Crazytown

I had been up since five this morning trying to get my email box under 100 messages.  Every time I answered one, three more seemed to pop in.  As I typed in answers to the myriad of questions from fans all over the world about Rick’s newest release, I could hardly believe some of the [...]

Home from College

It was time for Christmas Break. Joe and I were both going back home to work and earn a little more to put in each of our bank accounts.   He had lined up a horrible construction job for the three weeks of break, a back breaking schedule of physical labor that started early and ended [...]

A Hot Summer Night

My mother was spending a weekend up north at her friend’s cabin on the lake.  This is what people do in the summer in Michigan, they all go up to cabins on lakes in the proverbial lands labeled “Up North”, which means they are somewhere north of the outer ring suburbs. She often did this.  [...]

Bittersweet, but mostly Bitter

All of my friends had dates for Homecoming my senior year, but they encouraged me to go anyway. My friend Karen was going with Alan, who probably had a huge crush on her. My friend Dawn (who I’d had a huge fight with over my crazy competitiveness about our writing…she was right, and I was [...]

The Knife

I was thinking about it. I was alone, one night at home, thinking about it. Everything was converging all at once in my head.   I had made the wrong choices at school, putting me a year behind in science from my other gifted peers.  They were all studying physics or advanced biology while I was [...]

Not Alone

My mother, while hesitant, was surprisingly OK with me driving a hundred miles away to go see a boy that I had a romantic interest in, even though it meant that I would be Staying Overnight At His House. My friend Dawn thought it was because my mother had been through so much with my [...]

Something New

Amazingly, my mother allowed me to drive out to see some of my camp girlfriends that fall.  We lived in a triangle, the three of us, with my location being the most distant from the two of them.  Lori lived about an hour southwest of Kristen, and she lived about three hours west of me.   [...]

Another Bout of Family Excess

Spent the last four days in the company of my father and his family on round two of my summer travel vacation. Again, the trip brought up all sorts of dust and brushed the cobwebs out of old, dusty memories. There was the photo of my aunt, her son, her two grandchildren (she had kids [...]

Summertime

The summer after my tenth grade year. Dawn moved to her sister’s house about half an hour away for the summer. Everyone hoped her parents would find a place by the time the fall rolled around, but for now they were still in the cheap day by day motel with no room for a third [...]

Bittersweet

It had been over a month since I had heard from my dad. My brother was released from the hospital and enrolled in the private, live in Catholic school. On the weekends my father would take him back to the house he shared with his partner. I didn’t see him, I didn’t want to see [...]