A thrift store in Carmel had a half-off sale yesterday and today. I paid cash for my stack of books at the book store. I mentioned that cash is important, especially for people who don’t have bank accounts or credit cards. “Without cash, what would those people do?” I commented. “Those people always find a… Continue reading My Republican Beach Town
Category: teaching
Dieting, Body Image, and Stay Out of my Business
(re-run) “Are you going to eat all of that?” I was sitting at a table in the teachers’ lounge, my lunch spread out before me. There was a sandwich, a red apple, carrot sticks and a glass of juice, maybe a chocolate or two. Why was the teacher I barely knew commenting on my lunch?… Continue reading Dieting, Body Image, and Stay Out of my Business
More Machu Picchu
(part two) Christy and I finished our breakfast at the hotel up at the top and looked into the fog. The buses wouldn’t start arriving until noon. “Let’s hike up the big mountain,” she said. “Okay,” I said. My lost and found tennis shoes were too small, but I had cut out the toes so… Continue reading More Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu Before It Was a Thing
(re-run) It was 1977. I was finishing up ten weeks of student teaching in an American oil school in Caracas, Venezuela. My roommate, Christy, wanted to travel for two weeks before we went home to the states. She wanted to visit Machu Picchu in Peru. I’d never heard of it. “It’s the lost city of… Continue reading Machu Picchu Before It Was a Thing
My Life in Dogs
(re-run) It was a dogless childhood for me, until I was thirteen. I had asked. My sisters had asked. It wasn’t until our younger brother came home from school and said that somebody in his third-grade class was giving away a perfectly good dog and could he keep it? It happened so fast. I was… Continue reading My Life in Dogs
Oopsy Daisy: Month 3 with the Rescue Dog
(re-run from 2018) Month number three with the rescue dog has revealed more reasons why she was surrendered. When it’s cold and rainy, Daisy prefers to pee indoors, especially in a dark room when no one is watching. Daisy is agile enough to jump on and walk across the table, as in, where we eat.… Continue reading Oopsy Daisy: Month 3 with the Rescue Dog
First Dog, Lost Dog
After moving to farm country to teach high school Spanish, I watched my roommate Kristy come home one day with a German Shephard puppy. “Meet Shane!” she said. She hadn’t asked me. She hadn’t asked the landlord. When she did ask him, his response was, “Not in the house.” Kristy made Shane a bed of… Continue reading First Dog, Lost Dog
How to Wreck your Cell Phone
(re-run) There are lots of ways to ruin you cell phone. I thought I’d heard them all when: 1. It fell from back pocket into toilet. 2. It fell into the hot tub. 3. It got dropped into a pan of dishwater. 4. It got wet when a glass of water wine, beer, or Coke… Continue reading How to Wreck your Cell Phone
Peace Corps Fail
(re-run) It was in the spring of my first year of teaching when the call came. I was at Greenwood Elementary in Greenwood, Nebraska. I had applied to the Peace Corps the year before. They had just seen my application. They wanted to fly me to Chicago for an interview that weekend. They gave me… Continue reading Peace Corps Fail
Dieting, Body Image, and Stay Out of my Business
(re-run) “Are you going to eat all of that?” I was sitting at a table in the teachers’ lounge, my lunch spread out before me. There was a sandwich, a red apple, carrot sticks and a glass of juice, maybe a chocolate or two. Why was the teacher I barely knew commenting on my lunch?… Continue reading Dieting, Body Image, and Stay Out of my Business
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 