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One of the charms of living in Alameda is that folks here like to decorate for the holidays. Not just Christmas, though most every street will have at least one befestivated house (and there is Christmas Tree Lane). Alamedans also like to go all out for Halloween, and some households will just do a mash-up of the two holidays. Alameda...
Clancy turned four (I think) around the beginning of June (maybe). And Charlie turns six (I think) today (possibly). Why don’t I know? Because both of these boys were abandoned by their previous families. Charlie was left behind when his family moved out of their home, and Clancy was found hanging out in back of Popeye’s in Oakland. From what...
For most of us, it is nearly impossible to envision the Golden Gate–that area of the San Francisco Bay where it joins up with the Pacific Ocean–without the majestic presence of the Golden Gate Bridge (the bridge took her name from the location, not the other way around). Still, it just seems like she was always meant to be in...
I write these words mostly in my head because they’d be too loaded to have brazenly displayed on my computer or on my calendar. And anyway our feelings are communicated, even though they’re unspoken. So I’ll just keep writing what I feel in my head to keep me safe and sane. (written some time in the early 1990s)
I am at a complete loss tonight. Of all the things I could have heard this morning, I was not prepared to hear that Chris Cornell died. I’ve been in a tailspin since 5:15 this morning, with virtually no time or space to process this news and grieve. If you follow any of my socnets, you may notice a Chris...
I was going through a box yesterday evening when I came across a stack of old journals, many had been started, then stopped. One in particular has a few entries beginning right after my mother’s death, as I began processing that and everything that came at me in the months that followed. I wasn’t consistent with the entries: some are...
For several weeks I’ve been writing and editing (and writing and editing and writing and…) a post about my love for soccer. And I’m realizing that the problem I have with the post is that it needs to be a series, because even with a gap in the 1990s, 30-ish years of loving a sport is a lot to cram...
My temperament has been a little on the fragile side the last couple of weeks. And yesterday, as I looked at a calendar, I realized why. I have officially lived half of my life without my mother. From this day forward, I will have lived more of my life without my mom than with her. That sentence feels pretty weird....
And so I begin another trip around the sun. I’m a different Me this year. Or, rather, I’m more ME now than I have been in a very long time. Over the past year I’ve made an assessment of my life and have been sorting what I’m bringing with me—and what I’m leaving behind—in the year ahead. I’ve done some...
I’m sick again! I thought my suddenly stuffy sinuses meant that my allergies might be taking off, given the pleasant weather we've had this week, following two or three solid months of rain (POLLENPALOOZZA). Alas, as the afternoon wore on yesterday, I was ticking all the boxes for Cold (allergy attack generally means stuffy and itchy; cold means stuffy and...