it is 9:03 and I am beat. I feel as if I am always talking on this blog about how tired I am. Sorry about that. Part of the problem is that I am writing at night and my days tend to be full. The other is that I’ve never been very good at pacing…
Category: Writing as a Discipline
Flash Essay: Saturday, Belief, and Ray Wylie Hubbard
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:…
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…
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 Essay: West Texas and New Mexico
Wide open spaces and oven-like heat, that’s what West Texas is like in July. And lots of little towns that you have to slow down from 80 miles per hour, first to 55, and then all the way to 35. And if you don’t, you can be sure that the local sheriff’s deputy in each…
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 