Category: First course

Remember hearing that phrase about the high school years, those whacky teen times? Or about college? Or about your 20s? Maybe even your 30s? Hell, hearing them about any time in your life when you figured that the “these-are-the-best-days-of-your-life” sentiment must apply to everyone else but you, because the so-called “best days” were actually an…

Something odd happened this weekend. I had things to do, people to see. I was busy…two nights in a row. Me. The queen of alone time in my apartment. The queen of very alone at the regulars’ place I no longer feel a need to patronize, even once a week. Would that really be me?…

It’s true, I had to work today, Thanksgiving. It is also true, I felt like I had the day off, for part of the day, anyway. I slept in. I got dressed when I felt like it, and I then went for a long, long run along the sidewalk that stretches forever along the beach.…

Hope is the go-to charm, the point of it all, the reason to get up and do it all again. Hope, however, in reality, can be fleeting. It often caves in to fear. Fear, on the other hand, is a powerful force. It sticks around, even when you are ready to shove it very far…

“I don’t get why you are doing this.” “Of all the other jobs you could have taken, with your writing and editing skills, why a restaurant job?” “…it’s time for you to stop thinking about yourself, get off your ass, and redirect your focus.” Welcome to the whacky world of RG comments and email: the…

After you have taken a risk in your personal life and shared a simple kiss with a man whom you will likely not see again–someone who is not the man to whom you have been married for multiple decades and who was previously the only man you had kissed in those multiple decades, after you…

Over the past two days, I have been struck by how at home–and how not–I feel during the threat of bad weather, thanks to a guy named Noel. DC: Weather forecast for possibility of snow a week out. Stores run low on milk and eggs and chips the next day. Video stores are inundated. Here:…

I have been working a lot of hours, a lot of days in a row, with a uncertain end to the madness, during one of the busiest weeks of the year for us. The best news? RG Daughter and RG Son are in town for the weekend. Although I am working, having them here, watching…

When I was in high school, actually a boarding school, we weren’t allowed to go out much. The day students led seemingly normal lives of cookouts and parties and shopping trips with moms. We boarders had housemothers who drank multiple bottles of vodka to forget about us and a our penchant for convincing them we…