confessions of a reformed tourist
I hate Word with a burning, unbridled passion. Not only is it clunky and slow, it makes inane “corrections” to my spelling and grammar. So, mostly I used TextEdit. TextEdit is my jam. TextEdit and I like-like each other. TextEdit and I are kissing in a tree. Alas, TextEdit has a fatal flaw. No word [...]
And with good reason. Ironing your clothes / cooking your lunch / mopping your floor are activities best performed before the rise of the day’s heat. I sleep in on Sundays, until maybe 8:30. I get up to pee and while I’m in the washroom, he takes the sheets off the bed and puts them [...]
In May of 1999 I had gotten my BA from Cornell University. I had double-majored in History and French Lit and harbored vague dreams of graduate school, but I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, or even the next five years. And so, in a sequence of [...]
My housekeeper is a champion phone-talker. All day, she does her work, one of three attached to her ear. Usually she’s just gossiping, catching up with one of her sisters, aunties, or friends. Sometimes she’s venting about her husband. Every once in a while, she’s moaning about her eldest daughter. This is the most infrequent [...]
I am mother and daughter, teacher and student, writer and reader. I’m woman and lover, but never have been – and likely never will be – a wife. I am a traveler, and I am fearless. I wear flip-flops in the security line, because it saves time, and I never check luggage if I can [...]
What if life were “choose your own adventure”? I loved those books, even after I got sophisticated enough to realize how trite they were. “Trite” isn’t precisely the word. What I mean is it became so obvious what you had to do in order to avoid getting one of the bad endings. It’s not unlike [...]
Last week I mentioned that “I’ve been treating blank pages like confessors since I was seven”. I imagine that sounded hyperbolic, but, as you can see, it’s true. Now. The cover is one thing. Actually reading it is something else entirely. I legit cringed at the thought. But my curiosity overwhelmed my trepidation and I [...]
It occurred to me last week that instead of talking about writing a book about Grenada, I should do it already. (Duh.) It also occurred to me that if I gathered together everything I’ve written in the last five years, and then edited it ruthlessly, I’d find that I’d already written a first draft. So [...]
Momentum, lately, keeps dancing just beyond my reach. I brush it with the very tips of my fingers, but then it senses my approach and spirals off into the darkness, out of reach, out of reach. I plot and I scheme. How can I conquer it? How can I foil momentum’s plans to elude me? [...]
Billy Joe Danforth had his heart set on baseball ever since the 2001 All-Star game, when he witnessed Alex Rodriguez offer his place to Cal Ripken. As the crowd went wild, stood up in ovation, Daddy turned to him and said, “Now you see that, son? That is respect.” Then he upended his can of [...]
