Rule #1 of owning a home: once you decide to spend money on your house, something will break/explode/leak. Same for spending money on the rest of your life. Everything is settling down, you've saved up to take a trip, and as soon as you hop on a plane, your parents call to let you know... Continue Reading →
In El Paso, as well as other cities on the border, it's customary to build stone walls around your property rather than a picket fence, a style that originated with our neighbors in Mexico. It was jarring a first to see heavy rock walls rather than wooden fences, but its practical. Wood in the desert,... Continue Reading →
Do you ever picture something you want and when you go to find that thing you can't? It doesn't exist, you just designed your perfect item and then were crushed to discover you could not, in fact, purchase that item? That happens to me all the time. You'd think someone would have offered me some... Continue Reading →
Shoppers know that after the Fourth of July the pool floats and sunscreen get moved to the clearance rack and the school supplies take over. I always thought it seemed cruel to roll out the notebooks and crayons so soon when I was dreading going back to school. Then I had kids and enrolled them... Continue Reading →
The week the world began to panic about COVID-19, we were in Houston visiting my in-laws. We drove straight home to El Paso, not wanting to have any contact with potential super-spreaders before we could hide out in our house for a while. "A while" turned out to be about fifteen months. This week, we... Continue Reading →
Regular readers know I recently attempted to write a full-length novel. I "finished" it, meaning I wrote it from start to finish, but it needs a lot of tender love and care. If my book were a house, it wouldn't just need window dressings. You'd walk into the kitchen and find that it had no... Continue Reading →
While I was on vacation, I ate bread that did not make my stomach upset. When I returned, I ate the same bread and felt sick. A rational person might just stop eating bread that made them ill, but I adore bread. My favorite food is sandwiches (like Joey from Friends) and no it is... Continue Reading →
Y'all, I made a classic rookie mistake today. My oldest son had an adult tooth barge in before the baby tooth was ready to depart, so he had to have the little guy pulled today. I had never heard of such a thing until his best friend had the exact same procedure, but apparently it's... Continue Reading →
I had a mountain of laundry to fold today to continue our recovery from vacation-palooza, so I watched In The Heights while I worked through it, and the movie was a delight! I felt so attached to the male lead, Anthony Ramos, who was also one of my favorites from Hamilton as well as Lady... Continue Reading →
The traditional photo for every visit: driving the boat with Baba. We haven't been to my parents' cabin in Wisconsin in a few years, but it is delightfully unchanged, for the most part. The colors here are so soothing and rich, like I'd never seen green until I visited the Midwest. The cabin is on... Continue Reading →
