When I was younger, I knew women who would only date artists or musicians – even when their creative gifts came bundled with drug use, financial irresponsibility, or infidelity. During my years singing in a band, a lot of these women would hang around after the show, waiting to meet the guitarist or the drummer, and this baffled me. Having worked with so many musicians since I … [Read more...]

I’m not a sound sleeper. The question each night is not whether I’ll wake up, but whether I’ll be able to get back to sleep once I do. Some restless nights my eyes open and my mind immediately begins flitting from topic to topic like a fickle honeybee. I think about getting older, and about the unsettling physical changes than come with age. But it’s not just the physical signs … [Read more...]

My husband recently decided to make a significant change to his diet. Since we eat most of our dinners together, I figured I would jump aboard and try it myself. It was a pretty big change for me, though, and during the day I hewed to my usual habits, which included a regrettable volume of Cheez-its crackers. Still, within a couple months my clothes were fitting looser, so I … [Read more...]

The first message in my Facebook feed this morning was from my nephew, marking himself safe in "The Violent Incident in Las Vegas" His notification linked to a news story about the latest mass shooting, this one involving a gunman opening fire from his hotel room into an open-air concert next door, killing at least 50 people and injuring hundreds of others. I closed down … [Read more...]

In the middle of an exceptionally busy week when a series of deadlines had worn me down to a nubbin, I dragged myself to a client's office to do some bookkeeping. Bookkeeping is such precise, Virgo work that I enjoy doing it now and then; it's a bit like working a crossword puzzle. In an uncertain world, there's something comforting about getting numbers to line up … [Read more...]