I almost feel like I’m cheating to admit this, but I do almost all my Christmas shopping online. No Black Fridays for me. No Black Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and especially no PITCH-BLACK-HEART-OF-DARKNESS-ARE-YOU-INSANE? Christmas Eves.
Granted…been there, done that…and I ain’t going back no more, no more.
It started a few years ago — I would receive [...]

That’s what I was thinking of Monday morning as I struggled my way upstream at Costco, braving the currents and the other poor fish caught in the next-to-last-minute Thanksgiving rush.
It’s already starting. The snipping and snarling, the tight smiles and underbreath comments, the musical jangle of ramming carts as they hurtle towards the aisles of chocolates and [...]

          Happy Halloween to one and all! 
Since I know you’re all going to be madly busy getting ready for the evening’s festivities, I thought we’d just do a little fun quicky post this morning. Answer if you’ve got time, and if not, we’ll see you next week.
1 ) Do you remember your first Halloween costume?
I was [...]

On returning home after the summer holiday there is always a slight chill in the morning air, telling us that autumn is on its way. On the grouse moors the guns and beaters have been stalking through the heather since ‘the glorious twelfth’ of August and in City restaurants the small birds, so eagerly awaited, [...]

I know, I know, it’s autumn, but I’m getting so much pleasure out of my garden right now.
It’s been a real battle. A year and a half of neglect does not a bed of roses make. I’m about halfway through the backyard makeover at this point — between last year’s unusually harsh winter, this summer’s blast [...]

I feel like Steve Martin in the jerk — that scene where he’s running around, jumping up and down, yelling “The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!”
My new laptop arrived (fondly dubbed The Silver Bullet upon receipt) two weeks ahead of schedule. Can you say, Thank your lucky stars?! 
What a relief. And what [...]

Forgive the recycled post. If you follow the Good Girls Blog you’ve already had to put up with me whining and (probably worse) philosophizing about my latest disaster. Here’s my tale of woe: Friday afternoon I’m finishing up a novella — that is coincidentally DUE that evening — and four lines to go — I [...]

I was reading an interesting article on NPR this morning about why — apparently — women read so much more than men.
There are all kinds of theories: everything from physiological differences to when girls are introduced to reading in relation to boys. Is there a cultural emphasis on reading for women that doesn’t exist for [...]

This morning I woke with that nervous Back To School feeling.
There’s something in the air right now, a certain early morning chill — its there in the evenings too. It’s too soon for woodsmoke, but there’s something crisp and earthy and invigorating. It’s fall. The trees are yellowing, leaves gently drifting to the lawn.
The market [...]

One of my sisters was recently objecting to the fact that I had Grace Hollister, the protagonist of my Poetic Death series, wearing a pair of leggings and an oversized sweater. I got quite a lecture, a la Clinton and Stacy, about how unflattering leggings were (you’d think my sis had actually SEEN Grace wearing [...]