Nesting Instinct

Posted by on Apr 24, 2013 in dish | 0 comments Our Carolina wrens are back! A couple of years ago, we noticed a patch of thready Spanish moss in our brass mailbox. The door latch on the box isn’t that tight, so it was hanging down. We thought the moss must have blown in there (we’d had some spring storms) and didn’t think much of it. At least, we didn’t until more things showed up in the box: leaves, withered potato...
read more

Swamp Thing

Posted by on Apr 21, 2013 in dish | 0 comments   After a weekend in Sunny San Diego, mimi can’t begin to say how happy she is to be back in her Central Florida swamp. The first time I ever flew west, I spent much of the time with my forehead pressed to the window, watching the landscape change from brilliant Southern green to hard-baked desert brown. Florida and California may have palm trees and beaches in common, but that’s where the...
read more

Battle of the Bulge

Posted by on Mar 28, 2013 in dish | 0 comments My grandmother was a formidable Southern woman. She was the kind of woman who would rise well before dawn (she was a farmer’s daughter, after all) and get to work, put in a full day of driving, entertaining, cooking, baking, running the family business, and what have you, then repair to her room to freshen and change before my grandfather strolled in. After he retired from his...
read more

My Labyrinth Moment

Posted by on Mar 9, 2013 in dish | 1 comment One of my many faults is that I’m an out of sight, out of mind kind of girl, which explains why the closet in my teenaged bedroom is still packed full of junk. This hasn’t been an issue until lately. Miss Carolyn, however, has decided to downsize, trading the 4/2-and-a-half with pool for a neat condo not too far away. The house is now disarrayed–boxes and piles and bags...
read more

Fashion Failure

Posted by on Feb 24, 2013 in dish | 0 comments Sometimes I wonder when the nice people from the hospital are going to call and tell me that there’s been a terrible error and that they gave me the wrong baby. I mean, Frack is a straight-up fashionista. She’s had an innate sense of style since birth and has always had strong opinions about colors and styles, not to mention the ability to throw things together that shouldn’t...
read more

Dear Manuscript: It’s Not You, It’s Me

Posted by on Feb 6, 2013 in dish | 0 comments This was a painful week, one that had been brewing for longer than I’ve been willing to admit. This week, I broke up with the baseball book. I love so many elements about this story: a heroine finding herself after a painful divorce, a couple of excellent sidekicks, a hunky guy who restores houses, and baseball (of course). It was a NaNoWriMo book that I enjoyed drafting. The revising? Not...
read more