Temporary Roommates

The most concerning moment came when we thought the car had been stolen.

The children were home from college for winter break. Of course, we were happy to see them, needless to say. It’s just that they are no longer children, and I started noticing some, well, irregularities in our otherwise carefully ordered lives.

Life 101

Recently, I went to mass at the Newman Center, here in Sacramento, and afterward, when I would normally walk to my car, I found myself walking across the street onto the grounds of Sacramento State University.

As I wandered past the same trees that had grown in the same spots when I was 20 years old, I stopped to consider them with my almost 50-year-old eyes.

Wall Colors

Recently, my mother-in-law came for a visit. Both of my kids are away at college and don’t live at home, and yet I did not have a “guest room” to offer my guest.

The Gelato Diet

It was a typical day.

Or so I thought.

Wandering the aisles of the grocery store, I glanced dispiritedly at the contents of my cart: cat food for the stray, milk, bananas, cold cuts.

Then I remembered that my parents had half committed to coming over for dinner and I considered buying a pint of ice cream so my father would have something he liked for dessert.

The Dreadful Perry Mason

Peri-menopause has not been kind to me. Being in my late 40s (not an appealing word—“late”), this harrowing and unpleasant condition has dogged me for years. Far longer, according to my bemused and yet overly earnest doctor, than is typical.

What a thing to say to a woman who has suffered enough.

One Good Meal

Loaves & Fishes is a soup kitchen run by the Catholic diocese. It is located in a not-so-pretty part of Sacramento, just north of downtown. They serve one substantial meal a day, 364 days a year, and only close on Thanksgiving because so many other groups offer meals that day.

The Road to Nowhere

We’d learned from the guidebooks that no visit to Maui was complete without experiencing the Road to Hana. It was strongly recommended that we leave at 7:00 in the morning because 2000 vehicles traveled the road each day! Cars cruised bumper to bumper all along the road and it took several hours to reach Hana. It was a one-lane highway that was too narrow to even allow two cars to pass each other, and it had 600 sharp turns!

Clearly something miraculous took place on the Road to Hana, and we wanted to know what it was.