Rose's Cantina

#136300003 / gettyimages.com This afternoon, we will clear out my antique accountant's desk from under the front window, vacuum up all the dog hair that's been hiding under it, and put up our fake Christmas tree, the one we rescued from a neighbor's lawn, the one that had a sign on it that said "free to a good home". We got that Christmas tree three years ago when we were so broke we couldn't afford to buy one. We were at our lowest point. Nobody in the house was working much, a baby was one the way and I was about to become a Grandmother. The planning for Christmas had become more of a nuisance than a joy. Still, there no reason to feel sorry for ourselves. It's not like we had small children and a lot of mouths to feed and expectations to meet at Christmas. We were simply wallowing in middle age as a dually-divorced couple, people who got together with nothing in hopes of building something. And we had. Together, we built a lovi...

I recently went looking for pictures of me as a kid and I found only a few of them. That's because my wartime Dad died when I was eight months old and a) my mother had no one to whom she could send pictures b) she probably couldn't afford the film and c) she sucked as a photographer. Why did everyone back then take "point and shoot" literally? I mean, couldn't she have just come up a little closer? I suppose she was artfully looking for a nice wide shot that showed the bleakness of the tapestry that was our lives. Or she wanted to get the house in the picture. There were great pictures of my bros, cute ones, and tons of pictures of my mom and relatives. Not me. I was sort of like the little girl with no face. This picture is of me and my neighbor Ron Houtby, or Renald the Pig as he was monikered. The Houtby boys all had nicknames like that, except for Ron's older brother Tom who was a bad dude. He would have leveled a can of whoopass on the neighbo...