I witnessed an assault that no one could stop. Everyone who knows her, cares about her and loves her watched as Alzheimer, a known thief, attacked her brain and robbed her of every sensible thought, every memory and stole who she was, leaving her empty. We’ve known her almost forever. She was in her early 60’s when we began to notice a change in her words and behavior. We knew something was wrong and feared what that something was. As…
What made me think just because someone shines on the Silver Screen, they know how to eat soup? I’ll bet you’ve never given how a movie star consumes soup one thought, me neither. Until I saw and heard a movie-star slurp. It happened one evening in the Mendocino Hotel, up-north California. My daughter, her husband, Lobo ’n me were spending a week near Mendocino at an awesome complex of homes atop cliffs above the Pacific called The Sea Ranch. But…
I don’t know if hillbilly is considered a disrespectful word or if it’s politically incorrect but I’ve used it all my life and never meant anything negative by it. Actually two of my all-time favorite people were hillbillies, Elvis and ACM. I guess to be politically correct, I could call this piece COUNTRY BAR but, the truth is…..we called it our Hillbilly Bar. I’m thinkin’ back to WHY we called it the Hillbilly Bar. Well, it was situated on a…
He was just a little boy when his family moved next door, maybe six or seven years old. A cute little boy but with very sad eyes. He was loud and sometimes obnoxious like little boys can be but there was a sweetness about him too, a gentleness and as I mentioned..…a sadness. It was an amazing neighborhood for kids to grow up in. A chunk of land a bit off the beaten path with a small subdivision full of…
It was a very old house and not in real good condition. But it was a time when rentals were at a premium on the Monterey Bay and so after searching for a couple months and finding nothing and realizing that we had to lower our expectations we landed what we called The Norman Bates Motel. I remember the first time we walked the yard, fell into a few gopher holes and peeked through a window, my husband was quiet…
Last week I purchased a toilet-seat lid cover. I hadn’t taken the receipt out of the bag since the sales clerk put it in. I’d pulled out the lid cover, took the cardboard insert out, tried it on the toilet seat and it didn’t fit no matter how hard I tried to force it. Bummer….and I shoved it back in the bag. It was the right color, but the wrong size. I needed an exchange. Sometimes those exchange lines are…
I had them all in one big box. I’d already gotten rid of many I thought were just OKAY but there were 99 left that I couldn’t part with. The Elvis ones weren’t with them, they were in my Elvis trunk. They made me happy and I sang with them. They made me sad and I cried listening to them. I hadn’t played any of them for years, modern technology changed all that. They were bookmarks from all different times…
It’s been three heavenly years of nature with sprinkles of human happenings to kinda keep it from being perfect, because as my girlfriend told me many years ago…..nobody gets it all! We did it, lived high up on a hill in a cute little condo, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We………. watched sunsets from our patio and whales as they passed by. walked the water every day with our two pals, Mr Lincoln & LooLoo. rode the train to San Diego,…
Bartles and Jaymes, two adorable Miniature Schnauzers, were our first furry-four-legged family members. We had recently moved to Monterey and they loved being outside to explore their new world. They had a big fenced-in corner lot to run and investigate. It was a great yard for a breed that was once used to catch rodents hiding in ground tunnels, because this large yard was loaded with gophers and their holes. No grass, just dirt and what looked like hundreds of…
I was nineteen when I married. What does a nineteen year old know about life? I’ll answer for me…..close to nothing! When I said, “I do,” not only did I gain a husband, but also an entire, large extended family of sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends…… and I loved them all. My new sister-in-law was just a few years older than me and I was in awe of her. She was beautiful; tall, thin, dark hair, skin that looked…