I’ve just gotten home from my road trip. For those of you who couldn’t make it, here’s a photo of Elizabeth, the events manager at the wondrous Charis Books, introducing my reading. The photo was taken by my lovely, talented, and stylish assistant Alysia. Apparently she also took a closeup of my fishnet-clad legs at [...]
The Baltimore chapter of the Society for the Preservation of Daft Little Old Men proudly presents a portrait of a very satisfied customer. Cats of all ages enjoy having daft little old men to sit upon, as they are warm, don’t move around too much, generally wear enough layers of clothing that kneading with sharp [...]
I am a lackluster and dilatory blogger these days to be sure. My apologies, I shall endeavor to be more interesting in public where people can see me rather than doing what I have been doing, which I must admit has mostly consisted in being uninteresting in private, trying to write and do eldercare and [...]
As I was remarking to someone the other day, the wonderful thing about old houses — and mine is almost 200 years old — is that they are old and solid and you know full well that they’ve been through pretty much every kind of thing that a house can go through and have come [...]
I figure any day that begins with discovering — by following the stench — that your resident 85-year-old with dementia has hidden a dead mouse in a plastic snack baggie in a bureau drawer is only likely to get better. Following the mouse removal, anyway. (For those of you who do not live in 200-year-old [...]
Dearest Plumplings, here it is Tuesday the Eenth again and, after considerable rumination, I have decided that in lieu of composing an entirely fresh essay for you all this month I shall bring forth to you something which I wrote for another purpose, namely, teaching my Chubbelinas at Miss Hanne’s Academy for Wayward Girls, but [...]
Everything is wonderful, wish you were here. I’m having a grand time this book tour, blessed with wonderful audiences and beautiful weather in some of my favorite cities, seeing friends and meeting so many lovely, brilliant, funny, and good looking people. (How is it that so many of you are so damn cute?) Thank you [...]
My mother is a complicated and a brave and a ferocious person. She is beautiful and smart and she sometimes drives me completely ’round the twist. (She is my mother and this is her job.) My mother is a survivor of degenerative kidney disease who has passed the decade mark with a transplant kidney [...]
On this National Coming Out Day, I would like to just say a few words to those of you who have never come out because you’ve never been sure what to come out as. There are a lot of people out there who spend a lot of time thinking vaguely that they should be coming out [...]
Today, I have three word-related intelligences to impart! Intelligence the First: The Return of the Commie Pinko! Several years ago, I founded and ran a writing contest. It was a great deal of fun, but other things intervened and I stopped doing it for a while. And then a dear friend of mine asked [...]