Last week I wrote about our sweet, easygoing dog. Well, we also have a cat. When Elsa was five weeks old, I picked her out of a feral litter born just outside the door of the rural office where I worked. Mama Cat had already produced a couple of litters with the resident playboy, Bobby …
Storytelling
Adventures in Babysitting: Winter Break
There I was again, driving to my sister’s house hours before dawn. It’s President’s Day and I have Aunt duty with nephews K. & D. My brother-in-law and I do the whispered baton-pass in the dark kitchen – he heading out to work, I heading straight to their living room recliner. After fumbling with their …
Wish you were here…
If you’re lucky, you recently got this post card from me. I thought the view of a crystal clear bay from a Caribbean beach would hit the spot right about now. I took that photo of secluded Brewer’s Bay, Tortola, BVI, from a chaise lounge. Another version shows my red-nail polished toes and a cold …
Popular: Viral without the vaccine
Apparently, Dive Bar is pretty popular. Within the first day of posting last week, a couple of friends who are frequent commentators on this blog stopped by to comment their reminisces about dive bars – one a reminisce actually including me, and the other a reminisce that I wish included me. Facebook, where new posts …
Dive Bar
If I had the time, resources, and inclination, I’d open a tiny bar and name it Dive Bar. It would be poorly lit, serve mostly bottled beer and well drinks, and the restrooms – clean and serviceable – would be graffiti temples filled with genius insults, beat poetry and psychedelic cartooning. To have visited a …
Apoca-NOT-o: Mayans Optional
On Thursday night I took care of my nephews while my sister luxuriated at the hair salon and my brother-in-law did his version of holiday self-prep with pitchers and wings. The boys were very well-behaved, as usual, allowing for your typical wailing, kitchen-floor flailing, and ignoring me with Sponge Bob-mesmerized stares. I convince them to …
Christmas Crafts
One Christmas my mother made candy wreaths for our elementary school teachers. She bent a metal coat hanger into a perfect circle then painstakingly tied red and green curling ribbon around the hoop, adding peppermint candies along the way. She was very good at making ringlets with a quick zip of the ribbon between thumb …
Gifts
Raise your hand if you’re done Christmas shopping. Are you still looking for the perfect gift? Do you have something for everyone, or do you keep it simple? Is it a grab-bag kind of event in your family? Actually, I really don’t mean those kinds of gifts. To get to what kinds of gifts I …