Today my beautiful lady head is holding pincushion protea, safflower, and eucalyptus. When I was younger I was more snooty about flowers: they had to smell, and smell good. None of these really have a smell, although fresh (really fresh) eucalyptus can smell wonderful. Cost for flowers, again about $11 at Trader Joe’s.
I venture to say I’ve almost made it through summer, always a challenge for me as a person who prefers chillier climes. My sister reports that up (up the hill) in Idyllwild where she lives now it has been chilly and stormy… of which I am envious as we’ve had a 90-100 degree heat wave here. It’s been a bit of a year so far, her dealing with a diagnosis of mucosal melanoma, and me dealing with her diagnosis. We’ve done the majority of her doctor’s appointments together, and although I know she sometimes must get sick of me, I really have treasured spending all that time with my baby sis. She was supposed to go visit our handful of a mother, but there were new protocols to try, so that got cancelled. She’s hoping our mother will come to her. I am not holding my breath on that because the mountain usually doesn’t go to Mohammed.
I now present an actual undoctored video of Mama:
Ha!
No, that’s not actually her, but the “everything” about Lucille is pretty close to Mama Pearce. And… if I tease out the comparison… I’m probably Michael in that scenario, who is probably the lamest Bluth. Sorry Michael. I have to tell the truth… on both of us!
As long as I have been a parent I have been worried about my daughter’s summer plans/schedule, because she’s a kid who does better with one than without. She was too old for any camps this year, so we just made a deal: she took an online Driver’s Ed course; she had to make plans with one friend at least once a week, and she did some new and interesting chores around the house in preparation for someday being in charge of her own dorm room or apartment. She mopped, and organized, and did all sorts of things she doesn’t have a lot of time for when school is in session, because her program has days that run from 8-5, but can go as late as 9. She’s joined a teen program at Pasadena Playhouse for the fall, where she’ll begin to get a little real-world backstage experience. And she passed the driver’s ed course. We’re waiting for the necessary pink slip to arrive in the mail, which will allow her to take the permit test (it is a rule in California that they have the pink slip before they take the permit test.).
Anyway, it’s been a busy few months, and I’m glad school has begin again, and the patterns are falling back into place that alleviate some of the the pressure. Is there a mom out there in a hetero relationship whose partner takes on the responsibility for the kid(s) over the summer?
🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗
Are those… crickets?
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
When life comes in waves of responsibility and busyness, you STILL have to manage to get to the ever more expensive grocery store (wait, I thought he was lowering the prices on day 1…. Good thing none of us held our breath), so skip a few of the overpriced boxes of cereal, or other overpriced things, and make sure you use ten bucks or so to buy yourself flowers!
These flowers I love because… orange, and green, the two best colors ever.
That there is a photo of white mountain yogurt, which is my new favorite yogurt.
Years ago there was a restaurant in Venice Beach called Hurry Curry. It’s gone now. It was one of those places where, between 9am and 9pm, you could walk in and Raj would hook you up with anything you might want that was your typical Indian fare, aloo gobi, palak or saag paneer, matar paneer, chicken tiki masala, vindaloo, you name it. You could get various levels of spice, but almost all of their food had a kick to it, and I was raised on Irish cooking, for the most part. I love cucumbers, but I’ve never been a fan of raita, because they’re too mushy in it. I had eaten yogurt in my life, but, if you grew up like me, the yogurt you ate was a crime against yogurt, Dannon. My mom bought one that was fruit on the bottom that was okay, but really, yogurt was always like a “when you really want a good sweet, but you’re too fat for one,” sort of thing, and as fat as I have ever been, and I have been quite voluminous, I ain’t never been that fat. LOL. Actually I am not even that into sweets. So why waste the sweets you are going to eat on freaking Dannon?. But Raj, the very sweet very large man in charge, gave me some plain yogurt to try as a way to cool down the spice.
Raj made the yogurt from scratch. Raj was probably 20 years older than me, and his entire family was back in India. Raj was here hoping to make enough money to send them back there so that his kids could do well in life, and he hadn’t seen his family in the same room as him in about ten years when I met him. Raj was illegal, and he could not go back to visit and hope to come here again easily, especially after 9/11. But he owned Hurry Curry, and he was beloved in the neighborhood.
