Monthly Archives: April 2014

The Pink Dress: Loved and Lost

Inspired by just one of the amazing women I met at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop 2014–Ilene Beckerman, author of Love, Loss, and What I Wore–this is an excerpt from the fire memoir I’m working on.

 

If a travel agent hadn’t messed up our reservation and nearly left us without a hotel room in New York that time, I never would have found the pink dress in an upscale beach town’s second-hand store. As an apology for his mistake, and for our embarrassment at the check-in desk at a hotel that had never heard of us or our reservation, the travel agent comped us to a weekend stay at the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel.

We tore ourselves away from the luxurious seaside resort one afternoon to wander through the nearby town. I’d spotted a second hand-shop on our way to the hotel and thought I might be able to find something to wear to the fancy wedding we’d been invited to that winter. “What I’m looking for,” I explained to my husband, “is something someone wore to the Oscars and then gave away.” And once I got inside the store, I found exactly what I was looking for: a glittery rack crammed with drop-dead beautiful dresses that looked as though they’d been down a red carpet at least once. I had found the mother lode of cast-off couture.Continue Reading

Brrr™: The Big Chill

I’d been watching the vacant former home of my favorite place to buy bread for months.Rumors started to spread about an ice cream store moving into the empty space. And then the rumors were confirmed, which turned out to be very good news indeed. While I missed the bread place, I had high hopes forContinue Reading