Life in the fast lane--where's the on ramp?

By Pat_B - About Me - E-mail this page - Add to My Favorites - Add to Blog List - See other blogs in Journal

Friday, August 5, 2016

It's on fire, but they won't get out of the house.

That was the dream. I'm sure it means something deeply disturbing and psychological, but it was a different house, multi-storied, many rooms, tree growing right out of a no- longer-used chimney. The people were different, familiar as relatives are, as fractious and uncooperative and downright... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by Pat_B at 6:19 AM | add or view comments (6) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Stuff Happens

I decided to primp it up a bit as I got ready for The Center on Tuesday. I was scheduled to work the front desk from nine to noon, but went in half an hour early. Sometimes when I arrive at nine the stuff has already hit the fan, and then I spend a couple hours trying to catch up. First Tuesday of... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by Pat_B at 5:53 AM | add or view comments (5) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Finding Salkum - Part 5

What choice did we have? She could die. What would happen to us then? Where would we go, to an orphanage somewhere? Mama didn’t want us to live with her family. I was sick with fear that she’d be gone and it would be up to me to see to the little kids. I damned my father for not being there, not... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by Pat_B at 8:45 AM | add or view comments (5) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Follow-up on the trapper next door.

It's a small world after all. And I'm not talking about the Disney version. A couple weeks ago I reported here that the old guy next door had set out a trap to catch the squirrels that were raiding his vegetable garden. I would have had no problem with that if he had taken the varmints out to the... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by Pat_B at 5:02 AM | add or view comments (7) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Monday, August 1, 2016

Anxiety

As a writer there are times when nothing comes to mind. Fingers hover over a keyboard but the screen remains blank. I can't come up with an idea, a story, a character that merits a reader. And then something happens to trigger an idea. There's an iconic photo in a magazine, a spectacular documentary... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by Pat_B at 6:49 AM | add or view comments (10) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Sunday, July 31, 2016

Running from the bully boys

Rose, Jim and I learned by the second week of school that it didn’t pay to get off the big yellow school bus at the first stop in front of Talbot’s store. Sometimes we’d be tempted, especially if we happened to have a few pennies for candy. But it wasn’t safe, because we never knew when the bully... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by Pat_B at 11:57 AM | add or view comments (4) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Saturday, July 30, 2016

The second shoe drops - revised

We passed our grade in spite of being enrolled at Mossyrock for only the last five or six weeks of the school year. I would start 7th Grade in September, Rose would go into 4th, and Jim would be a second-grader. And then, a couple weeks into the summer, Mom told us she had some bad news. She hadn’t... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by Pat_B at 8:21 AM | add or view comments (6) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Friday, July 29, 2016

In the eye of the beholder

When I was six or seven years old I asked my mother if I were pretty. She looked thoughtfully over the frame of her glasses for a minute and then said “Just smile. Nobody will know the difference.” I don’t remember exactly why I asked the question, but it must have had to do with my jealousy of “the... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by Pat_B at 6:57 AM | add or view comments (7) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

About Finding Salkum

"Finding Salkum" is the working title of my memoir. Contrary to current writing styles where the author starts a story in the middle, at a point where something dramatic sets everything in a new direction, this is pretty much going back to the beginning and moving forward from that point. One of the... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by Pat_B at 5:17 AM | add or view comments (4) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Friday, July 22, 2016

The one (maybe only) plus of the media's focus on political conventions

They don't have time to do 47 instant replays of every confrontation between citizens and the police and all the angst and frustration that goes with them. And if there were terrorist attacks or civil unrest problems in the Middle East or Europe, we didn't hear every gory detail. Sometimes I think... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by Pat_B at 5:46 AM | add or view comments (5) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

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Sometimes you have to write it down in order to learn what you really think about life, what it means, how to do what's best. Sometimes you need feedback from someone else to put things in perspective.

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