopping 47% increase from 2019, primarily due to my novelog My Stolen Diaries, so I’m pleased.

I’ll start with the worst blog post of 2020:

#1 WORST IN 2020 

I Tried to Save a Cat’s Life Yesterday: I was sorry to see that this blog post was a loser. I still haven’t gotten over that poor pregnant cat. And I’m not sure that anything can be done about it, but we have way too many feral cats in my North Woodmere, New York neighborhood.      

And now for my Top Five 2020 posts:

#1 HIT IN 2020

My Stolen Diaries – Chapter Two: To Know Yourself Is to Know Your Family : I was dumbfounded to see that a chapter from my rough draft novel was numero uno. It took me a while to figure out a format for excerpting from my decades-old unfinished book. When I finally settled on calling it a Novelog (novel-in-a-blog), I put up a Disclaimer and six chapters. I was reasonably sure they would all bomb. The thousands of hits that this 28-year-old Chapter Two garnered made my heart happy.

#2 HIT IN 2020

My Stolen Diaries – Chapter Four: The Yellow Kitchen Table: Wow, so this was also a thrill for me! Another chapter of my dusty old novel? To be honest,  I almost didn’t post this chapter for reasons I won’t disclose. But I have no regrets.

#3 HIT IN 2020

2020 Cedarhurst Sidewalk Sale: I Was Fired for Seeking the Truth: Getting fired from my job as Executive Director of the Cedarhurst Business Improvement District for refusing to put people’s lives at risk during a pandemic was devastating. But I’m glad my post reached thousands of visitors, and I hope it continues to attract tons of traffic. I miss my job, but I don’t miss the Village of Cedarhurst’s political posturing, the lies, the misinformation, or the bullying. And I’m still weighing whether or not to sue the Deputy Mayor of Cedarhurst for defamation.

#4 HIT IN 2020

My Stolen Diaries – Chapter Five: My First Diary: The first thing I thought when I added up the numbers and saw that the #4 spot was yet another chapter of my book—was that maybe, just maybe, my languishing novel has legs!

#5 HIT IN 2020

My Stolen Diaries – Chapter Six: Tit: Another chapter of my book! And BTW, Tit is the nickname for a bully character in my novel. And the thousands of people this chapter reached gave me new resolve to pull out that book and take a fresh look at it.

#1 HIT OF ALL TERI TOME TIME (2015-2020)

Bullies Are Cowards and Why I Refuse To Turn the Other Cheek: I have a lot to say about this one. Year after year, this post, written in 2015, continues to outperform all the others, and to date, has garnered almost 550,000 page views. And year after year, I’m thankful for the blog traffic, but the fact that “bullies” is my number one keyword says volumes about our world’s character. And as history has shown us, there are way too many psychopathic bullies out there. And from my personal experience, someone with a psychopathic personality disorder will almost always display some sort of mental illness and or narcissistic derangement. As far as I’m concerned, all three conditions are little more than a convenient label for crackpots and social deviants who over-estimate and exaggerate their abilities, status, intelligence, and looks.

In reviewing my 2020 hits and misses, as well as my top post of all Teri Tome time, I’m excited about highlighting more chapters of my novel on my blog.

And 2021 might even be the year I finish it!

I want to wish my loyal readers a Happy New Year. I hope that 2021 brings you wellness and equality, plus all the hopes and dreams you thought would happen in 2020.

And I can’t wait to see what 2021 holds for the new and improved Teri.

Stay tuned!