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  • I love to dream. I don’t do it often enough. I know they say the average person dreams 2-3 times a night, but I say, unless I can remember it, it doesn’t count. Of course, remembering snippets can be much more maddening than remembering nothing. We’re all familiar with dream-logic… when you’re telling what you…

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  • My neighbors are landscape geniuses. Their yard is amazing—well imagined, well crafted, and well-tended. My kitchen window faces their house and I thank them daily as I trudge through chores for providing me with such an awesome view. This spring, they “roofed” the porch they built with dirt and plants. And a goat. I think I…

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  • The Condiment Blog

    In honor of Memorial Day picnics, this week’s blog is a quick little catch-up. Get it? Ketchup! But not catsup. The After Party Please, no RSVPs. They’re not necessary. I’ve already planned on your attendance. Mary Me I love that our local paper lists the baby names in the birth notices, even though they’re usually…

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  • You People

    I can frequently be heard making the comment, “I don’t know how you people do it.” Not to be accused of being any kind of –ist, let me clarify that this could reference anybody who isn’t me. For instance, the “you people” I could be talking about could be men and the “it,” well, you know.…

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  • She’s a Super Freak, Super Freak, she’s Super Freaky, Yow! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! The chorus to that booty shaking and inappropriate Rick James song comes on just as I slow to a stop at the red light. I am jamming—singing loud, bouncing in my seat, arms a’flailin’—and I look to the car next…

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  • A Fountain of Inspiration

    Why is it that not only ideas, but entire sentences, passages, chapters— come to me when I’m up to my elbows in soapy water? Shower and shampoo also seem to be a conduit for brilliance. Writer’s Block? Wash a pet! Especially a large, furry, uncooperative one! I guarantee the concepts will come faster than my dog’s urge…

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  • Where were you when…

    The morning of February 14, 2008, my daughter Nicole and I were getting ready to go down for breakfast when the Italian CNN station interrupted with a scroll we loosely translated as Shooting at a college in Chicago. We quickly changed the station to the BBC where we learned that it wasn’t a college in…

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