To do: Drink Hippie Kool-Ade

Check.
Today I purchased all the accoutrements necessary to rig up a slackline in my backyard.  Now all I need is a few tie-back shirts, patchwork skirts, patchouli, and some flour tortillas to throw around at a String Cheese Incident show and my transformation would be complete. 

Southern Crosses

I’ve seen the Southern Cross.  I must have seen it.  I spent hours outside after dark in Zimbabwe, gazing up at the sky when I was far from city lights.  I’d play a game with myself, trying to find the faintest stars.  After focusing on the faintest for a few moments, fainter ones would reveal themselves [...]

Hunger, part 1: Coffee Shop

I spent the summer before I left for Africa working long shifts at a friend’s coffee shop.  It was good money, hard work, and it left me just enough time to do the two things on my daily to do list:  write for one hour, and run no  fewer than three miles.  When we were [...]

Number Two

My twenties were full of road trips–popping in to see far flung friends, sleeping on tatty couches.  Once, while staying with my friend Megan and her first husband, my period surprised me in the middle of the night and I bled all over borrowed sheets like a menarcheal pre-teen whose mother never gave her “the talk.”  In all [...]

Not a vegan

“Guess what.  I’m a vegetarian.”
The words didn’t really sink in when my brother Jamie said them today.  I was parking the car, preoccupied, and not giving his phone call my full attention.
“Huhhh.  Wait, what?”
“I’m a vegetarian.  I started reading this book last week called The China Study.  It’s pretty good.  You should read it.”
I can’t easily [...]

Stink

The smell of rotting fruit takes me back to Mexico in an instant.  Strange that overripe, bordering on putrid cues some of my happiest memories. 
Another curious smell that takes me back is “restaurant worker smell.”  I recently started volunteering once a week at a really cool restaurant that trains people with physical and mental disabilities to work in food [...]

Strain

I’m not a big regifter because I don’t have an excellent memory, decent organizational skills, or nerves of steel.  Most unneeded gifts end up going to Goodwill. 
Wine is a different story though, and it doesn’t have to be unwanted wine for me to regift it.  When I plan to give a bottle of wine for a [...]

Wake up call

I had dinner last night with my friend Larry who is a clinician.  I hadn’t seen him in several months and he’s looking fit and trim.  As soon as the words “what’s your secret?” passed my lips, I felt like a freaking moron. 
Calories in<calories out, Einstein.
I’ve been trying for over a year to take off the weight [...]

Renting space in my head

Recently, the following phrases have been rattling around in my head:
I love the person I want you to be.
The part of me that hates myself loves you.
It’s so hard living someone else’s life.
I think I need to develop some characters around those phrases and write some fiction.