THE LESSER BLESSINGS
All around America, in kitchens and dining rooms this Thursday, people will gather to give thanks. Many of us make it a ritual, going around the table reciting what we are most thankful for. What a wonderful custom! However, there IS an element of political correctness involved. EVERYONE is thankful for family, love, pets, abundance, good fortune, and good will. But I am willing to bet thousands that there is not one woman in America who would be REALLY honest and say she is thankful for tampons, for example. But there are just so many things that make life worth living, and I, FOR ONE, am going to go on record this year and say what I AM REALLY THANKFUL FOR.

PLOT LINES
I have been encouraged lately by many people to write a book. I am not up to it yet, but I am ruminating on various potential themes. I have about three or four recurring dramas that I play out in my head for entertainment, and perhaps one of these has in it the germ of a novel. You can be the judge.THE ECCENTRIC MYSTERY. Someone is murdered. A dectective is hired to solve the crime, but this particular detective has some personality quirks that make solving crimes particularly challenging. The detective, one Arnold Scullwood by name, works by day in a bookstore, and moonlights as a nude model to bring in extra cash, which he squanders by buying lottery ti

THE OTHER MAN
He is talkative, svelte, and handsome. His blue eyes are piercing. He is a charmer! He walked into my life, took one look at me, and I was hopelessly in love! He thinks he is the coolest cat around, and actually, he is kind of conceited. But he knows I am crazy about him. Even my husband likes him.You would think that a woman of my age would know better than to fall in love again. But what could I do in the force of his personality, his presence, his charisma? Even my friends don’t blame me. They admire him, also!He arrived in Dayton from Atlanta on Delta Airlines on a summer day two years ago. He needed a place to stay. I took him to my place. We hit i

THE REMAINS OF THE DAY
There is a reason why my house has a “servants” room in the attic. Of course, the attic is neither cooled nor heated, and it has never been. But there is a rudely finished room up there, with walls, a hardwood floor, a nice dormer window, and a corner with a sink. It must have been the place where “the girl” lived in the olden days. In my imagination, “the girl” did all of the things that I now have to do, and she was, I bet, an extremely hard worker!I spent the day “putting away” summer. We have lots of chairs and cushions on the deck. It also has potted plants galore. There is a table and chairs where we ate meals al fresco, sitting in the breezes and dr

THRILLER
As a kid, I loved Halloween almost more than Christmas. Neighborhoods were safer then, and Halloween actually commenced after dark. Nothing was more exciting than racing along dim streets in our costumes. The candy part was anticlimactic. I don’t remember even sampling the candy until after I got home—NO, the real fun was running free in the night, shouting, knocking on strange doors, and comparing notes with my friends on which houses were handing out the best loot. If you got a full sized Hershey bar, that was AMAZING. And by the way, the person who coined the term “fun sized” for those stinking little miniature candy bars is a master of brainwashing, as far as I am concerne