(This is 8th in a series that begin with A Night in Steerage.) On my way to the Old Pier to catch the bus to Wells I chatted with a man who ascertained for what felt like the hundredth time which side of the street I wanted.  It’s funny: there aren’t that many buses in  Read the Rest…

(This is the second in a series that begins with A Night in Steerage.) Butleigh is a small village in Somerset, a county west of London, north of Cornwall.  In previous trips to England I have spent most of my time in Cornwall because that is where I, in a sense, came from.  My great  Read the Rest…

Gwen (my neighbor who knows something about just about everything) and I went to Costco last week.  We go twice a year and the spring trip is the most important one to me because it’s when I get my cheap vodka to make my raspberry liqueur. I’ll get to that in a moment but first  Read the Rest…

I’m on Whidbey Island for four days at Windhorse, the retreat center I visit every year when the Buddha House is available because the meditation cabins don’t have toilets and I’m sorry, I don’t leave the house to use the toilet. I need a modicum of comfort and the cabins, though lovely inside, don’t leave  Read the Rest…

Gwen, my neighbor who knows something about just about everything is home after what felt like six weeks but was only half that long. She was doing the European thing while I was home on Lucy duty. Lucy is her 15 year old gray and white with smudged-nosed cat. When Gwen goes away, she sets  Read the Rest…

Seepage. That’s a word to alert you that this post is not for refined sensibilities. I have been told by people (who don’t know me all that well) that I have refined sensibilities. I used to; over the years I have put aside so much for my cats. Anyway, ten days ago, early in the  Read the Rest…

My first thought here is do I want to write about this?  Do I need to make my weird private habits public?  People who have read my memoir will say that page is already torn. Two weeks I lost my Freudy, a cat I had wrapped my heart around.  He started to fail and within  Read the Rest…

Grief.  It’s a place I visit.  I’ve been there so many times it feels like a familiar cabin in the woods, a place where my heart hurts and I cry without warning.  A film runs over and over, playing out a story.  Occasionally my mind refuses the story and tries to make it not have  Read the Rest…

There is nothing as sweet as the calm after the source of anxiety has vacated the premises. In reference to my current situation, I believe the skunks have moved on. It was news to me that skunks could live in residential areas of a city when I first smelled them last spring. I came home  Read the Rest…

At the end of Part One, I was crying on my kitchen floor, wearing a respirator mask and talking to an opossum with eyes as big as silver dollars who was under the house along with a family of dead rats: March 28 A beautiful, warm day but all that means to me is that  Read the Rest…