Recently I wrote about the continuum of hope, fantasy and delusion within the context of playing the lottery. I realize now that I forgot to consider confidence, that extra added ingredient that can reset the continuum to the right or left. For example, supreme confidence can turn fantasy into hope and delusion into fantasy. Confidence…
Read MoreChapter 31 I picked up the plates to bus them into the kitchen. As I walked in, Ralph waved a fifty dollar bill in my face. “Look at this,” he said, “your new best friend gave us a tip – Fanny’s coffee cake is great, but fifty dollars?” “I think that tip might represent a…
Read MoreChapter 29 By the time I got back to my car, it was almost 4 PM, and even though I had been on the job since 6 AM that morning, I instinctively began to think about my next steps. This was one of the traps of working as a consultant – billable hours. I don’t…
Read MoreOur first attempts at a garden.
Read MoreEvery day promptly at five o’clock, our two dogs rouse themselves from their relentless relaxation and trot up to Nick’s office to agitate for a walk. At the very least, the dogs have a good sense of time, but I wonder if they also have a sense of a hopeful future – do they hope…
Read MoreI had about an hour to kill before I was scheduled to meet Simba, so I wandered over to the bookstore across the street. I asked the reference desk if there was a section on local history and the women showed me a section of paperbacks devoted to the histories of different coastal communities, including…
Read MoreFor any of you who vacation at a lake, this story may seem familiar, you have probably had some encounter with a snapping turtle. My story begins at the end of a long hike around a mountain in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, when we were looking forward to the quiet peace of the rocks…
Read MoreChapter 26 My nap at Ralph and Fanny’s had put me off kilter and I was wide awake at 5:30 AM, the kind of wide awake where I knew that I might as well get up. I made some coffee and prepared the bill for Sam Todd. I thought that I’d make it four days…
Read MoreNow Thank We All Our Sphincters Last week son Ned sent me a link to a blog posting with the note – “Mom, I thought this was funny – it seemed like something you might write.” The essay was entitled: “On Buttholes,” authored by one Mia Warren who spends 900 words discussing the fact that…
Read MoreChapter 24 It was 5:30 as I headed back along the coast highway. It was an absolutely spectacular sunset. A veil of clouds hovered over the horizon sending luminous beams upward. When I was a kid, my father used to take me to the beach to watch the sunset. It was the only time he ever…
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