Raj’s yogurt was slightly warm, as he took it from the pot on the stove, and runny. Dannon’s was only runny if it had gone over. Raj’s yogurt had a tang to it, but not sour, and so soft and smooth. It was delicious. Raj taught me how to make it by taking home some of his yogurt, and heating up milk on the stove, letting it almost boil, cooling it down to room temp., and then pouring in Raj’s yogurt. (I am not a food scientist… please do not consider this a “how to” on yogurt making. It is a reminiscence from 20 years ago.)
Raj had a little “fatherly” crush on me, I think. I was not a petite person then, and he thought I was just the cutest, plumpest thing outside of his wife in India. He always used to put extra cheese cubes in my saag paneer. Oh, man, was it good!
Indian restaurants, in general, in my opinion, have the best yogurt going. I am not a fan of yogurt with sweet things in it. I like it plain. And, actually, I have to make another tangent here to rave about Turkish manti.
Turkish manti can most easily be described as tortellini filled with meat and presented with a creamy buttery garlic yogurt sauce on top, but the kind I had was made like that, and then “soupefied” (it’s my word, I created it!) with some of the pasta water. The ones I see photos of on the web have missed this (IMHO) crucial step. I once had a little group of Turkish graduate students I’d become friends with, and they took me to a restaurant in NYC that served manti, which they said is normally a food not served in restaurants, because “Only Mama makes it.” And then they had Mama send some, somehow, frozen like a brick, and they made it for me at home too. I don’t eat a lot of meat these days, but if someone put a steaming bowl of manti in front of me, especially if it was soupefied, it would be impossible to say no.
Back to the yogurt, because I want to tell you about white mountain yogurt, which I found at Sprouts. I’m not gonna lie. I bought it because of the beautiful glass jar. I am a jar lover, and a jar hoarder. I mean it’s endlessly reusable! And this jar is beautiful.
May they never switch to paper or plastic! Imagine those flowers you are going to buy yourself sticking out of this damn jar! Wow! Imagine the terrarium you could make in it! Imagine the leftovers, like something soupified, you could store in it after you have pulled a Gene Simmons and somehow gotten your tongue all the way down to the bottom of the jar. This yogurt tastes exactly as I remember Raj’s tasting. It is thin in spots and thick in others, but a good shake of the jar makes it more uniform. It has that silky thin texture and absolutely perfect taste. It is, so it says, Bulgarian! And, just like that, another country on my “wish I could visit” list. I want to go!
Which brings me to tangent #2: Immigrants, illegal or otherwise.
I found a photo of Raj! God bless the internet!
What a cutie!
And here are some photos of Hurry Curry!
Wasn’t it beautiful?
Right before I moved back east, Raj had a heart attack. At the time his wife was able to visit, and was coming to take care of him. Of course, she couldn’t stay any more than he was supposed to have stayed. I don’t know the real story of why Hurry Curry is gone. I was having my own very real life crisis at the same time, so I could not even attempt to keep connected. I hope he closed because he went home to his family. I know he always wanted to. I’m mean, Los Angeles is great, but his family wasn’t here, and he always wanted to return to them. The immigrant situation in the USA is a problem of our own making, in my humble opinion. If you want to move here from England, you have a much easier time than if you want to move here from Mexico, or India, or many other places. The way to move here is not standardized or the same for each country. Many Americans, long before the current mess of an administration, married immigrants only to find there was no way for their spouses to get citizenship, and they left the USA for their spouses’ home countries. But many countries are not safe to go back to at all, and so people go “underground” because they fear harm back home. But really, if home was safe, and your family was safe, you would probably prefer to be in your home. I’ve met and become friends with many international students, and none of them wanted to stay. They wanted to go back to Turkey, to Vietnam, to Eastern Europe, to Mexico. And it breaks my heart, every day, to see what the current administration is doing to my fellow humans. A person who happened to be born in Columbia, or Haiti, or Yugoslavia, or Sudan is no different from me. They may like different foods, or have different spiritual beliefs, but we all have the same dreams: happiness for ourselves, and, as we have them, for our children. Stephen Miller and his goons are as wrong and evil as any other proponent of monoraciality in history. He would deny us our friends from other places, our family from other places, and our food from other places too. I see what is going on today as simple cruelty that is out to hurt people like Raj. And why? What for? I don’t buy the whole “crime & rapists” stuff, and I don’t buy the “they’re using all the resources so we don’t have enough!” The Republicans keep cutting aid programs, which is why we don’t have enough. It’s got nothing to do with poor children from this country or any other.
