It lifts its cheerful head above the grass each spring in the same place in my yard at about the same time, this bright yellow crocus. The oak tree that towers above it is still bare of leaves and dark. The ground isn’t yet warm so how does it know that it’s time to wake […]
Let Me Be Completely Honest
I wonder if there really is such a thing as being completely honest? And should we be, ever? I hear that phrase a lot and when I do, I begin to suspect what comes next. A person’s word and character should be such that we never doubt his honesty in the first place and don’t have […]
Go Away, Bad Bug!
At last it caught up with me, that horrible, awful something called the Grunge. It snuck in when I wasn’t looking, and before I knew it, it bit! I was infected! I’m much better than I was but still yucky. My children have been bringing me food and offering sympathy but the Grunge is a hard thing […]
With Time on My Hands
Retirement–that longed-for Utopian state for which I worked for decades. Lovely, unhurried mornings, peaceful, sunny days of travel, visiting coffee shops. Plenty of time for cleaning a house and keeping it sparkling, baking cookies, taking long walks. And, oh, my goodness, all that accumulated wisdom. Just a whole headful of good advice gleaned from years of […]
A Mystery Writer’s 12 Days
This is Twelfth Night, the Epiphany, the impetus for the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas. With my family’s help, I added words that might be appropriate for a writer of cozy mysteries. Thanks, Matt, Dawn, Sara, Nathan! A Cozy Mystery Writer’s Sizzling Twelve Days of Christmas On the first day of Christmas, Santa brought to […]
Looking Back Without Stumbling
·Sometimes, when beginning a new year, I like to look back at the old one. So, yesterday, I not only looked back at 2014, I went way, way back to 1953 and a 5-year diary my mother gave me in 1952. It was full of a young girl’s thoughts and experiences. Some of them were […]