An good friend I had dinner with a few weeks ago reminded me on the way out of the restaurant that I still had a borrowed book of his…after, oh, about three years. He even remembered the title, and when he said it, I remembered the cover and contents - but after multiple moves [...]

The house I live in is in an old neighborhood in view of my city’s imposing skyline. It’s a cozy little cottage, one that would not look out of place plunked down, Oz-like, in any small town in America. But the address of this house is decidedly urban, on an avenue bisecting the neighborhood north and south, with stoplights anchoring its east [...]

I’m neat. Not freakishly, compulsively neat – but orderly. I like things to make sense. It pleases me when one thing logically follows another. Like when the conclusion of a good book somehow affirms its beginning. Or when I intuitively reach for something in the place it should be…and it’s there.
But while there’s comfort in [...]

I barely survived a three alarm meltdown in lane two of the bank drive-thru, and I was the one who started the fire.

I had two checks to deposit, both clearly endorsed and recorded on my deposit slip. No other cars were waiting, in my lane or any other – yet the teller seemed to be taking an unusual [...]

The importance of how I feel – on any given day, about any given subject – is highly overrated.
There. I’ve said it. I’m a feeling person, yes, but the truest thing about me is not how I feel. Never has been – never will be. There is something truer than my emotions.
Years ago, a good [...]

My first big-girl bike was a shamrock green Schwinn with no gears, reverse brakes, and a basket. My sister had one identical to it. I rode this simple two-wheeler to elementary school each day in Portland, Texas, and my chief destination was just down the street. I didn’t consider that by riding it I was [...]

In the 10 months that I have lived at my current address, I’ve seen my west-side next door neighbor exactly three times. That’s roughly once every hundred days. The yard is neat. The front porch light comes on each night. I’ve even knocked on the front door a few times with a piece of misplaced [...]

“God is in the details” is a phrase I’ve heard plenty of times – enough to cause me to wonder who first said it, and why. So I spent some time recently searching for the source of this particular phrase (you may rightly call me a “word nerd”) and discovered that it’s a knock-off, of [...]

Close to 100 name tags were spread on the table near the door of the event – the invitation to which I’d affirmatively responded over a month before. So although I’d almost rather be pushed out of an airplane at several thousand feet than walk into a room full of social opportunity alone, I approached the welcome [...]

My friend Christine and I have marked our calendars in permanent ink to meet for one day in October and one in April. We set aside these fall and spring days for our “pilgrimage” to a tiny Texas town called Round Top, where, with thousands of others, we comb acres in search of magic. Twice [...]