Grandfamilies: Sideways–Six Things You Can Do When Trouble Comes

Cadence and Lala. February 2014. If you know someone whom trouble has never visited, well, you don’t know that person as well as you think you do. Rotten stuff happens. It rolls right in along an astounding array of avenues, squats down in the middle of our routines, cracks itself open like an old egg, and raises […]


Why I Won’t Judge Richard Sherman

Cadence Closing Off the Noise. Christmastime, 2012. “Who Was Talking About You?” The more I see of this big old world, the more grateful I become for anonymity. Famous folks have to navigate cameras and microphones, especially at the most important moments of their lives.  I don’t. Thankfully.  No reporter stood at the curb to ask […]


How A Hairbrush Saved My Sanity

  Time For Something New Or maybe it was the broken combs. One way or the other, though, my hair–my somewhat-wild-and-wooly-head-of-hair–has  illuminated a platitude for me. Here’s the saying: One definition of  insanity is to do the same thing over and over expecting different results.  We’ve all heard it a million times, right? Sure we have. But […]


The Clicker Episode

Remotes. Honest. Wrong Turns, Right TrackMy beloved husband, Rich, and I know one another well. We share our lives, our home, our hearts. We worship together, eat most of our meals together, and stroke the same dogs’ heads as we relax in evenings. We climb into the same bed at night. Those details, along with our status […]


My Lunch With the Clowns, 2002

Cadence and Ayden, Clowning Around. January, 2012. A Peculiar Blindness I knew exactly where to find the vendors’ lounge at the Los Angeles County Fair. After all, we’d had a booth there for several years. Sure, we’d moved to a new building this year, but all four exhibit halls were identical, right? Or so I […]