It’s been a summer of intense heat, lightning strikes and seemingly non-stop wild fires here in the Inland Northwest.  The smell of smoke is ever present, the sun is either invisible or appears briefly...

Autograph books were popular with girls when I was eight or nine. They had fancy gold writing on decorative leather covers and were probably designed to collect actual autographs of famous or semi-famous people...

For the most part, I like exercise.  It clears my brain and the endorphins are nice — the physical benefits are secondary. I zip along outside with my dog every other day — my...

When my kids were still at home I baked cookies a lot. Chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, M&M cookies, peanut butter cookies — I turned out pan after pan.  Three growing boys and their...

I headed off to my regularly scheduled Spanish class last week and when I got there, there were people I didn’t recognize plus an interpreter signing in the front of the classroom.  For a...

I stopped at an outdoor market the other day to pick up some fresh produce.  The weather was above a hundred and it seemed like a pretty miserable job to me, babysitting all those...

I have a series of family pictures taken when our kids were young and we’re all walking backwards. I don’t know if anyone outside the family would realize that we’re doing that — although...

I cancelled a vacation.  It was a trip that had been planned for quite a while and then whammo, a couple of big financial obligations crept into the picture —  a massive car repair...

The recent national news story about the roller derby girl stopping a mugger who was attempting to steal an elderly woman’s purse felt extra important because it happened in the town where I live....

I love friends. I have friends that I have known since we were in kindergarten together and I have friends that are nearly new.  Some of my friends are casual ones that I enjoy...