I locked myself out at my parents’ last week. I’d been trying to do a good deed—water Dad’s tomato plants—and had even left myself a yellow sticky on the mirror in my bathroom to that effect: “H20 toms”. It all started the night before as my… Read full post »

I’m sitting in a booth with my parents at Bricks Restaurant in Motley, Minnesota. Bricks used to be the old El Ray Café, named after its original owners, Elmer and Raymond. Bricks is bigger and nicer than the El Ray, which went the way of poor management and an aggressive horde… Read full post »

The semester is finally over: I’ve submitted final grades for a jillion students, I’ve put everything that had anything to do with Spring Semester 2012 away, and I can turn now to my future: gearing up to leave for Minnesota next week, and prepping for my summer classes.… Read full post »

Life has been so surreal lately that I expect a hobgoblin to round the corner at any moment, hand me a bag of McDonald’s food and skitter off to sweep my patio. Or maybe that actually happened.

Today is Leo’s three-week birthday, the day he’s supposed to cross more milestones: using his litter box instead of me and my t-shirt and a warm Q-tip, eating gruel instead of sucking on a bottle. So many directions and anti-directions are on the Internet and to be… Read full post »

My new kitten Leo is 17 days old today. My mom is 77 years old today. I’ll board a flight in three weeks for Minnesota to see my Mom, leaving Leo behind—Leo, who will then be five weeks and…

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Exhausted after getting up twice every night for ten nights in a row to feed my tiny, starving, penniless and constipated kitten Leo, I call one of my sisters in Minnesota for comic relief.

“Dick Clark died today,” I say, after our usual… Read full post »

It’s 2 a.m. and my alarm goes off: time to feed the kitten. I get up and zombie-walk to the kitchen, where the light has been on since Easter Sunday, Kitten’s birthday. I need to see what I’m doing every…

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Does anyone remember the Super Bowl of 1996? I do. I was working at Arizona State University, making peanuts teaching our future leaders. I could afford my apartment, gas for my car, and food. If one majorly bad thing had happened during that time—if… Read full post »

Does anyone remember the Super Bowl of 1996? I do. I was working at Arizona State University, making peanuts teaching our future leaders. I could afford my apartment, gas for my car, and food. If one majorly bad thing had happened during that time—if… Read full post »

I have some people over on Saturday night, just by chance. I have gone out with Manfriend for sushi, and when he drops me back at my house with a walk to the door and a hug, I could go inside. But…

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One tradition started in our family, by our mother of course, was the Telling of the Birthday Story. “Tell me about the day I was born,” we would beg, in the days before a third or fourth birthday, or—heaven help us—the…

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God has smote me with cystic acne, what can I say? But other than the occasional whopper, my complexion stays clear, so I end up walking around sporting a red clown nose next to my own, and sometimes on my forehead. They grow so large that… Read full post »

I’ve been trying to find something funny to write about for days, weeks, months. My dad has been sick for weeks, months, years. I don't want to know how the cycle ends, but he's coming home from the hospital. Today.

…

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Traffic School

A camera has caught me going 67 in a 55 zone, so I must attend Traffic School or pay $223 to the State of Arizona plus take three points on my driving record. I only have to pay $180…

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Ten years ago today, I was getting married in a beautiful garden at a fancy resort. Probably at the very moment you’re reading this, I was either saying “I do” or hoping the mockingbird would pipe down or wishing my new step-son would look up or regretting… Read full post »

When I was just a child of 21, I became romantically involved with a man who was 18 years old than me. Soon we were living together at his house in the woods, on a lake, in our home state of Minnesota. I knew exactly
…

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I moved into this house six years ago and was still unpacking when the City decided to rip up all the old pipes in my neighborhood and replace them with new ones. Base camp was in my backyard, where city workers would sit on my cinder block… Read full post »

I had lunch yesterday with Jim Cervantes, a retired colleague—a poet, teacher, and former English department renegade—who is now pre-diabetic, not the sexiest adjective to add to that list, but hey, we all got somethin’. Jim’s doctor now has him counting carbs, which Jim d… Read full post »

It’s a Sunday, and for many Sundays over many years I would put my grading aside, powder my nose, throw on whatever I’d been wearing the night before and dash out the door so I could drive the ten minutes it took to get from my house to… Read full post »

I know I’m not supposed to be shopping at Walmart. The employees there don’t make squat, they can’t unionize to make more squat, and if you believe in shopping local, you’d have to travel to China to buy most of what Walmart sells…right? I mean, only… Read full post »

I’m not one to lose my temper, but I seem to be particularly on edge lately. This could be the result of my new green tea having an aftertaste like manure, or knowing that Arizona is one step closer to…

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Since it’s springtime in Arizona, I went to Home Depot yesterday for some yard and gardening supplies: potting soil, pansies, a gnome. I also needed to make an adult purchase: a wheelbarrow. My dad had told me several years ago that I wouldn’t have the strength… Read full post »

I live in the house made of dust, as if the three little pigs had an evil brother whose construction efforts the wolf overlooked. After thirty years, my walls and roof have all settled sufficiently to resemble a normal house made of…

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