Photo from AllThingsD

Early this morning, I dreamed the mother ship called me home. I woke up early with that familiar mixture of exhilaration and dread, which I always felt during my tumultuous decade in sales with a Fortune 100 company.

In my dream, I received a call from th… Read full post »

On the flip side of fifty, I'm experiencing a literal downward slope of what was formerly perky and positively uplifting.

I’ve battled weight since my twenties. Drinking beer with my pals at the Chug-O-Mug on Tuesdays (and Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays) in college was th… Read full post »

My social network page and my Real Life Grapevine are full of news of Proms. The girls’ dresses are stunning, and I suspect the price supports the shimmer, glimmer and glamour of these special once-in-a-lifetime evenings.

In our semi-suburban community prom night is just as it was for t… Read full post »

I have met the enemy and he is chocolate

 Over the weekend, you might say I stumbled over a few rocks in my “lifestyle change.”  I always hesitate to use the word “diet”; it’s a foul four-letter word that I just don’t like.

I admit; however, that my stu… Read full post »

In June 2008, we attended college orientation with our only child. Always interested in how the government works (or doesn’t work), he chose a college in Washington DC. For anyone who loves politics and American history, living in Washington DC gives you a front row seat.

My husband… Read full post »

She  looked angelic in her immaculate Brownie uniform, perfectly matching Girl Scout anklets and uniform shoes. She had a Julie Andrews pixie haircut.

But she had a sly, not sweet smile, for she was a demon in cookie-seller's clothing.

Every Tuesday afternoon about fifteen girls from my element… Read full post »

_{Photo from Richard Lugar's web site.}

Yesterday Senator Richard Lugar got what we Hoosiers call an "ass-whooping." Indiana’s long-term senior Senator was soundly beaten by State Treasurer Richard Mourdock on Tuesday, in a contest that delivered national attention to the normally quiet H… Read full post »

Something is seriously wrong with my body.  Is it possible I was transported aboard an alien spacecraft and my own body was substituted for this mass of flesh I now own?

For three months now I’ve been trying to undo the mistakes of fifty-plus years of… Read full post »

New Harmony, Indiana, is an artist's village on the Wabash River about forty miles from our home.  This afternoon we took our cameras and made a photo walk through an arts and crafts show and some antique stores.

The town has been home to utopians and Shakers (and apparently… Read full post »

painting from brunzema.com/images/blog_images/magritte.bmp

Yesterday I was on deadline and really didn’t want to be bothered.

Someone pounded on the front door and I peeked out the front window.  A man stood there with a plastic bottle in his hand.  At his side was an old-fa/… Read full post »

  

As a young child I fantasized about my future romantic life, fueled by visions from old movies. My Fred Astaire danced with me as a sleek Ginger Rogers to “Dancing in the Dark.”  My partner would be tall and handsome and debonair, some Fred Astaire, a… Read full post »

If you saw our grocery cart a year ago, it would have looked completely different.

Both of us were master level in eating badly and sedentary behavior. Two bookish types, whose idea of fun on a Saturday night is listening to jazz on NPR and catching up on magazines (check… Read full post »

I apologize for the length of this. I had to write it for myself and the others who loved Joe Murphy. Much love to Genie, his partner of more than fifty years.

Today I learned that my mentor and former boss (which he termed as double SOB backwards)… Read full post »

Democratic pundit Hilary Rosen stepped in a pile of it this week when she stated that Ann Romney had never worked a day in her life. I don’t know much about Hilary Rosen, nor do I know anything about her personal life.  I probably know less about Ann Romney, except that/… Read full post »

  The cemetary is a stark contrast with nearly two hundred years worth of grave markers, some crumbling beneath the rich Hoosier soil.

Here in this peaceful place the bones of my ancestors lie, starting with Reuben Long, my great-great-grand grandfather who came with… Read full post »

Sated with cherry crumb pie and cheesy potatoes, all we could do was lie in bed flipping the channels. We came up the Hub channel which was showing pilots of ‘70s sitcoms, including “Mork and Mindy,” “Happy Days,” and “Laverne and Shirley.”

The pilot of &ldq… Read full post »

A testament for early intervention.

Today is our son’s birthday. He’s a fine young man and we are really proud of him.  In a month he will graduate from college. We are optimistic that the path he chooses will be a good one, and that he will make a positive/… Read full post »

She walks beside me all day and I know she is there, even when I am not specifically thinking about my mother.  She is buckets of sadness and boxes of guilt.  She is snippets of a symphony; she is a smell of White Shoulders and baby powder. She is an/… Read full post »

For years I’ve bugged my husband that we should go to Vegas and be remarried by an Elvis impersonator. He always sneers at this, and says, “I am already married, and you just want to play the slots.”

Well, that’s mostly true. But I think a long-term marriage full of… Read full post »

In his famous Meditation 17 (the “no man is an island” poem, Brit John Donne says that “every death diminishes me.”  When someone dies, we lose that piece of ourselves that was woven tightly to them. For me, the recent death of my mother has made me stop and reconsider my/… Read full post »

Courtesy NOAA Archives, Indiana 1965

The storms this week packed quite a wallop throughout the Ohio River Valley and parts south and east causing a number of fatalities.

I live in southwest Indiana; the worst storm was about thirty miles north of The Tink's Cathouse.  He's okay.  Ev… Read full post »

This is a column I wrote for the Evansville Courier and Press today.

If you listen closely to news about the 2012 presidential election, you will note that some folks predict the Republicans will have a “brokered” convention in Tampa come August. A brokered convention is possible when an… Read full post »

When my brother and I were small children, we fought most of  the time. It was a blood sport and we loved it. And when we weren’t fighting, we were laughing and up to no good.

And sometimes my mother would just give up and laugh with us.  Which was often. … Read full post »

You spent most of your days bowing like a Japanese houseboy in old, bad Technicolor movie to our whims. You always behaved with grace and put the needs of everyone ahead of yourself. You cleaned our toilets and washed our clothes and when I didn’t have a car you dragged me out of… Read full post »