Bounce Back Blog
A Squirrely Situation: Vindication Is Finally Mine
I am not a vengeful person, at least not an overly vengeful one. True, I stifled a snicker when I heard an old flame’s hair was thinning as quickly as his waist was thickening, but it’s not like I had wished that on him. I just took a teensy bit of delight in it. No...
Bye, Bye American Pie
This past June marked ten years of marriage to "the good husband," as I call him. And, wow, did he ever live up to that title on this anniversary. He completely surprised me with a trip to Europe, including a visit to my relatives in Italy. He planned the entire thing...
Nailing Addiction (and kicking my bi-weekly habit to the curb)
My story isn’t new. You’ve likely heard heartbreaking tales of everyday people who got in over their heads, who thought they could control their habit and found out too late their habit completely controlled them. Addiction long ago migrated from back alleys to Main...
No Free Lunch
Early in our courtship, my now-husband invited me to lunch at a Colombian restaurant. I knew a little about Colombian food, but was anxious to try more dishes under the expert guidance of my new boyfriend from Bogota, Jorge. The server brought the menus and she and...
(The Truth About) Sidewalks and Monkeys and Beets, Oh My!
A group I belong to selected this writing prompt for the month of June: “Things I Know to Be True.” You’d think at my advanced age, I could rattle off a few, but I am terrified to commit any of my “truths” to paper because, beets. Yes, beets. Until about ten years...
Love with a Perfect Stranger (and we met online!)
The winter of 2014 was an exceedingly hard one for me. My mother passed away and I faced a significant health scare of my own. The call I received giving me the all clear on my follow-up tests was the first good news I’d had in weeks, and I let out a sigh of relief...
Click to Bypass the Personal Touch
In our often cold and impersonal modern world, you would think a business that boasts of delivering its services with “a personal touch” would be something to celebrate. Yes, you would think that. And you would be dead wrong in this instance. Believe it or not, the...
In Praise of Stepsons
After such lovely Mother's Day greetings from my now faraway stepsons, this piece needed a replay! On Christmas Eve, 2002, the same year that my father died and my mother hovered on the brink of a coma, my husband of 22 years looked across the living room at me and...
Silver and Gold
For the past fifteen years, I have greatly enjoyed teaching English as a Second Language classes to adult learners, but lately I have noticed a disturbing trend—the so-called adults seem to be getting younger and younger. Just this morning, one of my new students gave...