Last night I sewed the missing button on my Christmas sweater. The button had been missing — off and on — for a year. How can a button disappear and reappear and disappear again like that? It was a mystery, but I knew that the little sucker was going to do another disappearing act if I didn’t sew it on right then! It started just over a year ago when Debbie invited me to her parent’s home in Big Bear to give a talk to her mother’s book club about my book (Beyond the Spotlight: On the Road with Phyllis Diller). I was, of course, delighted. As I tossed my overnight bag in Debbie’s car, a button fell off my Christmas sweater. “Oops, let me grab that,” I said as I stooped down and picked up the little leather covered button and stuffed it into my pocket. (I thought.) That evening as… Read More »
Where in the World … ?
Pop Quiz: Who or what is Burkina Faso? Had I not been looking at it in context, I might have guessed a fashion designer, a casino game, or a new hybrid grass seed. But it’s Perhaps it’s a fashion designer from India … not any of these. Take a guess — go ahead, guess. Give up? It’s a country in Africa. Really? Yep –I looked it up. It’s just north of Ghana and west of Nigeria. And why would I care? because, oddly, someone in Burkina Faso has read out my blog. One of the fun things about writing a blog is that WordPress keeps track of the statistics — the number of people who look at my posts and the countries where they live. I have not looked at this in awhile, so today I decided to see where in the world my readers live. Of course, I expected lots of people in the U.S., and I knew my friend… Read More »
Don’t you just love a bargain??
After just over 25 years, I’ve come to the conclusion that my bathroom needs to be re-done. Not major renovation, but I want to get the old wallpaper off and paint it something light and bright. Time for a different look. And yes, that grout around the tub should be re-done, too. As I contemplated this, I thought “this would be a good time to upgrade that old towel rack that was probably put in when the house was built over 50 years ago.” Not just a towel rack, I decided, but this would also be a good time to put “grab bars” in the shower. So a couple of days ago I stopped at Lowe’s and bit the bullet. I took a look at the towel racks and settled on a brushed nickel Moen which was $27.98. For a towel rack! (Sigh.) Then I checked the bath grips. Merciful heavens — $20!!… Read More »
Bogus Service Dogs Part II (sort of)
Hey, someone at the Associated Press must have been reading my blog because yesterday in the Sunday paper there was an article by Sue Manning titled “Impostors Hurting Service Dog System.” So I guess the dog at that auction party in Beverly Hills a few weeks back is not the only bogus service dog out there! According to the article, bogus service dogs with the vest or ID bought off the internet are making it difficult for people who really have disabilities because businesses are loath to let them in. A furniture store in California was reluctant to allow any service animal in since a fake service dog urinated on several expensive Indian carpets. “A true service dog becomes nearly invisible. Pets might bark, urinate, sniff, scratch and eat off the floor,” according to the article. Hmmm… sounds like the dog at the party. This is an area of interest to me because I know a couple of people… Read More »
Writing My Blog
Once upon a time I heard a newspaper columnist say “writing a daily colum is like being married to a nymphomaniac. It’s wonderfully exciting at first, but eventually it becomes a chore.” I love to write and cannot imagine it would ever be a chore, but I realized that posting something daily might be more than I bargained for, so I devised a plan: I’ll alternate between writing about Phyllis Diller and about wine — the two things I actually know something about — and I’ll do it every other weekday: Monday, Wednesday and Friday (okay, you had that part figured out). I’m sort of thinking now that I should’ve included cats. I know a lot about cats. And a lot of cats. I write poems for my cats (I call them cat raps because, really, they do not rise to the level of poetry) and my cats are a source… Read More »