News you can use
News you can use
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I will be home in time for Christmas. It’s always a little hard to leave Mexico, and leaving right before the holidays is perhaps the hardest. The giant Christmas tree just went up in front of the church last night. Thousands of handmade tin stars hang over the streets, embedded with colored glass beads and lit from within. The poinsettias (or “nochebuenas”) decorate the windowsills. There is a concert every night of the week. It is hard to leave, in the middle of all this...
It is an unusual living situation, in many ways. My husband, Peter, and I spend almost half the year down in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. We had a terrible experience in another town (an absentee American owner with a filthy rental) and we came running back to San Miguel, desperate to find a place to stay — any place that was clean and halfway affordable. And that is how Jorge found us. “I have an apartment on Loreto that is available for the month,” he wrote, in respo...
My husband, Peter, told me about the unlikely friendship. When we stay in Mexico, Peter walks the same route up to the environmental preserve every day. It’s a steep climb to the park, which is filled with wildlife and rare plants. Because Peter walks the same streets daily, he has gotten to know a lot of the people who have homes on the way up. The whole thing started with Reacher, an exuberant 75-pound Belgian Malinois, and his American expat owner, Anita. The Belgian M...
“I don’t know many words about teeth,” I told the dentist. Since my husband, Peter, and I spend time in Mexico, it makes sense to get dental work done while we’re here, and I had been putting off going to the dentist. I knew I needed to get work done where my gums had receded, and the enamel no longer covered what it was supposed to. I’ve been told that over-exuberant toothbrushing contributes to this condition, so I’ve been trying to ease off. But I don’t really think...
There will be monks here tomorrow morning,” is what I figured Jorge was telling me. In Spanish, “monks” sounds like “monkeys” in English. But I was pretty sure we were not having monkeys over for breakfast. Jorge is my landlord here in Mexico, and he speaks only Spanish to me. He will speak some English when my husband, Peter, is around. But if it’s just me, he’ll stick to Spanish, and I am fine with that, but it doesn’t mean I get 100% of what he says. “Very good!” I...
So I’m doing a show after all. The problem with me (and I might not be alone in this) is that I have a hard time imagining anything between close to perfect and nothing at all. I’d been planning to do a first show featuring material from my columns, and it was overwhelming. A fully realized show involves a lot of preparation and getting every detail down all at once. A close-to-perfect show requires a ton of rehearsal and usually a lot of help from others to make it hap...
I am quick to criticize other people’s luxuries. “Buying a latte every day?” I say. “What a waste!” But, of course, I have Peter making me coffee, and I can have it exactly the way I like it. (Lots of milk, not too much coffee.) I think sailboats and horses are crazy expensive, but campers and RVs make sense — because that’s what I grew up with. “Economics don’t count when you are talking about campers!” my father has repeatedly told me. My father is a frugal man. He live...
Over the weekend, Felix met his three other mothers. Felix is our cat, and we adopted him from Mexico. We are now back in Mexico for the first time since we adopted him and, of course, Felix is with us. When my husband, Peter, and I first discussed adopting a cat, I had in mind some needy little creature who would cuddle on my lap when I read. Instead, we got Felix. Felix was a street cat for two years before he was scooped up by his foster mothers. He was very skinny when...
I have a problem with inspirational quotes. “You are never too old to set a new goal or to dream another dream,” is a quote attributed to C.S. Lewis. He didn’t say it. “It is never too late to be what you might have been” is something George Eliot is supposed to have said. She never said that, either. I could keep on going, but it’s a safe bet that, if you read it on Facebook and it is attributed to Mother Teresa, Einstein or Keanu Reeves, they almost certainly did not say...
I wear used clothes. I remember going to clothing stores years ago and buying new clothes. But about the time I stopped wearing business suits and flying in airplanes for work, I started going to used clothing stores. Then I discovered online consignment stores and, since then, I’ve hardly bought a new item of clothing except socks and shoes and underwear. I like used clothes. Of course, I like the prices. I’ve always been frugal and when I see how much a pair of new jea...
I have never been able to watch scary movies. My mother will remind you (if she gets the chance) that I can’t even watch embarrassing television programs, which is, frankly, embarrassing. I would watch that terrible moment when Lucy was about to get caught doing something embarrassing by her employer, Mr. Mooney, on “The Lucy Show” reruns, and I would have to leave the room in a hurry — making excuses about how I suddenly needed to help set the table. The truth was, I just co...
I have been blessed with many cousins. My two cousins closest in age were both boys, Brian and Dane. We went camping and hiking together and stayed in the cabin up north. We all remember the day we made tea from red sumac berries, and — after we’d drunk about a gallon each — my Uncle Mike told us, “You know that stuff is a laxative, don’t you?” (For the record, it is not.) We are still close, although I marvel at how similar we seemed when we were young, and how serious and...
