I used to love road trips. I always stocked up on candy just before leaving, and now I’m not sure if that was a way to celebrate the trip, or to survive along the way. Whatever the mission, I knew I had to visit a […]
Blame it on the Chili Cheese Fritos. On our way from Dubuque to Ann Arbor for yet another visit to the Michigan Extreme Headache Institute, we’d pulled over at a rest stop to, you know, rest. It was two in the afternoon Iowa time, three […]
After retiring from a column-writing gig lasting eleven years and yielding over 300 personal essays, I find I still have something to say. My thoughts range far and wide, and occasionally deep, on subjects including being an Iowan who misses Colorado; surviving marital violence; raising an amazing daughter and an equally amazing son; being justifiably angry about the world “these days;” writing poetry and plays; wondering if I’ll get Alzheimer’s like my mom and her two brothers; wanting to write about my twin granddaughters without sounding all Hallmark-y; fixing OCD-ish food; making sense of pants that come in shorts / crops / ankle-grazing / bootcut; being a librarian in public, academic, archival, and medical libraries; waiting 46 years to attend my high school reunion; having a gorgeous garden I can’t take care of; seeing a shaman; loving good men despite all the bad ones; and trying to wrest a little joy from life despite an 11-year-and-counting chronic migraine.