Snowbrush

The best times to go to the woods are in late spring and early summer when the most flowers are in bloom, and in mid to late summer when the...

(This entry contains slang sexual references.) Mark and I got together a lot until we both moved to other parts of the country, and didn’t s...

Today's rants. Littering …is an ironic activity. I would have thought that people who litter are neat-freaks who can’t stand to carry tr...

My Mississippi trip was more like a family reunion interrupted by a funeral than a funeral accompanied by a family reunion. I saw some peopl...

Peggy’s mother died last night. During the years that I dealt with people in crisis—as a funeral director, ambulance driver, phlebotomist, r...

The judge reduced our tickets from $257 (each) to $65. At that rate, the city didn’t make any money, and the cop would have done society mor...

I just came from a meeting of the Wimawhala Encampment, which is a lodge that I joined last winter because it is dying. There are six of us,...

Peggy and I got simultaneous traffic tickets last week for running the same stop sign on our bikes. All we could figure was that the cops we...

Peggy’s mother is dying. She is sometimes rational for brief periods during the day, but at night she forgets where she is and who her famil...

(This entry contains several instances of the F-word.) I don’t remember the last time I heard the word people. I grew up thinking of folks a...

I sometimes attend Sunday school at various liberal churches. The service itself is another matter because I usually take issue with the ser...

We just took our first camping trip of the year, a two-nighter to the Old Cascades. Windfall had the road to our destination—Windy Pass—bloc...

We are having our first warm days since last fall. I bike amid greenery, my wheels afloat, winter’s gray defeated by color. I’m selling my c...

I had my surgical follow-up yesterday, and, my other errands having gone smoothly, arrived 45 minutes early. I wanted a cup of coffee, but S...

Obstructive sleep apnea is caused by loose tissue (turbinates, tonsils, uvula, soft palate, etc.) blocking the airway. The problem appears d...

When you’ve been anesthetized for surgery, you’re advised to spend the rest of the day with a responsible adult, and warned not to make any ...

The anesthesiologist had said he would knock me out just long enough to get the primary painkiller started, leaving me awake for the surger...

Not long ago, the anesthesiologist called about my surgery tomorrow. “You’ll be given two painkillers,” he said, “the first to kill the pain...

My neighbor, Ellie, also has carpal tunnel problems. Hers is advanced, so a return to normalcy is unlikely even with surgery, but Ellie is o...