Look, I know I am supposed to write something every week, but today writing is hard. I’m on vacation. And it’s especially hard to write now, not only because I’m in chill mode but also because I’m out of the country with no wifi and some kind of stone-age 2G network on my phone. This article is taking twenty hours to upload. I’m going to do my best, though,…
This week’s theme is Getting Away. Wow, how timely. My book releases in Canada tomorrow and next Tuesday in the U.S., so you can bet I really want to get away. This past year has been full of getting ready for this and I’m sure feeling that. I need a holiday. And for me (and thankfully my husband) the best holiday is one spent at sea. That’s right: I’m a…
My family camped a lot when I was a kid. Everyone knows it’s not really camping unless someone tells scary stories around the campfire, and storytelling duties always fell to my dad. His version of scary stories always came with a humorous twist. A terrifying tale about a zombielike voice snarling, “I need eyes” turned out to be a camper with a burnt hand demanding “ice.” When we camped near…
My favorite place no longer exists. I don’t mean this on some deep, metaphysical level… I mean it literally was demolished and no longer exists. The place was the Kapalua Bay Hotel in Maui… and it was heaven. The first time I went there, my husband proposed to me. He wanted the experience to be perfect… sunset on the beach. Unfortunately, he had scheduled night after night of simple yet…
If there’s one thing my family taught me, it’s how to travel on a budget. We camped on our vacations or stayed with relatives (avoiding hotels). We also cooked on our own food on the road. The goal was to see as much as possible with a limited budget. We did okay because we did end up traveling a lot. We took a cross country road trip when I was…
I never was much of a traveler. I’m no good at packing, I like my OWN bed and my OWN house (and heaven help you if you keep me up past my bedtime… and that’s Pacific time, thank you very much), and on top of all that, I’m such a contented homebody that I don’t feel the need to go elsewhere. (Until I have a couple of glasses of wine,…
Just before we’re leaving for spring break, I hear back from my editor that her response to my edits will be complete two days after we arrive in South Beach. And would I be available for a phone chat? This is nobody’s fault; just the way things keep turning out for me. I sort of keep believing the myth that writers have control over their work hours. But even though…
My first apartment wasn’t an apartment — it was a house. And not just any house but a house on Martha’s Vineyard the summer between my sophomore and junior years in college when I was a Derelict with a capital D. And, well, I had the house to match. I lived in it with three other girls, which became two other girls once the third got a look at the…
If I hadn’t picked 12 containers of blackberries, I might not have ended up with the Dorothy Hamill-had-she-cut-her-locks-with-gardening-sheers haircut at the age of 13 (aka, the worst age to be when you suddenly find yourself possessing a disastrous haircut). It seemed like a good enough idea at the time. I was staying with my friend Ramsay at her dad’s Napa vineyard for a week and after a few days of…
My name is Anna and I am an exercise addict. In terms of addictions, it could be worse – I should know, because I have all of them. (I have what they call an addictive personality.) With exercise, however, I’m not planning to get into recovery. See, considering the fact that I’m also addicted to chocolate (an obsession I seem to share with my fellow Deb Mia), my need to…
