Several years ago, my family and I spent the fourth of July weekend at a time-share near Branson, Missouri. On the way there, we stopped at Lamberts, a restaurant where servers hurl rolls at customers) and serve large amounts of greasy, Southern food. While waiting for our order, Louis, my then fourteen-year-old stepson, announced that he was all for women being treated the same as men but–
Annoyed, I tuned out. I’ve heard variants of this phrase coming out of…..
In 1965 and 1966, the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees were both terrible, so I happily chortled when the Yankees frequently lost and was happy when the Red Sox infrequently won.
On a late August evening in 1967, Dad came into my room as I was brushing my teeth.
“We must root for the Yankees,” he announced.
“What?” I spluttered, nearly choking on a mouthful of toothpaste.
Dad explained that the Yankees were still terrible, but that the…..
Bats are big in October, whether it be those varnished pieces of wood meant to connect with baseballs or those slightly spooky creatures associated with Halloween.
In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, bats hovered in Hogwarts’s Great Hall during Halloween as an evil professor let a troll into the castle; as Harry and his friends attended a ghost’s deathday party; as someone framed for a murder disguised as a dog tried to murder the framer disguised as a rat; and…..
Bats are big in October, whether it be those varnished pieces of wood meant to connect with baseballs or those slightly spooky creatures connected with Halloween.
In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, bats hovered in Hogwarts’s Great Hall during Halloween as an evil professor let a troll into the castle; as Harry and his friends attended a ghost’s Deathday party; as someone framed for a murder disguised as a dog tried to murder the framer disguised as a rat; and…..
Since moving to Columbia, Missouri, in the fall of 2006, video game sounds have wafted through the house. Explosions. Rapid machine gun fire. Weird noises suggesting alien invasions. Bucolic barnyard sounds. Large sports stadium crowd noise, including play-by-play calls. Loud, foreboding music and edgy, erie music. Constant video game background noise as I did kitchen and laundry duty; wrote a book; composed and recorded music; looked after my guide dog and a pack of bouncy standard poodles; did some consulting…..
“There’s a plane high in the sky headed east towards France,” my mom told me in a wistful, dreamy voice. She had come outside onto her deck to join me on a breezy and humid Cape Cod late afternoon.
“Well, it’s certainly headed towards Europe,” I responded as the soft rumble of the plane caught my ear.
“But I like to think it’s headed towards France,” Mom said in that same wistful tone.
Aunt Connie, my favorite aunt, had moved…..