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New Notification from Ancestry

Every few weeks, Ancestry tells me that there is a new match, a person somewhere, usually in Michigan, who is the son of the daughter who was second cousin to an aunt married a second time to her sister-in-law’s brother and I sometimes look to see if they look like anyone I know but they never do and then I see that there were thousands of possible matches so no reason to think some long lost…

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Dear Starbucks Barista, Ten Years Later

Dontre Hamilton was killed by a Milwaukee Police Officer on April 30, 2014, in Red Arrow Park, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The park is in the center of downtown, across the street from City Hall. It was in the afternoon. A Starbucks employee called the Milwaukee Police Department twice to complain about him sleeping near the park’s arrow sculpture. Both times officers came to check on him, and after…

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A Cat on the Bookcase Instead of Other Things

I share with you a picture of my cat eating his dinner on the bookcase. His bowl is placed there to keep it away from Swirl who has been known to take advantage of an accidentally left open office door to barrel in for a cat food appetizer. The cat bowl is next to my father’s ancient Underwood typewriter, the one he used to type up my mother’s obituary while I sat next to him. He no longer typed…

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Swirl's Views on Cricket's Demise

This is not Swirl. It is a stuffed animal. All the pictures of Swirl are blurry because he is pacing. Swirl has a thing or two to say about South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem shooting her dog, but he’s too busy pacing in anticipation of the big storm that is coming. He just can’t sit down long enough to collect his thoughts. Earlier today, at the dog park, Swirl tried to shake off his disgust by…

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Vernon's Workbench in the Garage

The lights in the garage flicked on and off three times. That was the signal that Greta was going to bed. He could feel her looking at him through the window of the kitchen door. He didn’t look up. Vernon flicked the light over his workbench twice to answer. That meant he was staying up a while to work on the toaster that wouldn’t give up its toast, it just kept toasting and toasting until you…

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It Looks Like a Round-Up but It's Just Thursday

The sound of the lawn being mowed by someone not me is delicious. Later, I’m going to make myself a bowl of instant mashed potatoes and that will be a travesty but also delicious considering my current food choices. This morning, I found my dog after he’d disappeared at a big dog park, and other people were looking for him (he was that lost), by going down a dense overgrown path to the river…

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Goodbye to #15

My husband used his favorite flashlight to look in my mouth. I warned him that where the dentist extracted my upper left molar this afternoon might look bloody. And so, before clicking on his flashlight, he said, “What if I throw up?” He is notoriously weak-kneed when it comes to blood and gore or stories that might imply later blood and gore. For instance, he didn’t want to know the details of…

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Question to the Wordpress Community

It is slightly unnerving to see that someone is reading all my posts since the beginning of my blog in 2010. There are over 3,000 posts. I appreciate new readers, for sure. But I’ve never had a new reader read all my old posts and so I wonder about that. Is it curiosity? Appreciation for my amazing writing? Or AI come to visit? If anyone has any experience like this or thoughts about what’s…

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The Zoomies: A Rhyming Poem!

Daily writing promptWhat makes you nervous?View all responses Zoom meetings I have to chairHave me pacing here to thereAll the faces in little boxesScare me down to my purple soxs Nervous nose runs but many tissuesKeep me focused on all the issuesCamera-off spectators love to lurkSwim by themselves in the chat murk 40-slide PowerPoints roll my eyesPresenters love how they’re so wiseImportant…

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Bad Dirt: The Side Garden

I don’t have good dirt. I have bad dirt. And because I’ve done nothing about this terrible situation in almost forty years, the bad dirt has gotten an attitude. Now, it acts like cement might if it was poured around ancient irises and holly plants, embed them for posterity, keep them as in amber for when the tour group comes past our house looking at the fossilized remains of life in the…

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The Lifeline of Social Media

Daily writing promptHow do you use social media?View all responses For years, I couldn’t communicate the way other people communicate. I couldn’t talk on the phone, and I couldn’t navigate most conversations outside of those with my husband and a very small group of other people whose voice pitch and tone were discernible by my terribly flawed hearing. Communicating in a group was impossible. I…

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All True Sentences Friday Round-Up

Someone in pink pajamas and a blue fluffy bathrobe is walking up and down the street in front of my house talking on the phone. Hemingway said to write the first true sentence. Well, there you go. I sat in the presence of Sister Helen Prejean today. Sister Prejean’s prison ministry led to her lifelong opposition to the death penalty. Today, she led the audience through the first time she was…

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About Turning 76

Today was the dreaded day. It was okay. Better than okay. Here’s why.

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100 Word Story: Night Visitor

Brenda’s cough woke her up. She heaved and hacked, phlegm tangled in the back of her throat. “Want some relief, honey?” Brenda looked around for the voice. Tinkerbell floated in the air, waving her sparkly wand. “If I kill a baby somewhere in the world, everyone could stop coughing forever, including you. Deal?” Brenda choked on a new cough coming. “What? That’s crazy.” “Compared to what?”…

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Pink Eye and Other Pleasures of the Ages

The ramp up to age 76 has been kicking my ass. I’ve had a cold followed by days of a hacking, doubled over kind of cough, and then, yes, pink eye. And during this fun, we had our two-year-old granddaughter staying with us while her mother was in the hospital. Gratefully, mom is out of the hospital now. Because I am so rarely sick, I have very weak chops. I lack fortitude and stoicism. Oh, I…

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The Melancholy of Sunday Night

It starts around 5:00. Before that, the day has hope. At 5:00, hope evaporates into little clouds of resignation that then gather and form a storm cloud of dread. It’s as if someone has given me a pill timed to dampen my mood and behavior late afternoon every Sunday. This has been true every Sunday night of my conscious memory and I’d like to know why. It was easy to blame school for my Sunday…

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When I am 85

Daily writing promptWhere do you see yourself in 10 years?View all responses In ten years, I will pose nude for the first time,play tennis with Billie Jean King using my wood racket from high school,tattoo my left arm with roses and depictions of my victories, bits of poems written for me,I will paint the side of my house yellow. In ten years, I will swim in the lake at midnight,catch fish I…