Category Archives: inspiration

I Had Some Dreams, They Were Clouds in My Mint Melange Tea

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I have plenty of time before my flight, so I search for an empty table at the cozy, dimly-lit, seat-yourself restaurant inside the airport.

I plop down at the first vacant table I see. I’m not excited over the menu options of grease in various forms, to be washed down with expensive beer. It doesn’t matter. I have a spot to decompress after my search and seizure experience. My new metal hip had set off the TSA alarm as I traversed the security check. I was suddenly surrounded by TSA agents barking, “Stop. Take your shoes off. Kleenex? Out of your pocket.” So much for my pre-check status. read more

The Bratty Voice In My Head

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Rain barreled into my world in Garden Grove, California. Puddles soaked our front yard. Mini-rivers swept down the street. Our neighbors huddled inside their homes. But my mom wouldn’t let a rainstorm stop her. She wanted a taco at Taco Lita and do some shopping at the Broadway.

At 8-years-old, I loved the rain and my mom’s suggestion we go out for tacos and shop at the Broadway sounded good to me. I put on my red, slicker rain coat and my red, rubber rain boots. My sister, age 6, got into her rain gear and we hopped into our funny little car, a Nash Metropolitan which we called the Metro. read more

Happy Food Deprivation Anniversary To Us!

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“Can’t we sit outside?” I asked our hostess as she led us to an indoor window table. I added, “I requested an outdoor table by the creek.”

Our hostess, a young twenty-something with long flowing hair like Rapunzel-in-the-making, gave me a pouty, glum look and shook her head slowly, “Not tonight, it’s raining.”

“It’s not raining,” I said, although I knew we had arrived in Sedona to celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary in the heart of the monsoon season. It had rained earlier in the day. read more

Noodle Crisis at 347 Grill

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Oh, I’m so outraged. No noodles in the soup. Take it back.

“Um, excuse me,” I said to our young server who had the looks and style of a Kardashian. “My chicken noodle soup doesn’t have any noodles.”

Kim, I’ll call her Kim just for the sake of not knowing her real name, stopped and inspected my soup.  She leaned over for a better look.

I glanced at her, waiting for her immediate reaction, such as, “Whada’ya know! No noodles,” and whisk my soup away for a fast exchange of soup with noodles.

But Kim didn’t say anything and gave me a perplexed expression, her eyeliner and jewelry flashing dazzling sparkles in the dimmed lighting. read more

Tea for Ten (and tasty shoe leather too)

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Kathy, Julie, me, reflective pond

“Anyone celebrating a special occasion?” our tour guide, John, asked.

Kathy, Julie, and I~ along with seven others (people we didn’t know) ~huddled together at the entry to the Japanese Friendship Garden in Phoenix.

After a long silence, one of the ladies in our tour group of ten said, “It’s a good day to be alive.”

“That’s a good reason to celebrate,” Kathy said.

“Every day I wake up and I’m alive, I celebrate,” said the lady, who we later learned goes by the name of Georgia and is 80 years old. read more