Yesterday I received another batch of Christmas catalogs in the mail which means (Ta-DA!) it’s almost Halloween! Today when I stepped into Wally World, I was confronted with a large display featuring reindeer and a sleigh full of colorfully wrapped boxes. Must be time for the Great Pumpkin. Actually, since the end of September, my neighborhood has been gearing up. The house around the corner has a yard full of fake tombstones (which actually complement the dirt and weeds). Across the street they’ve hung white gauze “ghosts” from the tree and the people next door put orange lights in every window and a motion-activated skeleton that jumps and shrieks when someone walks past. The house on the other side has a display of carved pumpkins and a large rubber rat that makes horrible choking and gagging sounds. Jolly good fun! When did Halloween develop into this elaborate holiday? And how much does all… Read More »
The Highway Robber
I was in high school before I discovered that the name of the store was not actually The Highway Robber. It was in fact The Circle Delicatessen. They stayed open late at night, Sundays and holidays when everything else was closed. I thought of them this Christmas morning when I reached for the egg carton and found there were only two eggs left. I had decided to make some bread pudding rather than throw out the last few slices of the week-old bread. If you were raised by parents who lived through the Great Depression as I was, you remember that NOTHING was wasted. Did your mother put a little water in the empty ketchup bottle and shake it to get the very last drops? Did your dad take a piece of bread and mop up the gravy on his plate at the end of dinner? Leftover roast became hash or… Read More »
button, button — who’s got the button?
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 »
Asking for Directions
A man once told me why he never asks for directions. “Half the time, the person you’re talking to gives you bad information.” He’s probably right. In fact, I remember with chagrin one day when I was walking back to the office after lunch and a car pulled up asking how to get to Boulder and I gave him directions to Bonanza instead. As the light turned green I realized that I had sent him in the exact opposite direction! So yesterday as I was coming out of an appointment, I realized I had forgotten to ask the receptionist if there was a post office nearby. My Christmas cards have been written and addressed for a week. I had actually remembered to buy stamps and so they were ready to go — and they had been; riding around in my car for two days! At the entrance to the building, I saw an information… Read More »
