Category: Indulgence

  • Summers are riding bikes to Berkshire pharmacy for ice cream cones, picking dewberries in the horse pasture, the first stars silently watching a twilight game of hide-n-seek. Summers are hours spent at Astroworld, standing in lines, screaming on rides, flirting… days spent at Camp Warnecke, tubing the Comal, playing pinball. Flirting. Summers are flying down…

  • Back in 10th grade, full of Texas pride, I got into a heated argument with my boyfriend, a fresh transplant from Baraboo, Wisconsin, over the merits of our respective states. I don't think he was trying to say Wisconsin was better than Texas, only trying to describe its beauty and merits to me, but it…

  • I've been mostly 'unplugged' for the past week, hopscotching through America's heartland. We headed north from Texas through Oklahoma for an overnight stop in Kansas at Kenny and Cathy's house (Tom's oldest brother) where we got a 'two-fer'… #4 brother Steve and his girls were there on their way home to Montana from Florida. Cornfields,…

  • Ever since we traveled down to Huatabampo, Mexico for his little brother's wedding in 1998, Tom has been raving about the Mexican Hot Dogs sold by street vendors there. He described them to me, but I wasn't impressed or tempted to try one myself – avocado, tomato and lettuce on a hot dog? Oh, heck…

  • I've been snapping pictures like crazy since about the time I learned to write in cursive, with any camera I could get my hands on, from instamatics and a hand-me-down black and white Scout camera, courtesy of one of my siblings, to an Olympus 35mm Tom bought me – and that was subsequently stolen from…

  • It was dawn, but little light filtered through the gray clouds; Belle was merely a shadow on the other side of the French doors, a silhouette of a well-behaved puppy, sitting politely, patiently. I couldn't see her eyes, but I knew she was watching me, silently begging for an early walk. I can't resist puppy…

  • Tom couldn't find his cash yesterday morning. He checked every flat surface he has ever dumped his pocket-contents onto… the kitchen counter/bar, his bedroom dresser, the bathroom counter, the dining room table, the church pew by the front door… He searched the pockets of dirty pants in the hamper… dug through the red duffle bag…

  • I rolled into Galveston after dark. It was the final section of the I-45 Time Tunnel I'd been traveling for almost an hour, seeing each of the sites clearly despite nightfall. Perhaps better, because the darkness blocked reality, allowing me to see each place as I remembered it… …there was Almeda Mall and its movie…

  • I'm a girl from the suburbs. I grew up with sidewalks, with the option of jumping on my bike to go anywhere I wanted to go, but with an illusion born of desire that the horse pasture across the street was "the country" (anyone else ever fish for crawdads in a sewage ditch?) Down our…

  •   Here I am sitting on another Friday facing a jam-packed weekend and I haven't even mentioned the last one yet! How did Friday sneak up on me like this? Has it really been a week since I helped surprise Lexie for her 50th birthday? (She's the one in the blue birthday sash.) I didn't…