Westwoods

  My good friend, Emily, over at  mrs.emilymiller.substack.com  challenged me to use the opportunity without a phone as a self-improvement thing...see what a phone fast does for you and give report of that to us. I am sad to report that I'm still not sure if there was any self-improvement and what it was, or if I benefited from this experience. I suppose the most shocking thing in all of it was the helpless and bereft feeling I had the whole ten days. That feeling began the moment I realized what I had done. How it happened: I was returning a rental car in Baltimore at 4:00 a.m. I had conquered the strange unpredictable PA roads for three days, navigated the toll system, figured out where to fuel up the car and leave it in the parking garage. Feeling quite successful for four in the morning...we, my daughter and I, grabbed our few bags, locked the car, and walked toward the deposit box for the key and the shuttle waiting for us to take us over to the airport for our six o...

I was born in 1976. Some of my siblings last night, on the family page, went wild with history that was going on at their time of birth. It was interesting. I googled my own but got distracted with remembering the 80's and 90's. The parts of living in a little girls mind without the history lesson, that is... Sunday mornings. Tight braids and hair balls. Unbearably tight braids that made my eyes water. I'd go to the mirror to make sure my eyes weren't squinting. Thick cotton socks stuffed inside black shiny buckle shoes. The buckles were  often stretched out on the shoes, so that they buckled loosely at best. And the hair balls also had lost their elasticity. The Dress...double knit polyester, green with big purple flowers. Hot and scratchy. Jelly shoes and moon boots. If you know, you know. Tights that hung low in the crotch. No such thing as leggings. Big glasses. Didn't care. Could finally see actual blades of grass and leaves on trees. Barefoot, mowing lawn. Gre...