I started this writing mid-January, and I know that I’ve pretty much bored everyone with the story of My Illness – 2016 – 2017 but I want to put it in the record because it’s been so weird and because I’m somewhat dramatic, or so I’ve been told. I started feeling bad around Christmas time – slightly before Christmas – but I went to a Christmas Eve celebration at our nephew’s home.  Had fun and good food and didn’t feel too badly. On Christmas day I felt a little worse, but my daughters helped with putting dinner on the table, … Continue reading My Illness

The Bolero It was 1964, at the height of the Beatles’ fame when I moved to Long Beach, California to live with four roommates in an apartment on Lakewood Boulevard. Lakewood was a busy street near … Source: The Bolero Continue reading The Bolero

The Bolero It was 1964, at the height of the Beatles’ fame when I moved to Long Beach, California to live with four roommates in an apartment on Lakewood Boulevard. Lakewood was a busy street near the McDonald-Douglas aircraft plant and a few steps from a bar called Little Abner’s. Each night, for the first two weeks of living there, I could hear the drunks, who had just left Little Abner’s, stopping to pee against our apartment wall and sidewalk. Our building had a name, of course, as did most southern California apartment buildings, and that name was, The Bolero.  … Continue reading The Bolero

Picture my Aunt Petra’s kitchen way back in the mid-50’s.  It was there that I told her, quite seriously, that I was going to be a movie star.  I was absolutely mad about the movies (Notice that I didn’t know you sounded more intelligent if you called them “films.”) and movie stars.  They seemed to have exciting, glamourous lives.  They dressed in furs and high heels and tuxedos and went out to nightclubs every night.  What could be better?  I could even give up my candy cigarettes and smoke the real thing – in a holder of course, a la … Continue reading True Talent

  As In: It’s a wonder he survived for as long as he did. What follows is the saga of our dog, Pablo, the Labrador Retriever. We lived very near the beach, and many mornings I took him there to romp in the sand and the waves. He, however, preferred to smell garbage cans, other dogs’ poop and other dogs’ rear-ends. Star, our neighbor’s dog was sometimes down at the beach at the same time, but Star was a dog’s dog. Star and Pablo would play for sixty seconds or so, and then Pablo would come crashing back at me and into … Continue reading Pablo the Wonder Dog

The television show, Sixty Minutes, claims that James Patterson is the best-selling author in the world. Wow, really? It’s okay. I’m not jealous. What I am jealous of is his office! It’s a light, bright room about the size of my house, and it’s inside his 22,000 square-foot home in Florida. It has a great, big window overlooking his garden, or was it a canal or the ocean? I was so enthralled with his bookshelves and file drawers — all built-in — that I didn’t notice his view. As for myself? I am writing from a small desk in my … Continue reading Plumerias

So, this is how my day started on May 12, 2016. I had been sick on Tuesday with some strange ailment, which on the only positive note, killed my appetite, so this morning, feeling a bit better, I decided I would cook an egg, toast and one small slice of Canadian bacon — no points in Weight Watchers. I cracked my egg into a bowl to cook in the microwave, slid my toast into the toaster and was then distracted by our bitch dog (interpret this any way you want to), who was going crazy barking in the back yard. … Continue reading Capital T

Once more, our family decided to accept another new job offer; this time in Arizona. It would be a another big move for us and out of our native state, but we again were up for some adventure. The week before Christmas in 1977, we went to AZ to see what it looked like and what they had to offer in the way of housing. The Valley of the Sun, in my opinion, looked like the backside of the moon, but we thought it would be okay to try it “for a couple of years.” This was when the term “famous … Continue reading I Lost my Shorts in the Real Estate Business

Larry, our daughter, Janet, and I moved to Alameda when Janet was only two years old. Larry and I decided he should accept a position in Northern California for Kaiser Steel in Oakland. He had been… Source: Mrs. Miller of the Afternoon at Cal Berkeley Continue reading Mrs. Miller of the Afternoon at Cal Berkeley

Last week, my husband and I went to my nephew’s college baseball game. Baseball can be a slow game, and this one was turning out to be one of those. That, and the fact that nephew Chase is a relief pitcher so doesn’t usually play until the last couple of innings allows lots of time for one’s mind to wander. As I sat in the nearly deserted stands at Jackie Robinson Stadium, across from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, I started reminiscing about my athletic career and some of my proudest — or possibly most embarrassing? — moments. I signed … Continue reading Safe at Home