Happy Holidays! At our Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends, one of our guests shared a story that made me happy and a little sad at the same time. Her husband’s father had just graduated from college and wasn’t making a lot of money yet. With two small children to feed as well, his mother …
Marching to the Beat of Your Own Drum My older sister took me to Sunday School with her every week. On one occasion, when I was about 3 ½ and she was 10, she announced that she wasn’t going to take me ever again. When our mother asked her to explain why not, she said …
Autumn Has Arrived! In the Pacific Northwest, it’s now officially autumn. We usually have a lovely and long “Indian” summer with sunshine and pleasant days until the middle of October. This year it lasted an extra 10 days but not anymore. I drove home from a (tap) dance class in one of those “atmospheric river” …
Beautiful Endings There’s nothing prettier than a sunset at the ocean after a day of nasty weather. It’s a reminder that even events or days that we don’t enjoy can have a nice ending—like a reward for patience or getting an ice cream cone after going to the dentist. As an adult, I’m not sure …
Backgammon Meet Cute A few days after that momentous primary election, I flew to visit a long-time girlfriend. We met 43 years ago because of a roll of the dice. Honest! I was playing backgammon with the guy sitting next to me on an airplane headed to San Diego and dropped one of the dice. …
Summer Reads When we adopted Button (aka Queen of Sheba) and Cheddar (Horus), we promised that they would be indoor cats and that we wouldn’t declaw them (horrors!). It turns out that they love to be outside when we’re in the yard or on the deck and come in quite reluctantly. Button is typically more …
Summer Lovin’ Summertime, and the living is easy! Unless you’re also campaigning for a seat on the city council and your main opponent is a local attorney. I’ve never waved signs on the corner but now I’m an expert, and it’s more fun than I anticipated. Team PJ has been ringing doorbells—there are a lot …
The Northern Lights There’s chatter on the internet that we might be able to see the Aurora Borealis tonight due to severe sun storms. We tried to see the colorful spectacle in October but had missed the initial alert so didn’t see the lights in their glory the first night, That turned out to be …
Feline Friends When we adopted Cheddar, the orange tabby, and Button, my little black Houdini 9-month old kitten, we hadn’t anticipated how much entertainment they would provide, free of charge. Nor how much they would like to “help” me when I’m at the keyboard when I’m trying to write or watch a webinar or attend …
April Showers Bring May Flowers My front yard is blooming in pink, white and red, as well as lavender. I love seeing the deciduous shrubs and trees leaf out to their spring splendor, even though it reminds me that I’ll have a few hours of pruning ahead once they’re done with the show. The daphne …
Cabaret Craziness Every two years a local non-profit organization produces a cabaret-follies type of show at our beautiful art Deco theatre that turned 100 years old in April. About one hundred singers and dancers (and would-be dancers!) turned up to do three performances during one weekend. This year’s show was called entitled “The Time of …
New Fuzzy Family Members Growing up on a small farm of about twenty acres was one of the best gifts of my childhood. There was a babbling creek across the road to play in and catch minnows and crawdads. One corner of our farm consisted of several acres of trees where we built a treehouse, …
My First Fan Mail Remember the movie “You’ve Got Mail?” I recently received an email from a reader that struck a chord more than the typical reader email. It felt like FAN MAIL and lifted me the whole rest of the day. It made me ask myself what was different about it. I realized it …
Happy New Year A new year has arrived, which means new beginnings, new resolutions (or not) and new books! It might also mean planning the next vacation or looking forward to new relationships or a new job or retiring or… For me, January always means getting away to Hawaii for a couple of weeks so I can …
The seventh novel in the Julia Fairchild series. Now available on Amazon & Kindle Unlimited. Read an excerpt here!
The sixth novel in the Julia Fairchild series. Now available on Amazon & Kindle Unlimited. Read an excerpt here!
