An ode to my very first bucket of bolts — In 1992, my dad went down to the garage where my grandfather was the shop manager and bought me a used vehicle that would eventually be known as “Loretta.” The photo above is not my truck, of course. Mine was black, not navy, and my tires were chunky off-roaders, not…

Come on, you were a mess back then too — There are several decades of my life that I would love to send sailing off a cliff into a fire pit of serpents, but perhaps none so galling as The Teenage Years. Do you remember how hellish this was? It was the only time in life when it was considered…

Yeah, yeah, I know. Not ALL men. — In 2002, I was 26, living in a new city, and losing my mind trying to find a job. It was a very quick trip down the ego Slip n’ Slide from looking for teaching jobs one day, down to hoping to fold t-shirts for a few hours a week…

I’m just another handmaiden spreading the Good News. — I woke up this morning and flipped open the bible that I now keep at my bedside table to Jeremiah 50:15, “Shout against her on every side! She surrenders, her towers fall, her walls are torn down. Since this is the vengeance of the Lord, take vengeance on her; do…

Let me have my fantasy, ok? — It’s a hot afternoon here on the Italian Riviera, but I am on Penobscot Bay in Maine in a multi-colored anorak sipping coffee from a stainless steel Yeti mug. It’s six am, which is fine because I went to bed shortly after the campfire embered down and slept like a…

No one else is going to walk that walk. — I went to culinary arts school when I was 34 years old and very quickly fell in love with kitchen culture. There was something deeply satisfying about putting my body through a meat grinder everyday in order to churn out food that made people’s eyes roll back in their heads…

When moving on is the wrong thing to do. — The only thing I’ve ever stolen was a bootleg peppermint patty-type candy that had the unfortunate luck of being positioned on a low shelf at a neighborhood pharmacy in 1980. I’m not sure what my motivation was at age four, except sugar. Perhaps “yum” was the extent of my criminal…

This was not what I thought I’d be doing. — At age 21 I was approximately 57 years old. I was in my last year of college and all I wanted was to end the ceaseless parade of red cups and all-nighters so I could get on with what I was sure would be “real life”. (Go ahead and roll…

Take two of these and call me in the morning. — Do you remember the scene in The Neverending Story when Artax the horse couldn’t stop his wee equine brain from thinking dreadful thoughts and got sucked up by the swamp of sadness? Yeah, that’s kind of how I feel lately too. And I know what you’re going to say. You’re…