Alex, the paint store manager, and I shared a moment today. I was returning from a visit to our new home in Sarasota when I decided, on impulse, to stop at the Sherwin-Williams store nearby instead of driving to my usual paint shop, now 90 minutes away. We are getting…
Channeling Tracy Bennett
I and three members of my extended family start off each day trying to figure out what is on Tracy Bennett’s mind. Or more specifically, what word she has selected for the popular Wordle puzzle in The New York Times. Since the game occupies about 10-15 minutes of my morning…
DeSantis’s Unintended (?) Consequences
Before July 1, there were scores of workers replacing the roofs on our condo complex in southeast Florida following Hurricane Ian. Today I counted two. After four months we are still without a metal roof. Every time it rains our upper-level neighbors, who hail from Canada, get another round of…
That Pesky Covid’s Back and We’ve Got It
Thank you Covid for making a return visit after our first introduction to you. We are so excited to see you and the baggage you bring with you: headaches, runny nose, nagging cough and that general feeling of ennui. Your first visit was three summers ago. The construction worker remodeling…
Banishing Emails, Hillary-Style
I just finished cleaning out 16,271 sent emails quicker than you can say Hillary Clinton. I’m not sure what motivated this housecleaning of 10-plus years of email responses. Earlier in the week I got rid of more than 4,000 emails – all read I’m proud to say. That’s how it…
The Aha Moments Make Life Easier
My son and I were exchanging Wordle scores this morning as we do every day when I experienced one of those aha moments. It’s amazing how often we track. On occasion, he gets the word in two or three guesses and it takes me five or six or vice versa.…
The Brain Eaters are Here
The lack of rain and with it the growing particles and pollen in the air have made my head feel as though it’s going to explode. I’ve tried pills and nose sprays and nothing is doing the job. My head feels heavy, out of sorts and occasionally dizzy. Some people…
The Benefit of Keeping Your Mouth Shut
A friend of mine who’d moved to a continuous care retirement community about 40 minutes away died the other day. Before his passing, he told his wife that he wanted his service to be in the new church the couple had attended for several months. A few of us were…
My Writing Interruptions
I’m breaking my rule about not blogging to let you know why my new book may take longer than I thought. Every time I sit down to write, somehow something interferes with my progress. Today, I stopped work to send a nasty note to the reporter who published Tucker Carlson’s…
New Mystery in the Works
As the end of March draws near, I will be taking a break from blogging to work on my new mystery, tentative titled Under the Sand. The book is about two billionaire brothers who live on the island in southwest Florida where my heroine Leslie Elliott and her newspaper friend,…