Fear of Drilling? You Betcha
As I sat in the dentist’s office a couple of weeks ago waiting for the anesthetic to take hold, I worked on a crossword puzzle. The clue for one of the longer words in the puzzle was “Fear associated with drilling.” The answer was not apparent to me. I worked around the word, and soon […]
My Mother’s Last Doll
I’ve written before about my first doll. I’ve written about my mother’s Storybook Bride doll that I could never play with. And I’ve written about the sewing doll that my grandmother and I made clothes for. This post is about my mother’s last doll. It wasn’t really a doll. It was a knitted humanoid figure […]
Leap Year: A Four-Year Assessment of Life
I haven’t written a post about leap year before. The opportunity only comes along once every four years, and I had barely started writing this blog in February 2012. I tend to use mile markers to assess my life over the longer term. For example, on a major birthday, I might ask myself what I […]
Jessie Benton Frémont: One Woman’s Perspective on the Californian Gold Rush
The sequel to Lead Me Home takes place during the California Gold Rush and the development of California as a state. Some scenes are set in Monterey, California, during the Constitutional Convention of 1849. That convention was full of early California luminaries—delegates included John C. Frémont and Lansford Hasting, both of whom had written guides […]
Binge Reading
Admit it. You’ve done it. I’ll bet 90% of my readers have done it. You’ve stayed up too late reading. Or you’ve neglected your job or housework or other obligations to read just one more chapter. It’s called binge reading. It’s a recognized disorder. There’s even a WikiHow on the steps to do it. I’m […]
A Story I Couldn’t Tell Before: The Sister I Never Knew
Shortly before my mother’s death, my father and I reviewed the draft obituaries my parents had written for themselves several years earlier, long before my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. At the time my father showed me the obituaries, my mother was about to go into hospice. We knew we would probably need her obituary […]
The Awesome Wonder of Gravitational Waves
I don’t usually write about science, because I don’t know much about it. I haven’t taken a science class since Physics in my senior year of high school. What impressed me most when I learned about waves in that class was that wave theory explained music—why some chords sound wonderful and others discordant. I could […]
The Boy Wonder
When my son was about three, he went through a Batman phase that lasted several months to a year. He had Batman pajamas and underwear. He had a toy Batmobile, which is still in our basement. He ran around the house singing, “Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, Batman!” (Did I do that right? I know some of […]
You Say Grandma, I Say Nanny . . . Doesn’t Have the Same Ring As Potayto, Potahto
I’ve mentioned before that I called my maternal grandmother Nanny Winnie. How I came to call her that started on my father’s side of the family when my older cousin began calling our common grandmother Nanny Kay. I was the second of Nanny Kay’s grandchildren (though a third was born just months after me). By […]
Salvaging Nooks and Books
I’ve written before about my love/hate relationship with technology. That post recently showed up on my Facebook memories, so I reposted it on Facebook with a comment: “Unfortunately, it’s been three years since this post. More computer upgrades can’t be too far in my future.” That was on January 23, 2016, at 5:54pm. About 9:30 […]