When I was two and a half, the ocean stole my bucket and shovel. I had been sitting, minding my own business, my legs in the water and my butt in the sand, when they were swept away. I cried and ran for my mom, but it was too late, they were gone. [...]
I didn’t see snow until I was seven years old. My family lived in LA until I was almost nine, and it was a rare day when the temperature dropped below 45 degrees. One day in March of 1986, my parents decided it was time for their kids to experience snow and so [...]
40 years ago this week, my grandfather Phil, my mother’s father, died of a massive heart attack. He was 57 years old. He had been a smoker since childhood, having grown up poor on the streets of Fishtown in the early years of the 20th century. He left behind a wife, three [...]
My friend Anna is getting married next month, after years of swearing up and down that she was never, ever going to get hitched. Her first date with her fiancee lasted three days, and their second spanned the length of a work week. After that, he just moved in.
For this untraditional bride, nothing [...]
My great-great Aunt Sue had a eccentric costume for every occasion. Here she is, as the (Jewish) Spirit of Christmas Creepy. My poor grandmother never knew what she’d be wearing when she’d show up for family events. Many found it frightening, Aunt Sue just thought it was festive.
Of the number of questions [...]
Keyboarding was the most valuable class I took in middle school. These days I consider that one semester I spent with Mrs. Hartzell among the most useful in my life. Not that I enjoyed it while I was in it. As a sixth grader in 1990, I didn’t understand why I needed [...]
Saturday afternoon I got home from setting up the booth at APHA to two emails. One from Luna and another from Mr. Blankbaby himself. They had both written to invite me to see The Chronicles of Narnia with them that evening. I love impromptu gatherings with blogging friends, and was luckily able [...]
Right now my belly is pleading with me to go stretch out on the couch, to relieve the pressure that an overabundance of Morimoto’s sushi. Tonight I went, with my five favorite girls, to celebrate our friendship and the fact that we finally have Lara back after months of wedding planning and preparation.
But I [...]
In October of 2000, my parents came up to Whitman for the very last parents’ weekend of my college career. On Saturday, instead of exploring the borough of Walla Walla (we’d exhausted that possibility during the previous three years) we drove out of town, pointing the car towards Dayton, WA. Dayton is a [...]
Tonight I spent some time with two ancient sewing baskets. I took advantage of my quiet Sunday evening to finally (it only took me six months) fix the hem on what had been a favorite pair of black pants, repair a tiny hole in a thriftstore sweater and make shorter a pair of brown [...]
