Category: Thoughts

The Gulf of Mexico holds the story the last two decades of my life. The Gulf wooed me here to Florida. Days and nights spent on the gulf shores have given me more than shells as mementos. I’ve watched my most precious things transform in its magical waters: my children swimming stronger each year, my…

Don’t you love learning new vocabulary words? You then get to use them three times the next week in important conversations, fights with AT&T customer service reps, and Scrabble games, and you just can’t believe how you lived so many years without knowing that awesome word. It’s like discovering wafflecones or your G-spot for the…

On a lark I recently clicked a bit searching for a high school friend I’ve lost touch with, thinking about how I screwed up her chance to shoot the objects of her desire. Celeste was a journalism comrade who spent every afternoon in our schools’ darkroom. I helped her sometimes, shaking developer over rolls of…

MS and I spent a long, beautiful weekend at the beach. We brought very little with us, some salmon, some music, some clothes, not enough champagne. Why is there either too much or never enough champagne? And we brought Maverick. River did not get to come because we were in a wine-and-lounge-chairs mood, not a…

My friend told me about how understanding gluten has changed her life, and it truly helped me understand mine. Because it is never too early in a conversation to turn it around and make it about me. Her: So after all of those tests, and camera yo-yoing through my innards, and treatment for ulcers and…

I’ve picked a side in a very high stakes grudge match. I’m not sure what my next move is, but I assure you It Is On. It started Saturday night when MS and I were at the Winery, next to Tapas (it is really named “Tapas”), both of which have outdoor patio seating overlooking one…

It wasn’t the worst party ever, but it was pretty bad. I hate to sound ungrateful. Any invitation to someone’s home should be treated with more grace than I am about to levy right now. But you know how you feel after you sucker yourself into watching the two-hour Bachelor special, cotton-brained about yourself and…

I brought My Sugar fifty roses yesterday for her 50th birthday. Fifty long-stemmed red Charlottes in two huge vases. I envisioned walking into her office with my arms full of beauty and cocking my head in a charming way as the magnificent sight and perfume reached deep into her soul to make her feel happy…

I was in my early 20s, living in St. Louis after spending summer and fall in Europe pretending to be poor. I stretched the money I had earned during my last year in college by being expatriate-moveable-feast poor. I spent little and lived on the student hostel breakfast and coffee and drinks and maybe a…

My Sugar is from Miami but loves the skein of years she spent running a farm in the hills of North Carolina. I’m from St. Louis but for a handful of years–about the same piece of time that MS was farming, actually– I lived in the deep woods in a primitive cabin. We each occasionally…