Back Off Pigweed OR: Just Enough On The Plate

Deserted houses, forgotten outbuildings, abandoned vehicles, long vacant parking lots, and sunken ships. They’ve all got something in common. Nature gobbles them up. Underground roots (rhizomes) undermine the integrity of foundations. Ivy creeps stealthily into cracks. Temperature extremes, dampness, insects and various wild animals- all play a role in reclaiming structures. In the sea, artificial reefs […]

Untangling a Humdingerdoozer of a Holiday

(Yeah that’s me. I love my photoshop.) This is my father, seen below- in his prime. (he’s 83 now) My aunt used to think he looked like Robert Mitchum, and in some pictures he really does. My father was a great mechanic. (Still is. He owns a race car now and takes great pleasure sitting […]

The Importance of Stories (open ended dates)

I was a small child then, but I heard the stories. When she was in her 40s, my aunt (now passed) drove a cab and smoked cigars. She was always one of my favorite people. “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.” – Macbeth Get the nasty bits […]

Musings of a Vivid Dreamer

I was trying to arrange an enormous pile of gladiolus, lilies and various wild flowers (Black-eyed Susans and daisies) into a makeshift vase -made from a repurposed pig trough- onto which I had mosaiced broken shards from actual Wedgewood dinner plates…when suddenly my silky black puppy wiggled and squeezed her way through the mail slot […]

Childhood Reminiscing, What IS “Conventional” Anyway?

me, what a looker! my mother and I, She kept the bathing suit. I still have it, (the red and white striped bikini) —the elastic is shot but I still have it. Matter of fact, I think, 49 yrs. later, my father still has that brown shirt blowing on the line! I’m not kidding. My […]

URNS Dilemma

URNS Check this out: These are on display in the corner of my cellar. The four of them, (two pets, two people) have been on display for some time now. I know it’s a bit of a macabre theme but go with it. Think of this as a pre-Halloween blog or something. It’s become a dilemma, […]

Thou Art Inspiring

My grandson said recently: “Grandma enjoys stress. It gives her something to do.” This is my bathroom shower curtain. The curtain was purchased at Walmart.As you can see, it’s an oceanic world, an underwater scene of fish and coral. Every week I buy stickers and when my grandson sleeps over, he puts them into the scene. […]

Loss of A Dear Friend, Zsolt Megai

Please don’t be put off by the length of this. I’m not sure how long it will roll on; but I’ve lost a dear friend so here goes. It was October of 2007 when I first met Zsolt Megai. My husband had died in 2005 and The Ct […]

Augusten Burroughs and me and also Egyptians and Stuff

“Guess I have to kill you now”, I joked during our ‘bathroom time’. He rolled his eyes and had this stern face which was his mask, the ‘mask of ALS’ (Lou Gehirgs) as it was called in the newsletter we got delivered to the house. His facial muscles were so weak that he had a […]

Christmas is… and isn’t

Do you get a little sick of all the warm-fuzzy hoo-ha this time of year? I’m not embarrassed to admit that I buy into all the good cheer to an extent and then slowly I feel like…where’s the New Year? I want all this behind me now. I wasn’t even going to get a tree […]

Digging In Boxes

Digging In Boxes There are ‘noun friendly’ languages like English and then there are ‘verb friendly’ languages like Korean, Hindi, and Japanese. In the latter languages, nouns are frequently dropped and names for activities are emphasized in the earliest years of life when parents are teaching children to speak. On the other hand, parents […]

Peas roll, right? House Elves and such

It never failed. My then 6 year old son would drop a pea on the yellowed linoleum floor during his favorite supper of meatloaf, peas and baked potato and a few seconds later it was gone. Peas roll, right? I can’t answer that because our fallen peas didn’t stay on the floor long enough for […]

Acts Of Kindness and the HEART

My grandmother died when I was about 13 years old. It’s the last thing I expected even though she was nearly 90. (Or was she in her 90s? Memory fades that detail…) To a child, death only happens to other people; not to people you know. It was a special relationship. I was mute most […]

Contemplation on Dead Greyhounds and Women’s Rights; Ultimately Life Lessons

Some people are surely meant to be in our lives, but not necessarily to be in them for a lifetime. I think of course of those people in my own life who came and went on in death before I would’ve liked. My spouse left three children whose ages were 23, 14 and 9. I […]

My Personal Yellow Journey, from Plastic Cups to Coldplay

My mother and I spent a few weeks each summer, and sometimes on school vacations, with her mother; a fragile sprite of a woman who was deaf and lived in a huge white house in Vermont sprawling with cats and houseplants. At bedtime I would take ‘my’ yellow plastic cup from the ‘cupboard’, which was […]

Resistance To Change

After our house was remodeled to handicap specifications, I had had it with workers in the house! My husband’s condition worsened, he died, and the last thing I wanted to do was keep up with repairs, because that meant having workers in the house again. So for years I let things go, no more visiting […]

Inside My Head Again

Soothing Places… Some places leave vivid etchings on our memories. When we close our eyes and drift…we’re almost there again. I was about 8 years old. There were crayfish to trap and study in Grandma’s Brook. I never saw more than one claw of the crayfish I named ‘Crab With The Big Green Claw,’ […]

Wisteria, Blue Roses, Murals, and Human Diversity

Some years ago I was wondering whether or not I should be a tattoo artist. Sounds fulfilling and fun. But then I got to thinking, what about all the small talk involved and touching of other people? Not really my thing. I mean if it were possible to tell […]

Hoarding, Shifting Perspectives or “New Use For a Light Bulb Box”

This stock photo is one that reminds me of my childhood home. I remember when my pigtailed daughter was five, still in elementary school; the only time in her 18 years that she ever allowed long hair on her head… We would walk to the corner to wait for the bus and play ‘passing-the-time’ games […]

I have 48 years, I will do much more

A few years ago, my daughter came inside the house carrying something. She put the thing in my hand. It was grey, solid, an almost perfectly round rock, which fit in my palm. She’d found a keen rock-ball. Across the street from me are natural caves. There’s a mountain with a flag on top, and […]

A Geometric Memory From H’s Terminally Disabled Years

There is a lady in a purple geometric block print pantsuit, so like one my mother would pick out for special occasions. But this lady has short cropped dark hair, so like the smartly coiffed styles seen on Liza Minelli. (My mother is blonde.) She walks briskly down the corridor and can see into our […]