Life is awfully quiet around our house these days. With a daughter off at college, and her brother starting seventh grade, it’s often just the husband-on-sabbatical and me in the house. Sounds like a writer’s paradise, yes? It is, and yet it isn’t. Sometimes I have to get away from the domestic distractions–critters, laundry, the …Read More

For years I’ve been a fan of stop motion animation. Not just Wallace and Gromit, but The Brothers Quay, Jan Svankmajer, et al. My first efforts were years ago–lost now, of course. I think they’re still on a 3.5″ floppy disk somewhere. One was of a Barbie doll climbing up to take a ride on …Read More

I know. Posting a blog that links right to someone else’s site is cheating, isn’t it? I’m just so delighted with the interview of me that Diane Landy did over at her lovely blog, The Princesston, that I want to send you over there. She asks me some challenging questions, and lets me natter on …Read More

You know I would never get this close to bees if I weren’t a sucker for a good photo op. The lavender in my garden is blooming like crazy. The herbs–except for the basil–adore this hot, dry weather. Seems the bees like it, too. Better that they pollinate the lavender than drill holes in my …Read More

First, I must give a shout-out to my own young superhero, Bengal, who celebrated his last day of sixth grade today. He did a lot of growing up this year, and is still the smartest, funniest kid I know. I’m always proud and happy to be with him, and can’t believe I deserve to have …Read More

Sometimes, you just need a picture of one of the best dogs in the world. This is our Scouty. He’s fiercely protective of us, and barks up a storm, yet he doesn’t have a mean bone in his oddly-assembled doggy body. Can’t you tell? Yesterday, I was Skyping with Opera Poodle who is away studying …Read More

Last night I did something I don’t often do–I stopped everything I was doing to watch a television show. I put the boy to bed, poured a glass of wine, liberated a box of dark chocolate, raspberry cookies from the cupboard, settled on the couch, and watched the final two episodes of HOUSE. I came …Read More

It’s not nighttime yet, but it’s dark outside my window. We haven’t had any significant rain here in So Ill for well over a month. The trees are finally moving in the wind. They’d been standing still so long, I was wondering if they’d forgotten how. It’s a good thunderstorm–a summer thunderstorm. Nothing like the …Read More

I so wanted to come home today with A +++ on both my motorcycle skills and written tests. But it wasn’t to be. While I missed only a single question out of fifty on the written test, I scored a 25 on the skills test–5 points over passing. We spent our first hour doing stop …Read More

Bursting into tears is so embarrassing. I did it a lot as a kid, but later learned–in therapy, no less–that tears disconcert people, and maybe need to be reigned in from time to time. Today I saved my tears for a 10 minute break after my dismal performance on the Honda 250 that I was …Read More