You would be hard pressed to find a more agreeable, soft-spoken woman than yours truly, except on those occasions when I am replaced by...

It was obvious we had lost our minds. We were in an antique mall in Simi Valley and I couldn’t find my friend. “Joyce! Joyce! Where are...

Motor vehicles are agents of mass destruction. Instead of the Four Horsemen, they are the Four Treads of the Apocalypse. Imagine I’m...

I’ve never been very good at telling lies. I feel guilty and then I look guilty and then the game is up. Also, you have to remember who...

My love affair with Japanese food did not begin as a child. No. When I was very young, if we weren’t eating Jewish food at home, we were...

What is the difference between a skill and a talent? Ask Google and it will tell you a skill is expertise, adeptness, and a great many...

In Part 1, I mentioned we lived for a period of time in rural North San Diego County. Why? Because the husband wanted to live near his...

I think we lived in rural North San Diego County for three years. Don’t quote me. It might have been two-and-a-half or twenty. We...

The fact that for three years I spent every Saturday and Sunday morning scouring Southern California for horticultural treasures...

There was a brief period in my life when I decided to host dinner parties. This differed vastly from the fifty-odd years during which I...

My Father the King Part 1 ended with a judge placing my father in a foster home. They were a nice couple who had a little girl of whom my...

Some people are born to royalty, even though they may never quite achieve it. My father was one such. It’s probably his fault that I grew...

You’ve heard of Harry Houdini the escape artist, right? Can you imagine how his mother felt when he started practicing his octopus...

I’m blessed with nephews. They are wonderful, each and every one of them. Even when they are torturing me with teasing, I know they’d be...

Just because two walls in my garage were packed from floor to ceiling with crates full of china, stemware, and other tableware treasures...

At my mother’s house, when someone went into the kitchen to prepare a meal it was referred to as making the meal. “I’m going to go make...

Some of my fondest memories come from mealtime moments, and that’s really saying something because most of the time I was too...

Every family has their holiday mealtime traditions. In fact, I once took a history class during which the instructor said he could tell...

James Thurber wrote a short story, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” about a mild natured man who daydreams about being a hero. After...

I could turn into an axe murderer tomorrow and I’d still get into heaven. That’s because I didn’t kill either husband when I had the...