Mid-afternoon here in LA on Saturday, the temperature a perfect 76 degree and there isn’t a cloud in the sky. I am sitting in the back yard so the dogs can poke around and hopefully do their business while I write. In just a bit, Ray and I are headed off to two different places:…
Category: Los Angeles
Flash Essay: Day One with Our Little Foster Dog, Sammie
I am tired. Babysitting little Sammie, our new foster Scottie, is the reason. My goodness. We’ve been downstairs, upstairs, in the house, in the back yard, and around the block twice. All with Cordelia one step ahead of little Sammie, leading the way. To my knowledge, Sammie still hasn’t peed or pooped. Our daughter Sarah…
Flash Essay: Countdown to Sammie
It is a cool evening here in LA with grey skies and a breeze that is shaking the leaves on the avocado trees out back. I’m sitting in a little outdoor alcove, which affords privacy under a canopy of green from a twenty-foot maple tree planted near the garage. I hear honking out front, and…
Flash Memoir: The End of an Era
“Yes, we’ll go to the State Fair next Saturday,” my father said. “We’ll take the family and drive to Dallas.” The words were right – the ones I wanted to hear – but my father’s tone was flat. I could tell he didn’t really want to go. He was reluctantly agreeing to the trip only…
Flash Essay: Two Places; One Brain
I live a schizophrenic existence: part of my time spent in a little Texas town; the other right in the heart of LA. Wow. What a contrast. We just returned from a month in Texas, a wonderful month of hard work and obvious results, neighborly chats on front porches at night, and friends to visit…
Flash Memoir: The Unexpected Joy of Cooking
Food is love. Not exactly. Not in my family when I was growing up, at least. I saw that principle applied in other families where dinner time centered on a meal lovingly prepared by a mother who might have gone out and picked fresh vegetables from her own garden, or used canned vegetables from that…
Flash Essay Prompt: Freedom
When have I felt perfectly free? Swimming underwater when I was a child, feeling the coolness, seeing the blue vagueness through open eyes, my body stretching forward near the bottom of the pool as my arms pulled and my feet paddled me to the other side. I imagine that freedom even now when I am…
Ten Minutes from Home
I believe it is safe to say that we’ve made it. We are on Ventura Boulevard and it is 66 degrees. All we have to do is go up and over a canyon road to Hollywood, turn right on Sunset Boulevard and left on Doheny. From there, we are home.
70 Miles from LA!
It is 8:55 pm and we’ve been driving since 8:30 this morning. We are an hour and a half from home, but unfortunately, this is some of the toughest driving because of all the traffic. I will just be glad when we pull into our driveway. If you are ever wondering how big the U….
Flash Post: Heading West
This is our last night in Texas before heading back to California. We have been gone exactly one month tomorrow. I can’t believe so much time has passed. We have been organizing and hauling, moving and shaking; getting lots done, hard stuff that isn’t conducive to hot summer temperatures. But we did it anyway. Tomorrow…
20 Minutes a Day 