################## ~ ################## I’ve never been the rebel type. I was a people-pleasing, rule-follower for most of my childhood. Yet rebellion seemed to be hard-wired into me. In first grade I was sent to the coat closet (more like a hallway with hooks) because I was talking too much in…
===================== & ===================== As I turned the corner onto my street, I could see there were no cars parked in front of my house. I opened the storm door and stood, icy flakes soaking my hair, and wondered if I had my house key. I opened my bag and rummaged…
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| @ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| I have decided to adopt the air and water diet. Everything else, it seems, is bad for me. Through channels of every caliber, I have been notified I am going to ruin my good health through eating. It’s no joke. It appears as if everything we humans…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ # ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ On the cusp between winter and spring, I am sitting here wondering what makes something beautiful. When it snows here in the mountains, leaving a layer of white brightness over everything outside, even the ugly oak leaf hydrangeas, with their spindly arms and crumpled brown leaves, take…
************************* & ************************* Today I’m going to play the role of critic. I play this every day, alone in my little studio at the Hobbit House, slashing whatever I’ve recently written to shreds in the name of doing better. At one point, I decided to have a little conference with…
================= ) ( ================= When I was finishing up my degree in Human Development at the University of Houston and working as an intern at The Center for AIDS, The Executive Director of that entity approached me one morning and announced that The Center now had a Facebook page and…
I decided last week I would train my dog Mindy to pick up her toys and put them away in the toy basket. She seemed to think this was unfair as she is not the only one to get them out of the basket. Every day, like some kind of…
“““““““““““““““““““““““““&“““““““““““““““““““““““““ Sometimes I just sit in front of my computer and wonder what I should write about. I signed up for a memoir writing class at OLLI (aka College for Seniors) in the hopes that I might write my life story some day. Currently, I tend to root around in…
============== @============== We Americans seem to love our array of options. Just walk into any grocery store and count the variety of soup cans available every day of the week. We have become immune to our vast wealth in terms of soup. What if one day you were having a…
Every other Friday I drive from my home in West Asheville to the food co-op on Biltmore Avenue downtown. I take the busy road outside my neighborhood and have a neat little trick for getting off at the correct exit, which I learned while riding on the bus. Once, a…