Category Archives: Zero to Sixty in One Year

About a Boy; Also About a Cake

There’s a story behind this story. In the fall of 2003, my younger son was getting ready to write his college essays. I asked him what he wanted to write about. He thought a moment, and then he said, “Maybe I’ll write about the castle cake.”The castle cake! I wondered what he’d write about it.Continue Reading

A Touch of Gray

It says right there on my California driver’s license—Hair: GRY.  I must have changed it when I renewed my license over ten years ago. That would be about right. The year was 2000. I’d grown weary of the increasingly frequent trips to the hair salon to fight the rising tide of gray hair. By thenContinue Reading

For Dad, part two

Dad’s Guide to Life My dad was a teacher, and like many outstanding teachers, he never took time off from teaching. Sure, there were vacations and summers, but he was always on the job. If no students were around, he always had my sister and me. I have put together some of his most importantContinue Reading

Song for My Father

Tomorrow would have been my father’s 92nd birthday. He’s been gone ten years now. Sharing a laugh on Father’s Day My dad always told me that I was a writer. He said this with admiration, I think. He encouraged me to write and would often help me when I got stuck.  When I was taking anContinue Reading

Moving on once again.

Yes, it’s that time. And while these are actual boxes in my actual house, they do not contain my personal memories. But it’s a fairly accurate portrayal of how much stuff I still need to wrap up  before I leap into the next month-long look back. For those of you who have been along forContinue Reading

From the Ground Up

I realize that the last post jumped ahead of where I am chronologically, but it seemed like the right thing to do.My rules; I break them. But I need to backtrack to the whole rebuilding drama. I kept a journal that began with the following entry on May 14, 1992:Our permit is approved! We meetContinue Reading

Great balls of….

…no, not fire this time. Taking a break. It’s great balls of yarn. Not me, or Marsha It occurs to me that I haven’t written anything here about knitting yet. I’ve been knitting since my friend Marsha taught me how back in high school. Which means a lot of knits and purls and dropped stitches overContinue Reading

Livin’ in the Mo(raga), or It’s Getting Real in the TJ Maxx Parking Lot

Where I live, in Oakland California, when you say something is “through the tunnel,” it really means you are saying, “in a galaxy far, far, away.”  Through the tunnel has implications.  I’m not knocking the ‘burbs here, but we Oaklanders had many adjustments to make to our new situation in Moraga, a place that stillContinue Reading

A Musical Interlude

Just because…it seems like I’ve gone from zero to 45 in a moment.

Making a List, Checking it Twice

After the fire, our insurance agent told us we needed to compile a list of everything we’d had in the house in order to be reimbursed for replacement costs. We were lucky to have purchased this type of insurance the previous year when we renewed our policy.  It was inexpensive to add, and we’d hardlyContinue Reading