I hope people who judge immigrants harshly will take a moment to read it.
Anywho, as a woman who loves to eat, and quite likes spicy food, but can also collapse into an asthma attack if it is truly spicy, yogurt has saved my ass too many times to mention. I’ve been known to bring my own (small plastic container secreted in handbag or coat pocket) if we’re going for spicy food at a place where I don’t expect them to have any… like a Korean restaurant. I’ve never not been grateful for being introduced to non-English, Irish, or Italian foods. Diversity is one of the things I most enjoy in the world. I can think of one of my favorite and most challenging students, and young guy named Mole (pronounced mole-eh! like ole!), who introduced me to, you guessed it, mole sauce! But that’s a story for another day.
I hope that Raj recovered, and was able to go back to India to live happily ever after with his family. I can’t thank him enough for all the good food, for being so kind, and always so tickled to see me (he always came from behind the counter to give me a hug), for thinking I was cute, and for teaching me about plain, and delicious, yogurt. Go try some white mountain. You can drink a shot glass of it: it is so liquidy and delicious. Take a shot of probiotic bliss and toast to your own health, mine, and Raj’s. And buy yourself flowers to put in the jar after you empty it!
Today my beautiful lady head is holding iris and Veronica. I once saw neighbors rip up an enitre patch of iris and throw them away I asked if I could have them, but they said no because they didn’t like them, so they didn’t want to see them anywhere. Can you imagine? They put in something foul, like geraniums. When I return from the temporary status as renter back to home owner, iris are absolutely in the plan. Veronica I wasn’t aware of until this year, which is painful to admit. They are absolutely brilliant flowers, long lasting, straight and tall with sometimes a graceful curve to them. They’re a real eye-catcher. A friend once took a plant pot filling class, and was told that if you plant a pot you should have a filler, and spiller, and a thriller. Veronica is the thriller. Cost for flowers, about $11 at Trader Joe’s. Also pictured… future Chex mix!
A gazillion years ago now I spotted a pair of madras pants at a Goodwill. Man, I wanted them. Unfortunately, based on their size or mine, it wasn’t happening. I remember standing there, thinking, What sewing skills can I unleash to make these work? I do have sewing skills, and they are universally unimpressive, so there’s that. I talked myself out of them, which was a good idea, but I’ve been longing for them ever since.
Facebook puts clothing ads up in my feed all the time. It knows me, and, in this case, I don’t mind, because here came a golf store (last month) with a huge sale on men’s madras pants. Score! Now, what the hell do you wear with madras pants if you don’t golf, and you don’t want to look more dork than usual? T-shirts just seemed to add to the wrong vibe, so I went with this shirt, from Old Navy, I think, during the pandemic, and I believe it is a women’s shirt, because it is a petite, as you can tell because it doesn’t come down to below my butt. I am short, really short, so short my favorite HS teacher called me Shorty instead of my name, and my waist is also short. And, while I’m outing myself, I might as well go all the way and reveal that, also during HS, the costume lady informed me that my arms are shorter than they’re supposed to be, which explains a lot of yoga challenges, and why my daughter says I am a T-Rex. Add into all that my usual chest size of 38D, and it’s been a work-in-progress, sometimes, to find what I want, like a good men’s shirt to wear with ties that fits waist and boobs, and this petite version does the trick so well that you cannot imagine how carefully I launder it. This shirt has to last me to death, folks, and I ain’t planning on going anytime soon.
Lastly the tie is, like all my ties, from Goodwill, but, until today, it had been living in my closet, unworn, for probably 8 or more years. Listen, I commit to clothes I love. I think it works with the slightly preppy vibe.
I have on Seavees sneakers, and, pro tip, every August Seavees has a massive online sale on most of their sneakers that is often 50% off, which these were. They are not as comfy as Vans, IMHO, but they do have that retro beach feel. I have had this pair about five years, bought on sale one August. I am obsessed with my favorite color, green, and really have to hold myself back from buying nothing but green clothes.
