The Hellish Handbasket

Christmas came and went with barely a burp. Nondescript weather, the usual array of cookies and relatives...nothing memorable to mark the pa...

It's the end of the year again, time to get maudlin over mistakes made and opportunities missed. All those wasted moments spent networki...

I generally don't post in forums or in the comments sections of articles or blogs, although I get a lurid thrill out of lurking on the p...

I honored one of my relatively recent holiday traditions last week: I celebrated Buy Nothing Day on Black Friday. I'm happy to let the h...

My scrawny 85-year-old mother called me a few minutes ago. “Have you ever had a worse Thanksgiving meal?” she asked. I had just finished adm...

No complaints from rainbow city. I'll take our unsettled rain squalls and sun breaks over 6-foot snow drifts any day. On the hierarchy o...

My friend Bravadita dragged up on Portland and moved to Gladstone, my sister is gallivanting around Vatican City, my friends in Minneapolis ...

This week I took time out between rainstorms to go for a jog. I slogged along in my running gear, following my usual path through the park....

I launched the Hellish Handbasket Blog in January of 2012 as I was headed into one of my many recurring dark nights of my soul: my intermina...

Last night as I set my collection of six clocks back one hour, I reflected that if I could hibernate until next spring, I would. Dream the w...

The moon must be aligned with Uranus or something. Fruit basket upset! Everyone important to me seems to be on the move. My jet-set sister, ...

Fall sucks. I'm officially declaring my intention to hibernate until spring, mentally, anyway, if not physically. Oh, I'll show up f...

As I slide down the dark tunnel toward winter, I'm embracing my inner curmudgeon by de-connecting from social media. I started with Link...

Bless me, Hellish Hand-basket readers. It's been over a week since my last blog post. My excuse is that I've been immersed once agai...

My forward momentum plunged into a tailspin with the coming of fall and cool weather. Even though this afternoon the rain clouds scattered, ...

I'm back in editing hell, editing other people's crappy papers instead of my own. I should be grateful. I am getting paid for my eff...

When I am sitting like a blob at networking functions, or ripping along the freeway cursing out slow drivers, or picking cat hair out of my ...

This is the time of year when everything goes sideways. A lifetime of Septembers has left me with a vague sense of dread. What will I wear f...