I learned today that my childhood friend, Cheryl Hicks, has died of a heart attack, just three weeks before her 60th birthday. I went from first grade through twelfth with Cheryl and spent a good amount of time at her home growing up. I haven’t seen her in a long time, but she is one…
Category: Texas
January 16th: Elizabeth’s Birthday!
Today I have been thinking about Liz’s birth back in 1986. How I had gone to the midwife on the morning of the 15th and declared, “I just need to have this baby,” even though my due date was two weeks away. I don’t know if it was the “I can’t stand being pregnant another second”…
My Mother and Her Pain
“Please don’t share our family tragedy,” my mother whispered to me while we stood in church together in Pottsboro, Texas in 1990. I understood what she was saying to me. “Please don’t tell these people. I can’t bear to deal with this right now.” Tragedy was not too strong of a word. We had just…
1st Day Back in LA
I am sitting here with Cameron, my first student in 2013. She, a pretty brown-eyed blonde with hair halfway down her back, has been my writing student since she was in elementary school (she is now a sophomore in high school). We are both feeling sluggish after a long winter break and are using 15…
Back in LA
We arrived at midnight and now it’s 1:45. We have been visiting with daughter Liz and her boyfriend, Ron, who stayed up late to greet us, which was very sweet of them. Now I am in bed after a warm bath. We are due to get up at 5:45 to go help cook breakfast for…
Westward Ho
We are in Van Horn, Texas, not too many miles east of El Paso and we are grateful to be here. It is 1:30 am now and we have been ready to stop since 11:30. However, the oil boom in West Texas has made every motel/hotel cram packed with oil rig workers. The prices are…
Delayed Trip
We have delayed our trip back to CA because we have had so much to do. Also, because it has been raining along our route either through El Paso or Flagstaff. Alas, it is now 12:34 am and we are still not ready to go. We have lots of work to do in the morning…
Time to Switch This Tired Brain to OFF
Welcome to the land of the living dead. Too much work in too short a time. Yikes. I have hit the wall – at least for tonight – and am ready to go stare at the television set with no care for what I am watching. For future reference, please remind me not to combine…
Shopping for a Tiny Apartment Kitchen
‘The house is quiet. It is 11:30 pm. Shadows fall across the floors in 2 rooms I can see from my vantage point in a chair near the gas heater in the staircase room of our Victorian. I don’t have one word to say that I think anyone would find interesting. But here I am…
5 Star Recipe for Orange Cranberry Pecan Muffins
I love collecting recipes and this one came from a recipe box I bought at an estate sale several years ago. The box is made up of two long file drawers in a small oak cabinet and each drawer is crammed full of the owner’s favorite recipes clipped from newspapers or magazines, along with hand-written…
20 Minutes a Day 