Dave has off today, and is sleeping in. I got up (even though I was up late, one!) at my usual pre-6 time, mostly because I was sooo hot, which was, I think, not a function of the weather, but more of the time of life, and had to get in a nice cool shower. Then I thought I would try to wear these pants, and put this look together, and took Oliver for a walk so he wouldn’t bother Dave. As we were heading back we pulled ourselves over to make room for another pedestrian, and we said hello, and she said, “I love your look!” So, you know, I’m pretty much on cloud 9 right now: day slayed. I only dress for me, so that I think, OMGosh, woman, I love it! and tell myself how clever I am. But, having another person comment, before 7 in the morning too, is a great surprise.
These pants are comfy, and got looser just on the walk, which was nice. They have four pockets too, cool, as I often walk with my hands in my back pockets for some reason. I’m all in on the pants, and also happy to be undercutting that golf, country club thing. Golfers… I just don’t know. Someone out there is giving golfing a very bad reputation these days. You know what I’m talking about. Imagine how authors would feel if I golfed instead of helping them edit and sell their books! So Ima sit my madras butt down on the porch before Los Angeles gets scorching at noon, and do some editing. And if it needs saying again, there are no riots here. Just hot days and hard-working people being nice to each other. Los Angeles is one of the best places to merge onto the highway, because they’re nice here. I mean, you know, I’m from Philly. I can drive freaking anywhere in the world because I could easily merge onto the Schuylkill Expressway from the left lane, coming down a ramp into the fast lane at 65. It’s a thing. Los Angeles is so much more forgiving. So, yeah, if you like nice weather, really nice, 9 or more months of the year (a teensy bit too hot other times), if you like happy people to interact with at stores and on the street, if you like diversity for your kids and your own general weirdness, and a more chill vibe overall, and especially if you like international food, this is a pretty good place to be. And if you want some super soft comfortable pants with lots of pockets that could, truly, go with almost anything, get some madras. Geek out!
That is the wonderful duo of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy.
My mother loved musicals when I was a kid, so I heard a lot of them. I used to ride my bike up and down our blue collar alley singing “Climb Every Mountain” at the top of my lungs…, you know, like all the cool kids. I once was a very high soprano, but now I am definitly a mezzo-soprano, if not a baritone.
Jeanette MacDonald went to school with my grandmother (one year ahead of her), which is what every old person in Philadelphia used to claim, but in our case it was true, and I know this because my grandmother, Sara, who never lied, and could not sing, told me she thought it was dumb, Jeanette doing all those “La la las” after school. My grandmother also told us that stolen flowers grow best, so there you go. My grandmother never knew her father, who ran off and joined the Canadian (French?) foreign Legion while my grandmother was still incubating inside her mother. Story goes her father got a new Canadian family, and died in WWI. So, of course, my grandmother had nothing to sing about and stole flowers. Of course. And so she walked home each day past Jeanette’s house where she could hear Jeanette singing. My grandmother wanted to play the piano more than anything, and knew a few tunes (“Jesus Loves Me,” “Cowslips,” and two-thirds of “Rose of Waikiki.”), but did not have the resources Jeanette had, and was certainly envious of those singing lessons, and the piano in the house.
In any case, family history and legend aside, my mother quite liked Jeanette MacDonald, and my mother was also a soprano. I remember the movies Jeanette made with Nelson Eddy were so corny, but she also made the movie about the San Francisco earthquake with Clark Cable, which was tragic and maybe a bit less corny, and had the stirring song about San Franciso in it.
In any case, I was a huge fan of her work, and I just loved this song that the duo did together, and “Indian Love Call,” (probably racist film and movie… but loved the song!)
and I also loved Rosemarie by Nelson on his own.
As corny as everything about them is, they had a tragic love life, if you read their Wikipedia pages, all brought about by the Hollywood studios trying to control them not getting divorced, which put Jeanette, who suffered with a weak heart, into a marriage of domestic violence. Really as tragic as their films often seemed! And they both died in their early 60s, which is also sad. They had money, fame, and privilege, but were denied the thing they wanted the most, each other.
“Will You Remember,” the first song inserted at the top of this post, has a habit of popping into my head on random, and I end up singing it for an entire week, in the shower, in the car, in my dreams. Hopefully you’ll find something to enjoy in these fantastic old tunes, and, if you do, join in, and see if you can hit those high notes!
May they be clasped in each others’ arms in the great beyond….
Back when Target was still DEI-cool, I bought myself this head planter. I never quite had the right plant to put in it though, and I decided to use it as a vase instead. I especially like the way the flowers come out the the head and look almost like hair, or a fancy hat.
