Posts

When a Mother Fails to Love: What’s Helped Me Move On
Like most girls in junior high school, I tried out for all the cheerleading squads every time tryouts came around—basketball,

Happy New Year 2022
Many people use New Year’s Day to make resolutions, or lists of things to do in the coming year. They

Merry Christmas 2021!
Happy holidays to everyone! I hope 2021 was a bit better for you than 2020 was. Looking back, I had

Turning Tragedy Into Charity: Helping Those in Need
Company was coming! If you came from a big family or had a Polish mother like I did, you knew

Woman Traveling Solo II: Home Exchanges and Camping
Having my third marriage collapse after only 9 months was about as devastating a blow as a person could ask

Woman Traveling Solo I: Learning to Pack Lightly
Losing your luggage on a trip is a huge inconvenience. Losing it twice? Now that’s some bad luck… My earliest

The Importance of Being Legal
When I went into business for myself in 1994, I was a simple “dba”—“doing business as,” and the business name

The Character of a Man
I recently had the opportunity to learn about the true character of two perfect strangers. The fabulous townhouse I moved

Preikestolen Kicks My Ass (and a Buzz Kill Named Harvey)
Several hours into the hike, with my heart feeling it was going to explode right out of my chest, I

Crash-Landing in Houston: Maxing Out the Holmes-Rahe Stress Scale
It wasn’t until I was 30 years old that for the first time in my life, I did the things

Fred Goes Missing (Or, I Lose My Mind Over a Trapped Kitty)
Fred was one of the neighborhood feral kittens that I’d adopted and domesticated into my household; a story told fully

Trapping and Releasing in Rockport, Texas
Can a person ever have too many cats? That is the question. About a year after moving into my home

The Hummingbird
Back when my cat Tigger was about 2 to 3 years old and still quite the hunter, one day she

Kayaking Misadventures on the Texas Gulf Coast
My girlfriend C.J. and I arrived on the beach for our regular Wednesday kayaking excursion. C.J. had taught me to

Unexpected Fun in the French Riviera
In January 2006, an opportunity presented itself to travel to France. My childhood friend Diane was then living in Toulouse,