The Hellish Handbasket

My life is punctuated by drafts of proposals and dissertations that magically appear in my email inbox, demanding my editing skills. Compens...

Humble apologies to all four of my blog readers, who all reached out to me to find out if I was getting ready to jump off a bridge. We have ...

For the past three years or so, I turned to this blog for comfort and solace, the way desperate people siphon the will to go on from therapi...

I root for underdogs. I cheer for the downtrodden. I'm a bleeding heart sentimentalist. I cringe at jokes that make fun of others: I hat...

I do a lot of thinking while I'm trotting the trails and roads in Mt. Tabor Park. I don't figure anything out, but I try. I start ou...

I've been away from the blog for a while, immersed in life and not feeling energetic enough to share. The vertigo is destroying my front...

And I bet you can guess who pays the tab! Yep. My mother. The phone company and the cable company are fighting over who gets to be my mother...

The past couple weeks I've donated my life energy to communicating with the telecommunications monopolies that rule our town. They are s...

Now that the maternal parental unit is ensconced in her new digs, I have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. It would be too easy if al...

On Saturday, my brothers and I got our 86-year-old mother moved into her new retirement apartment. With an eye on the clock, we scrambled to...

Last week I was volunteering at a business conference for a nonprofit group of which I am a member. When you volunteer, you meet the members...

I'm sitting in the Love Shack, hunkered down under the ceiling fan with my feet in a bucket of cold water. The temperature outside is 96...

Today I cried. Just a little, not for long, but it was an unexpected shock, to find myself sobbing into my hands. I haven't cried, reall...

A friend dropped by briefly today. He laughed when he saw me. I thought that was odd, but didn't say anything. We concluded our business...

Yesterday Mom and I went to the retirement village (more like a small city) to look at a one-bedroom apartment. After a long walk through th...

During the spring, winter, and fall, I often try to remember how it feels to swelter in 90°+ heat. I never can. I know for my friends in Ari...

This morning I had a choice: take a bus to buy groceries at Gateway, or walk a mile to the big store on Glisan. Choices, choices. Waiting fo...

When I got home from a walk in 98° sunshine, I saw a strange shadow on the drape that hangs across my front door to shield my living room fr...

Welcome to the summer of carlessness. Mine, that is, I hope not yours (unless you want to be carless). I spent time this week embracing my n...

As I nodded off on the bus today on my way across town, I remembered that 40 years ago, I took Portland buses everywhere. Long before the MA...