And nobody told me?

I’m co-hosting a party at a friend’s house tomorrow night for a local political candidate. The real hostess has placed me in charge of the cheese platter and dessert. I’ve turned to one of my heroines for inspiration. No, silly, not Julia Child. Amy. My dessert will be her Three Way Cake with Sloppy Seconds….

Just a quick aside to the person who checked out Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything before me from the Missoula Public Library: thanks. No, I mean it. It wasn’t enough for me to appreciate Hitchens’ wit and intellect. I wouldn’t have pumped my fist in the air and said “Yes!”…

This seems to be our year. First Erin, and now Patia, have hit us with two of the various memes circulating around, as Senator Ted Stevens likes to call it, this series of tubes. Patia’s is “Why Do I Blog?” Good question. Every now and again I tried keeping a diary when I was little….

Here’s a mystery. Years ago I ducked into a Six Flags gift shop to wait for my kids to finish a ride and to avoid the park heat, despair and abundant metaphors for the sweet fakeout that is the American Dream. It was a specialty gift shop. The specialty was special candles, like massive sand…

In finishing up the house renovations, it turns out I’m facing a costly repair. Sometimes a broken tile isn’t just a broken tile. Tile floors may look like puzzles but it’s not like a matching tile is available to just slide into one missing slot. If a matching tile isn’t available, you have to decide…

Hello Weekend. Birds are out there, so loud. Let’s stare down the uncanny valley of the soul until the delta is gone. So much is close to almost being aspirationally authentic. The problem is the closer it looks to almost real, the worse it gets. Closer can’t be the goal. I submit to you Anne…

A few conceits can push forward the intimacy of a group of people. Elevator breakdowns, of course, just ask Hollywood. Discussions about huitlacoche, any other fungus and/or disgusting things to eat. And then there’s the ink conversation, the three-hour tour of party conversations. Guaranteed to make all manner of people hike up their skirts a…

Do you remember teaching yourself to strike a paper match? Learning the right amount of pressure, the pinch on the hard chemicals then the snap and the deft finger lift away from the air that would be sucked into flame. Maybe a quick curve of the hand to shield it from the wind? Each matchbook…

I wanted something from Faulkner’s house. I wanted something like you do when a grandfather is buried, when you leave a lover for what you know is the last time even if she does not, when you walk through the woods or a graveyard at the beginning of winter. A shirt, a stone. Something. Circling…

You know I love a pilgrimage. When the seed casing feels too tight, it needs to be soaked in a hard rain and it needs to be scratched, given a cut against what won’t give way. One way to do this is a road trip built for touching gravestones, stomping on the grounds of the…