Categories
Food Happiness Our Life Self Reliance

Potatoes!

Those who know me well have heard me say, “I’m never bored,” and yet I worry my life appears boring. My life is as predictable as the sunrise, especially in the culinary department. Bob and I get up, make the bed, and sip coffee and cocoa at our desks, before wandering down the well-worn paths […]

Categories
Environment

Boiling Point

I step outside into a shroud of stupefying air. Still chilled from the air conditioning, the hot air feels good to me, like when I open a hot oven on a winter’s day. I breathe it in. It tastes like a movie of my life, a feeling so basic and all-powerful, some might call it […]

Categories
Community Happiness Recurring Epiphanies

The Decommissioned Centurion

“Our fickle bodies,” Bob remarked when I showed him my throbbing index finger. “All I did was pull a weed,” I whined, laying the swollen digit back on its bed of ice. Tami saw me minutes after it happened, a purple crease on a pale sausage. She comforted me with “This happens to me sometimes; […]

Categories
True Stories

Paradise Unhinged

Against proper judgment but tacitly supported by their spouses, two of the sons and the oldest, a daughter, drove into the heart of Amish country. On the surface they were checking on the condition of their parents’ vacant house, euphemistically referred to as “The Farm.” In reality, it was voyeuristic reconnaissance, and this year the […]

Categories
Family Observations Travel True Stories

Bridging the Gap

As he does every year, Bob rents a car and drives us to DC, our first stop on an annual trek to see my parents and four of my five brothers. We spend the night at our friend Ned’s and pick up my brother Joe at Dulles in the morning. He’d nearly missed his flight. […]