When I purchased my new car recently, I intended to keep my old one for the kids. The old car was having some transmission issues, but I was going to have them repaired. My car had only one previous owner before myself. It seemed like a good idea to keep the vehicle in which I […]
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Home Sweet Home
This is going to be short today, because I have to be out of my house in about 40 minutes so that total strangers can come and walk through, touch all our stuff, and then decide if our home is meant to be their home soon. Yup, today is our second Open House. Yesterday was […]
Healing Waters
Welcome Summer and the first Saturday of the season! I grew up a pool rat. My father managed a number of town pools and swim clubs in Northern New Jersey from the early1960s through the late 70s during the months when he wasn’t teaching and coaching. His summer job. My family loved pool season when […]
A New Adventure
Over the years when Mario and I would go camping, we’d make little upgrades, mostly for our own comfort. We liked to get into the wild outdoors, but were never the type to seriously rough it. In the later years, and after an unexpected rainstorm we survived in a small tent, we always talked about […]
Comfort in Numbers
I have written about the Frazier Thomas Band several times since I inherited this assignment at the beginning of 2021. Based on a local kids’ television show about a goose who thought he was the King of the United States, our band was purely a figment of our collective teenage imagination. Back then, life seems […]
Following Father’s Day
Here you are on display so many years after the fact. Having been only four tiny pounds yourself, you grew larger than life. You had the strength to be immutable and the grace to be tender. Tough and Tender. A combination for life. Seeing this photo undoes me. Missing […]
That Twin Inevitable Heartbreak
As a widow, we hear plenty of platitudes. One of them being ‘time will heal all’. It’s one that I truly dislike and still makes me cringe mostly because I don’t believe it’s true. I don’t believe that time will heal becoming a widow. I don’t think anything will be able to heal that. I […]
A Family Vacation
Last week I was on vacation with my children and my late husband’s family. My in-laws organized the trip as an early celebration for their 50th wedding anniversary. We spent 6 days in the Outer Banks with Tony’s parents and his sister’s family. The cousins had fun together bouncing between the beach and the pool […]
Father’s Day Ain’t for the Weary
Hello Friends. Happy Sunday! Or, for those of you who are not using the word “happy” right now as part of your vocabulary, then I get it, and I wish you simply “Sunday.” Today is Fathers Day, and over the past 13 years since my husband’s sudden death, this day has varied in terms of […]
Floating On
On Thursday, my family and I paid a loving tribute to my mother when her ashes were interred with my father’s at Saratoga National Cemetery in New York. One year earlier to the day, my father’s Military Service took place at the same location on a day that was just as beautiful and warm. My […]
Back to Nature
There has always been a big nature element in my life. Where I grew was not too far from San Diego, but in the 70,s it might as well have been the Outback because the average San Diegan considered it very rural. My parents hailed from Western PA, outside of Pittsburgh in small towns. My […]
Reflections on Being Married
Despite an undeserved hard guy reputation in some quarters, the truth is I am a sensitive, occasionally sentimental, fellow at heart. However, I’m not feeling particularly sentimental at the moment. As I have mentioned, for me June is easily the funkiest month. To paraphrase Charles Dickens, it represents both the best of times and the […]