I haven’t gone camping in a tent in a long time. I grew up camping and, for much of that time, it was in a tent. My parents would take my sister and me to the Boundary Waters between Minnesota and Canada for about a week. We’d paddle our canoes from one lake to the next. We’d listen to the loons at night. We’d build a fire. We’d eat dried food — which miraculously tasted better the farther we paddled from civilization. We’d drink water right out of the lake, before we nee...
One of my favorite stories as a child was “Stone Soup.” I don’t know if you know it or not. It’s an old European folktale, and there are a lot of variations, but in most of them two soldiers come into a town during a war. They ask for food, and everyone tells them they have nothing to eat. So the soldiers build a fire, and they ask an old woman if they can borrow a pot because they are going to make stone soup. “Soup from a stone?” the old woman asks. “Yes,” they say. “We a...
I told my husband, Peter, when he first announced the idea, that I thought it was dumb. I probably didn’t say “dumb,” because I try to be nicer than that. But I let him know that I thought his idea of getting exercise by climbing stairs in the stairwell was, well, kind of dumb. “Find out if I can access the stairs in the stairwell!” he told me, after we had purchased this condo, sight unseen, during the pandemic. We didn’t see it for almost two years. When we were finally rea...
It is construction season. The building we live in is 40 years old, and it was recently discovered that water was finding its way behind the brick. This requires some very loud repairs that are not expected to be finished until fall. Usually, I am just finding my way to the coffeepot around 8:30. But now there are men standing on scaffolds, jackhammering bricks at 8 a.m., right outside my window. If I open the drapes, I can see their boots. There is no one to blame. The men...
It is construction season. The building we live in is 40 years old, and it was recently discovered that water was finding its way behind the brick. This requires some very loud repairs that are not expected to be finished until fall. Usually, I am just finding my way to the coffeepot around 8:30. But now there are men standing on scaffolds, jackhammering bricks at 8 a.m., right outside my window. If I open the drapes, I can see their boots. There is no one to blame. The men...
I’d never been to a U.S. citizenship ceremony before. I’d never even thought about it much. I knew the process took a long time but, beyond that, I knew nothing about it, until I was invited to one. My dear friend, Betty, was coming in from out of town to attend the citizenship ceremony of her son-in-law, Raul. Raul is a quiet and soft-spoken man who works in corporate catering. He has been waiting to become an American citizen for many years and finally, last Thursday, he...
Last night, my husband, Peter, and I went to see the play “Come From Away.” I read about it last year, waited for the day tickets were available, and bought the very best cheap seats I could buy. I love going to the theater more than almost anything, so you might be surprised to learn my husband is not much of a theatergoer. I’ve learned, over the years, if I ask him months in advance, he imagines the date will never come and agrees to go with me — and that’s what he did when...
I never learned my multiplication tables. Not really. To this day, if you ask me, “What is six times nine?” out of the blue, with some urgency, I will panic. (Please don’t do this.) The troubles started when I was transferred from one math class to another in the third grade. I now understand that this was some sort of promotion from lower math to higher math, but it did not feel like that at the time. Almost immediately, I realized everyone around me was privy to some secret...
My dad doesn’t like asking for help. He told me this recently when he asked if I could help him put out the dock. His knee was bothering him, and the dock was pulled up on shore at a steep incline. The dock frame was rolled into the water and then the boards of the dock were laid into place. It was a good job for two people and two sets of hands, especially since my dad’s knee is bothering him and he’s been legally blind for a number of years. My dad doesn’t like asking...
I’m about the only person I know without a tattoo. Well, this is not true. My parents don’t have tattoos, and I don’t think most of their friends do — although I’ve not done a close inspection. That would be hard to do, and probably not very polite. But among people my age and younger, I’ve become something of an oddity, yet I can honestly say I’ve never considered getting one. This isn’t because I have anything against tattoos. I’ve seen some that were beautiful. But I’ve als...
“I don’t even know what game we’re supposed to be playing!” my husband, Peter, told me. He and our cat, Felix, have been playing their nightly game of chase and tag. Peter always loses. This might be because Felix makes the rules — and is the referee. “When is the game over?” I asked. “Whenever Felix wins!” Last night, I was already in bed while the game was wrapping up. Felix was nowhere to be seen. Peter was silently creeping around the bed and out the bedroom door. Sud...
I never learned my multiplication tables. Not really. To this day, if you ask me, “What is six times nine?” out of the blue, with some urgency, I will panic. (Please don’t do this.) The troubles started when I was transferred from one math class to another in the third grade. I now understand that this was some sort of promotion from lower math to higher math, but it did not feel like that at the time. Almost immediately, I realized everyone around me was privy to some secret...
My Aunt Ruthie used to make the best pickles ever. Ruthie was my mom’s sister, and she died a few years back in a car accident that left us all sad and shaken and filled with memories. I remember her dry humor and her sharp intellect and her voracious reading habits. I remember her never-ending kindness and resilience. And I remember her pickles. Ruthie always gave me a jar of pickles whenever she made them. They were a treasure. One year, the glass Mason jar filled with pickl...