I buy myself flowers. All the time. I buy them at least twice a month, depending on how long they last. I admit to really loving them and not wanting to throw them away or compost them until they’re really spent. Today I went into my local Vons (I usually get pretty and inexpensive flowers from Trader Joe’s, but they had nothing interesting a few days ago when I stopped in for half and half.), and found these cool tie-dyed roses. I thought they were perfect for celebrating Pride. I’m straight and cis, and a very much in support of Pride, and trans rights, and gay marriage, and all that good stuff. And I love flowers, and fun, colorful, or heavily-scented , off-beat, exotic, just about any kind. (Except geraniums, but that’s a post for another day!)
I just thought these were so pretty and uplifting.
My mother has always considered flowers a waste of money, which seems too sad to me. This bunch of roses and the yellow “filler” cost me ten dollars. That means I’m spending around about 20 bucks a month for a little hit of joy every time I walk into my perpetually untidy kitchen.
Get yourself some flowers and enjoy the color. This is your one life: make it beautiful. Don’t wait for someone else to do it.
I have been taking photos of myself in clothes (lucky for us all! Not naked!) because I love clothes, and I figured I could be brave enough to share that side of myself which you would not know unless you knew me in person.
I also snap a lot of photos of pets, flowers, and, when she lets me, my kid, so the phone gets pretty full. I finally got around to downloading a bunch, and here, for my second (?) clothes post is what I wore back in March to the Atlanta Writer’s conference. It’s a Lucy and Yak Ragan, and my, what are they? Snake? Leopard? I think snake, boots. and some sory of cropped black sweater.
Having been a fat woman for most of my adult life, I often go black in professional situations because it feels safer, cleaner, slimmer. This L&Y Ragan is a USA size 10, as an FYI, so I think I’m down in average size for that, not plus, but I still see me as large, too large, and probably always will.
It was a wonderful day, though, as I had someone come sit at my table with me:
The moment I met Emilie I was in big-time girl love. LOL. Emilie and I are in the same age range, and that’s all anyone needs to know abut that, and she is a person who, the moment we saw each other in person, I felt like I’d known forever. So, even though we’d worked together for many months, to meet her and just hang out was so much fun. Honestly, and I know this is going to sound really dorky to say, but when I work on a book with an author I get really attached to the book, well, because usually I had to likethe book a lot to begin with to want t publish it, and then, because I am a gigantic super-nerd, I am very very excited when I get to meet the author in person. I didn’t ask Emilie for her autograph on her book, but I wanted to. I was really sorry to leave Atlanta. I wished I could have hung out the rest of the week with Emilie. Does anyone else out there feel like there’s never enough time for connection and just fun? Back on the plane, and, that week, home to a huge amount of chaos as an exchange student had come while I was in Atlanta, and the exchange student was a delight, but she was only staying for a week, and it happened to be the same week (the school, IMHO, arranged it badly) the kids the vsiting students were staying with all had all their midterm stuff due, and my chronically procrastinating child was losing her mind when I arrived back in the house, much to the chagrin of the poor the exchange student. So Mom was on immediate duty, and, oh, how I thought back fondly on hanging out with Emilie. Being a mom to my daughter is one of the best joys in my life, but it is not lost on me that when you become a spouse, and then a parent, you are giving up most of your allowance of fun. So you have to get it in where you can. I would love to escape to Atlanta with Emilie again, or anywhere. She felt like a lifelong friend right away, and she’s also an interesting and talented author.
And, I veered a bit off of my outfit, but, what can I say? I’m a veerer.
It’s getting dark outside as I write this, and I have the door open. We live one block off of the restaurant street, and sometimes, like tonight, there are people who are rambunctious in the street. I’ve heard yelling, some fireworks, sirens, dogs barking. Everyone wants to be seen, to matter, to have some attention, and we get squeezed too thin sometimes, and we get loud, when we get a chance to have some fun, to loosen up the reigns. Everyone is guilty of some loud times, but the breeze and the temperature are too nice to allow a little noise to make me close the door. Whever you are, I hope it’s a nice, if slightly loud, spring evening. Sleep tight.
