Monthly Archive: November 2018

26
Nov
2018

IT’S BEGINNING TO NOM NOM NOM

Our Thanksgiving dinner guests arrive at 5 pm and we’re sitting down to eat around 5:30…and by 9 pm some of them are already getting ready to leave: a dog at home that needs to be let out, kids that have activities early Sunday morning, two that were fighting colds and needed to head to bed. By 9:30 it was just my two best friends and two husbands (mine included) that moved our bloated turkey bellies to the living room and sprawled on the sofas. It was nice to have an extra hour with just a couple of people to...

23
Nov
2018

GATHERING, GIVING AND THANKING

The whole house smells delicious. Anders is taking turkey 1 out of the oven right now. Tomorrow he’ll cook turkeys 2 & 3 in the final preparation for our annual Thanksgiving (or Friendsgiving as everyone refers to it nowadays) potluck dinner. It’s our 20th anniversary of having Friendsgiving with our best friends. 20 years! Some of them are the same friends that came to the first one. Some of them have joined along the way, and some are fairly new to the celebration. As we have done every year, Anders and I provide the turkey(s), mashed potatoes, stuffing (in the...

18
Nov
2018

LIVING ON IN LIBRARIES

I’m reading a fantastic book. A book about books, what could be better? It’s fascinating. It’s technically about the worst library fire in American history, when the Los Angeles Public Library burned in April 1986, but it is also about the idea of libraries, the history of them, the purpose and updated use of them and how they’ve changed from a modern-day viewpoint, and the love of books in general. The first chapter, which details the spread of the fire and what it consumed, and how much it destroyed actually almost brought me to tears. The thought of all those...

17
Nov
2018

STUFFED

I think a lot about dying these days. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I’m over halfway to a hundred? Maybe because I wonder what my family would do without me? Maybe because I see signs of decay in so many places. It’s in the news. It’s in the illnesses and diseases and diagnoses that drop like bombs around you. It’s a worm in the brain that whispers what if. What if? What would I do if I lived forever anyway? Even if inevitable, it’s a squirmy uncomfortable contemplation. All the accumulated flotsam of my life, both soothing and cluttering...