I own a very old house in Monterey County, where everybody wants to go on vacation. For ten years I rented it out to friends, way under market value, although the price has been creeping up these last few years. During the pandemic, I rented it one time, and my mom, sis, and brother-in-law spent… Continue reading No More Renters
Category: memoir
Daisy’s New Perch
(re-run) My suburban house is dumb. The small bedrooms are on the front of the house, with the family room tucked behind the garage. There are no good windows for Daisy to see out of, no couch to jump upon to watch the street. Until the day I cleaned my office. I ended up pushing… Continue reading Daisy’s New Perch
Memories Light the Corners of my Mind
(re-run) I used to be good at remembering people’s names and remembering to use coupons before they expired. Now I am lucky if I can find the coupon when I am at the store. (re-run) Today, at CVS, I checked out and was given a long receipt with $6.00 of extra bucks on it. My… Continue reading Memories Light the Corners of my Mind
Creative People Make Messes
(re-run) If you are an orderly person like Monk on the TV show of the same name, this column is not for you. You crave things in place, all the time. Otherwise, you are agitated. The other side of the coin is the person who is so busy creating that he/she doesn’t notice the mess.… Continue reading Creative People Make Messes
How OCD Improved my GPA
I’ve been doing research for a kid book involving the presidents. It got me to thinking how back in high school I needed to do a project for my government class about the presidential election. It was fall semester of 1972. It was between George McGovern and Nixon. My class project was to make a… Continue reading How OCD Improved my GPA
How Pretty She Was ¡Qué Linda!
She was my roommate in Spain way back in the summer of 1977. She was a beauty, except for the scar that ran across her cheek and down her nose, a result of going through a car windshield in a teen-aged accident. I didn’t know her well, since I was a year ahead of her… Continue reading How Pretty She Was ¡Qué Linda!
Rocky Mountain Low
(re-run) He was the good-looking cousin of my best friend. Tall, tan, and bearded, with a killer smile, he was gorgeous. For me, it was love at first sight. Marcus had moved from Minnesota to Colorado to be near his sister. He asked if I wanted to come out and go backpacking with him. I… Continue reading Rocky Mountain Low
The Danger of Family Secrets
(re-run) To this day my mother says, “It was a different time. That’s what families did in those days.” She is talking about family secrets. Mine had a whole bunch of them. My dead Uncle David, with his farm painting on the living room wall of my grandparents’ house, was a mystery to me. He’d… Continue reading The Danger of Family Secrets
The Weakest Link – my Low Back
(re-run) The good thing about the current Coronavirus Covid-19 lockdown is that I have a hundred projects to finish. Suddenly I have nothing but time to do it all. Everything was going along swimmingly yesterday. I exercised. I painted (spray-painted picture frames), I picked up dog poop. I did a heavy load of laundry. I… Continue reading The Weakest Link – my Low Back
Participation Trophy
My millennial children like to make fun of themselves for all the participation trophies they earned in childhood, for soccer, basketball, softball, baseball. Two of them recently ditched the trophies. One of them kept hers. “Why did you guys give us trophies for everything?” Child # 3 asked. “The pendulum swung the other way from… Continue reading Participation Trophy
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 