One thing you might not know about me is that I love clothes. Absolutely love them, and (usually) like getting dressed. I have had, throughout my long life, mixed success in this area, largely due, IMHO, to the size I was wearing at any given time. I have fought my weight for most of my adult life, but, long before I knew it was something I needed to fight, people were telling me I needed to: my mother made comments, especially when my two best friends in HS also turned out to be… not skinny. My mother and my sister were skinny, so my mom was flummoxed about where my “trouble” came from. So she often said things to me about my weight, mostly asking, like a person new to this planet, why I thought I was heavy, and where it came from. If only she had voiced that question while looking in a mirror, she’d have found her answer looking at her. And then there were my two Irish grandmas, who looked as potato-fed as they were. So, why was weight trouble for me? Anxiety from my narcissistic mom, and genetics. No one else in my family ever said anything, and certainly not my size 22 grandmas, but there were others. I remember the gym teachers in HS, male and female, told me I was very pretty, and I just needed to lose 20 pounds. I believe I weighed 118 then; I hadn’t yet begun to stress eat enough to be considered self-medicating. I know I hated gym, and never spoke to gym teachers if I didn’t have to, so the fact that 2 from each gender felt the need to tell me I was attractive and losing weight could make me more so is, I now see, weird. But when you feel guilty (I am guilty for being too large) you often don’t realize inapproprate behavior. Between them and my mother I was taught that my weight was a problem before I saw it as one. I don’t think I’ll ever make it to 118 again in this lifetime (at least not while healthy), but I have done many things to try and get smaller. I’m going to say that I feel better smaller too, which is not to accept body-shaming or anything like that. I am, and have always been, petite, short, short legs, short waist, small bones. In HS when I bought my class ring it was a size 5, so skinny fingers (although now the joints are a bit lumpy). It feels better in my body to be smaller in pounds. And with a smaller body I can buy more fitted clothing that suits me better. Even though there are a lot of stores that carry clothes for larger female bodies, they are often not scaled for a petite person: the legs are too long, the waist is too long, the sleeves are too long, the shoulders too broad. They expect a larger woman to be large in height, in bone structure, shoes size 9 or higher, just all-around large. I remember my mother telling me I could wear big flowery prints because I was large, when I thought the opposite was true, but the stores agreed with her, and often the prints are gigantic. To be a combo of large and petite is really hard when trying to find clothes.
How did I get “large” to begin with? I think now, looking back, it was anxiety that I could neither rid myself of, or live with. It had to go somewhere, and it went into my stomach where it gnawed, and I was simply trying to give it something else to chew on. Not being a sweets person, that usually meant a second sandwich. Too much pasta really took up space, and gave the anxiety hours of distraction, much like my dog with a chew. These things worked on the uncomfortable feelings, but stretched my body.
In any case, I love clothes, and I love getting dressed. Though I have worked from home exclusively since just after the pandemic, I still get up and shower and dress and fix my hair, every day. And put on shoes usually too. I know some people won’t wear shoes in their house that they wear outside of their house, but shoes are part of the outfit, my friends.
In this photo I am wearing the first jumpsuit, coverall, whatever you want to call it that I’d ever bought for myself. It’s from Wildfang, and I am wearing it with an old Old Navy sweater in sort of an acid yellow, with my yellow specs, yellow socks, and my beloved Basquiat Pez Dispenser Doc Martens that Dave and Sophie got me for my birthday a few years back. I tend to keep clothes I love a long time. I have a pair of Bass Weejuns from 1983 (that I have had resoled at least three times), and they’re probably my oldest article of clothing.
So when I get dressed, though I’m often not going anywhere, and no one sees me but me and the fam (and the fam has long ago stopped noticing me), I still do it. And I do it, like the weightloss, 100% for me. Now that we’ve settled in our little rented house I’m back to running too, which I do alone, and also just for me. I’d love to be able to get back to doing a 5K again, and, hopefully, with a less embarrassing time. In the future. Not today. But for today I also have with me, in the photo, tied with Oliver the Dog for my most ardent fan, Patrick, the fluffy alergen who loves me. I am willing to swear he can actually say “Mom.” Pets don’t care what I am wearing, or how much their hair messes with the outfit. This fluffy white fellow here has recently had a haircut, and is still fairly fluffy. He was a gift from my crazy cat lady brother, and he loves me like my brother did, which is awesome as I miss my brother, gone some years now, still almost every day. So, from time to time I’ll post something I have on that I particularly like, as I get more used to seeing photos of me, and having other people see them too. And I’ll always know that Patrick thinks I look, as my brother would have said, “Marvelous.”
Dianne Pearce Writes 