It was one of those mornings when everything just seemed to be falling into place … The sun was shining, the coffee was just right, I had on my favorite jeans, my slice of bread came out of our finicky toaster perfectly, and the dogs went through their morning routine without a glitch. With list in hand (I’m big on list making) I set out for town to run errands. Even on the streets of […]
Through a twist of fate an adventurous news anchor, Bradley Jackson, is recruited to do a live broadcast aboard a sub-orbital flight around Earth. After escaping Earth’s gravity she, and the other two passengers playfully float through the capsule, all enjoying the exhilarating liberation of weightlessness. Bradley is no stranger to human conflict. She has witnessed firsthand and reported on some of the worst of humanity. Seeing the whole of Earth from the vast expanse […]
My limbs were virtually immobile, arms and legs sticking straight out. I was bound in a stiff, puffy suit cartwheeling through the vastness of space and unable to stop, slow down or course correct. The chilling unearthly silence of an infinite void surrounded me, a black empty sea. My only points of reference, the twinkling white lights going in and out of my vision. I tumbled around and around to what would eventually, surely be […]
Well, it’s official … our household has gone to the dogs. To two puppies actually, Moose & Maya. These little fur balls with sugar sweet faces and fluffy soft white fur (when they’re not smeared with poop) have turned out to be terrorists in disguise. The M&M’s teethe on everything they can fit in their mouths and generally rip it to shreds, pee copious amounts of urine frequently, howl when they want attention (which […]
I’m going to blame it on Sudoku. For some reason that I cannot understand two of my kids are obsessed with these puzzles. I look at all those numbers and instantly break out in hives. Not them however, my mystifying offspring vie for the daily Sudoku in our newspaper, cynically placed in the want ads just under ‘Pets’ … Wicked. So it happened that at breakfast while working out the days puzzle my son casually […]
The sky is gray, temperatures are hovering in the lower 30’s, icy drizzle comes and goes and not a snowflake in sight. This is not the deal I made with Spokane 9 years ago when we moved from the eternally damp bone chilling winters of the Washington coast to the Inland Northwest, the land of sunny skies and snowy white winters. Not this year, and not last year. Since the beginning of December I could […]
The acrid smell of diesel fuel stung my nose, jarring me awake. I was cold beyond shivering, bound in some kind of tight suit, confused and feeling nothing. I was numb, a block of stone covered in snow. Then I noticed the crystalline sky above the mounds of puffy clouds in shades of bluish gray. The stars were bright, beautiful and I sighed in relief. It was over. “If this is the end of my […]
Everything about the morning had been ordinary. As usual I was walking my dog Zoe down a well worn path through the woods when unexpectedly, on a small rise next to a sturdy ponderosa pines we were met with a gusty breeze. I stopped. It was as if Mickey Mouse, the sorcerer’s apprentice in Fantasia, his long sleeves falling down around him, frantically waving his master’s magic wand, was conjuring up a whirlwind of the […]
“All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed. For after all, he was only human. He wasn’t a dog.” Charles M. Schulz I woke up and there she was at my bedside, my 80 pound genetic mash-up of a dog. Her round brown eyes reaching out, pleading for a morning adventure. “Get up, let’s go for a walk. There’s so much to smell from the night.” She, […]
The 8 am departure for our journey to my mom’s lake house in northern Wisconsin had passed. We finally pulled out of her suburban Chicago driveway hours later but just in time for an Egg McMuffin at the McDonald’s only a couple of blocks from her house. The muffin plus a hash brown patty were the very last cards I had available to play in order to persuade her to get in the car. I […]
The Spill... 