I am too tired even to reply to my roommate’s astonishment that I am awake at 7:30 in the morning. She had greeted me briefly after she came home from work yesterday, just before she asked me to put her laundry in the dryer and went out to celebrate Cinco […]
Keeping track of which method of communication people prefer is really difficult. We are awash with choices. Individually, each is wonderful and enhanced by modern technology. Collectively, they are a problem. Person A doesn’t like making phone calls because it always seems to be an intrusion on friends and […]
I am, unexpectedly, undergoing a social experiment. I am living in California without a car. “What utter madness!” I hear you cry. But, it’s true. And, it’s by choice…kind of. When I returned here on New Year’s Eve, I expected to be buying or leasing a car within […]
People talk about the human spirit all the time as though we all know what the spirit is and what the word means, but no one actually defines it in any useful way. The dictionary makes attempts, and Dictionary.com has thirty-one different takes on it, but they all boil down […]
When I moved to this condo in 2009 I spent the first couple of years just settling in, and then it occurred to me that I wanted to get to know a few of my neighbours. I also wanted to know what decisions were being made, so I […]
Nothing prepares us for long illnesses or for dying. All the skills and strengths we have built up are stripped away, and we are left without most of the things that brought us fulfilment and pride. Instead, we are dependent upon others, and we wish it wasn’t so. […]
The people you live with may be people who put up with you because you pay your share of the rent or people who love you, or both. They may be very clever, or know a lot about a couple of things, or not too bright about anything. […]
At a meetup group coffee event recently, I made the mistake of bringing up the topic of the refugees flooding into Europe. I probably should have stayed with safer topics because I didn’t know any of the people who were there, and up until that point the conversations had been […]
I walk the line between wanting to live in the USA, close to my family there, and feeling horrified by repeated mass murders. My US family members are all lovely, peaceful, law-abiding folks who are outraged at gun violence. Every time. They don’t keep guns under their beds […]
This weekend our main street hosted a festival of art, music, and food. It is called Kaleido which is Greek for beautiful form, and that is a perfect description for the festival, for the individual works of art, and for the neighbourhood. As I walked along the street […]
I have just finished reading the very moving and beautifully written Letter to My Son by Ta-Nihisi Coates in The Atlantic. (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/tanehisi-coates-between-the-world-and-me/397619/). It is a raging love letter, and a complex acceptance of disquieting truths about racism in America. I won’t try to paraphrase it because I would […]
It meant a lot to me to be invited to join a book club, even though I had only a vague idea of what was expected of me. I had never been in a book club before. The first time I went to a meeting I arrived too […]
Sometimes I see something on my Facebook page and think “How is it possible that you are my friend?” How could someone in my social and family circle say something, or repost something, that is so diametrically opposed to my own way of thinking? Occasionally, I see something […]
I am listening to my son doing housework upstairs. It warms a mother’s heart. So does this week’s news about same-sex marriage in the United States. It has been a long time coming but heartwarming all the same. For too long, many parents have felt embarrassed, ashamed, or ambivalent […]
My dad was a fast walker. When my family was walking up the road to the bus stop, Dad would be way ahead of the pack. Mum and the kids toddled along behind. I used to think he didn’t want to walk with us, but then I grew […]
I fell over the other day. It was both bewildering and embarrassing at the same time. I somehow tripped on a curb while crossing a road. It left me winded and bruised, but otherwise OK—except for the nagging suspicion that it was karma. Only a few days earlier […]
I need a couple of buttons on my computer. One would be a “What just happened?” button and the other would be “What do I do now?” button. If you could make those for me, tech people, I will be very grateful. Not that I am ungrateful, of […]
That could be me. That’s what occurred to me when I saw a news story out of San Francisco about a mummified body being found in a house. It turned out that the house belonged to a hoarder and the body was the remains of her mother—it’s a […]
“No, it’s my imaginary friend.” That’s what she said when I asked her if she was talking to me. She was in another room, working on her computer. Sometimes she talks on the phone there, so that was my first thought. I could not hear her clearly because […]
In August 2007 I was in a serious car accident that caused me to have fractured vertebrae in my neck and a long convalescence. After a few months, my friend Jean asked me what was the lesson that I had to learn from the experience. The following was […]
I am a snowbird who travels south for the winter. When I get there I have a bird of paradise plant on my patio.
