On Sunday we sat outside on the sidewalk and carved our pumpkins. As we worked, we reminisced about past pumpkin carving sessions. My mom and my brother and I used to carve them on the kitchen floor, on the rectangle squares of linoleum. My husband and his sister used to carve their pumpkins in the […]
It’s embarrassing enough that it took me 12 years to go to Channel Islands National Park, especially since I see the islands almost every day. Last month, I got on board the dive boat that would take us to the place they call the Galapagos of North America. At last! The captain said something about […]
Sometimes I lose track of time when I’m in the water. There are days when it seems like I’ve been paddling through whitewater for hours, the wind makes my ears feel like icicles, and my arms are burning. When I get back to the car, only fifteen minutes have passed since I started surfing. Then […]
September 10-14, 2018 Sarah starts off the week with a Tinder stand-in: a 1972 guide to the outdoors at night. The challenge is identifying just which kind of nocturnal creature you are encountering’ This may not be the same kind of creature you thought you had swiped right on. . . If he’s wearing a […]
September must be my preferred house-cleaning time, because once again, I was purging things in closets this weekend. And like last year, when I wrote this post, I found a disgusting amount of silverfish. (I feel a little better that it’s not just me: even my very organized and clean neighbor says she finds them […]
August 20-24, 2018 Remember last year when, for a moment, we took a break from earthly concerns and looked up at the sky? Helen returns to her eclipse post from last year, written from the backseat of a car during the I-95 traffic jam. The sun’s last rays shone bright, then winked out, and there […]
Let’s call the thoroughfare I live on Lemon Grove. There are two signs for it, one at each end of our block. Until very recently, one of the signs read, “Lemon Grove Avenue”. The other said, “Lemon Grove Street”. When someone asks for my address, I usually don’t say either. I just say I live […]
This post originally ran last summer. This summer, we tried to do better–we only planted two squash plants. Still, we went to dinner at a friend’s house last night and left behind a very large zucchini. At dinner for my 18th birthday, one of my friends gave me one of those long, narrow posters filled […]