'Our family,' I say as Jane's dogs make their morning presence known on my bed.  They behave predictably, Bixby and Bella.  Jane has to lift the former from floor to bed.  Bixby, ever posttraumatic and never more than partially oriented, does not seem in his element atop the sheets.  He tolerates petting, looks around for some sign and eventually leaps off the bed, back to solid ground.  Bella, having spent the night under the covers, yawns and creeps in for a morning lick.  Read more [...]

Some things are excruciatingly small, others just excruciating, and they comprise a typical day.  One is grateful to be observing them, these things.  For one more day.  One more whatever.  Not a grim thought, but a grounded one.Let us begin at the breakfast table.  I am also grateful to not approach this site alone.  Breakfasts being a particularly dismal experience in the time after Marlou's death.  Now I am not alone.  Jane has prepared cereal, cut up bananas, Read more [...]

It is the smallest things that matter.  The apparent big thing, that I am rolling out the door in search of caffeine and breakfast...well, it dominates the wide screen.  But the titles are rolling in one corner.  And their message?  That I feel a little exposed having my oatmeal and cappuccino at a table in Café Borrone.  And too lonely and on display at Peet's, now that I think of it, approaching Draegers Supermarket where, of course, the electric doors welcome me inside.  Read more [...]

What does it mean that last month's curry still clings to my apartment?  What is clinging and where?  Everyone remarks on it, at least those who care to.  Team Filipina.  Volunteer Paul.  Does the past cling to us in the same way?  Or is there nothing metaphorical and message-laden in this at all?  The answer, the only one, comes on a day like this.  A blustery day.  No Winnie the Pooh, just the aftereffects of cardamom, garlic, tumeric and others.  Read more [...]

I've got you covered, I want to say.  Or perhaps I want them to say it to me, the fava beans, the cover crop greening and swaying in the 72°F globally warmed February sun.  Who could keep away?  It is the center of this day's universe, my nearest raised bed.  I can feel the agrarian tension.  There is a race on.  An annual one.  Cover crop versus sprouting vegetables.  They've all had an equal go at the sun.  I am watching carefully.  The spinach Read more [...]

Life plods along, gray and featureless, then smack.  It fires off signals in staccato.  Bam, bam, bam.  So listen up.  Watch closely.  And here's what happened.I headed for Walgreens.  One of those revelatory choices one just makes in life.  So there it was, Walgreens' back door, the one facing the parking lot.  I had just maneuvered a wheelchair slalom between cars, parked and moving, the distinction inherently vague in a place where vehicles pause and start Read more [...]