Disney’s marketing strategy is only 4 words: Celebrate. Magic. Dream. Wish. Combine them into infinite possibilities for 12 hours, add a nightly acid parade and stir. That was my day yesterday! It was a good one.

Facebook Post May 20, 2013

You know when somebody good walks into the room!

It hasn’t happened today.

Facebook Post June 2, 2013

Saint-Exupery’s biography, French language lessons, travel magazines strewn across a blue French provincial bedspread.

This is flying when you’re not flying.

Facebook Post June 6, 2014

I had the most positive “C” flight attendant today. An avid reader of biographies like me, I had to tell her about Saint Exupery’s bio:

Me: “He was a pilot author. At 44, he disappeared in the his plane and they never found him or the plane. Just like Amelia Earhart.”

Flight Attendant C: “Oh, they must be together then. Don’t you think? That must be where they are. Still flying.

Facebook Post June 10, 2014

After a major medical emergency and two significant delays including flying with only one generator, I am still totally confident in my pilots and aviation in general. The world may scare me, but flying never has.

However, I would be lying if I said I didn’t sit on the jump seat and repeat the flight numbers to hear if they sounded like a future catastrophic memoir in the making. Today’s title: “Flight 456 to Phoenix.” The run of the numbers and rhyming sounds just spelled LifeTime Movie.

Facebook Post June 10, 2014

I love rolling into some new city with a delirious crew that’s been up for 20 hours. When we are plunked down in the hotel shuttle that’s playing baby making music, finally free of passengers, the topics of conversation are always enlightening.

Tonight’s convo: Whitney Houston, how billy goats walk, and the difference between alpacas and llamas.

Facebook Post June 10, 2014

Night flying is not helping me overcome my obsession with time, neither the meticulous calculation of it nor the total lack thereof. Only aviation seems to cling to the pinpoint accuracy of minutes and seconds, while simultaneously removing the separation between days, weeks, months.

There are only hours passing. And clouds.

It is intensely isolating and yet connected to everything.

Facebook Post June 16, 2014

Got to Columbus at 2 am. There were children all over the hotel. The elevator was out of order and we were told we'd have to schlep our bags up 3 flights of stairs. I asked if that music from the wedding party—a clear indication of why the children were swarming like bees—was going to end soon. The night clerk said, "I'm calling the police."

What? The hotel is calling the police on its own guests? Why not just pull the plug on them?

We walked back to the stairs next to the elevator. We pushed the button before the walk up. It worked. I think. We crew members were a haggard bunch. We all looked at each other but climbed in the magic box without a word. It is quite possible we are now on some fake floor between universes. I wonder how long it will take me to get back downstairs and if the wedding music will spell our demise in this parallel dimension.

Facebook Post May 21, 2015

…we circled the airport and circled the airport and circled the airport…

Thankfully, I had the QVC skincare guru to chat with in my first-class cabin. He gave me his recipe for kale, blueberry, and sweet potato salad (he didn’t eat any plane food). Then he described his poor Danish working class upbringing turned home shopping star life hocking his luxurious good to all the pores in America’s households. He was the kindest and most patient passenger I’ve had in weeks. The he opened his fancy travel bag and showed me how he organizes each compartment, saying, “if the plane goes down, darling, we must still look fabulous!”

Facebook Post June 1, 2015

I keep winking at the little old men in my first class cabin. I have no idea why. They are cute. And there may be something wrong with my face.

Facebook Post June 3, 2015

A crisp and clear night, driving down the highway with the window open, my hair a tangled mess. You don’t get this on an airplane. Next life I’m going to be a race car driver.

Facebook Post Jun 6, 2015

In flying, there are no days just hours.

Facebook Post June 7, 2015

The Octopus Tango: I stood in the space between the flight deck and the galley during boarding. I held a tray with a drink and my computer tablet boarding script in my left hand, while I used the PA with my right hand to make a boarding announcement. I also held the the lavatory door with my right foot so the captain wouldn’t open the door and smack me in the face as my left foot blocked the aisle so I could finish serving drinks post announcement. Now you know the moves.

Facebook Post June 8, 2015

I act like this wanderlust is a sole pursuit, spun from my own restlessness, but I often forget my mother grew up in Japan and Morocco.

Tonight, she regaled me with stories of one dirt road. “If you turned left” she said, “it took you to Marrakesh. If you turned right,” she went on, “it took you to Casablanca. I remember the carcasses in the marketplace hanging above us, I remember the sizzling heat coming off the desert and the mountains capped with snow in the distance. Quit a contrast. I remember the stones being thrown at the American buses. And the circus. The Marrakesh circus. When we got there, we picked up the salt rocks from the ground and licked them.”

This is not too far off from the sugar cane I would suck on as a kid when it fell off the back of the trucks in Plaquemine, Louisiana. The salt of the Earth and sweetness of memories, that’s travel.

Facebook Post June 26, 2015

Life is just raw material for writing.#bemorenaked

Twitter Post April 12, 2016

I finally have to admit, I don’t care for traveling. Home’s better.

Facebook Post May 29, 2016

Spent the morning telling business related ppl to politely F*** OFF! I've demanded value from all parts of my life except work/career. Now I'm 40 + new baby and I'm so done taking work scraps. Can I get some value up in here?

#ready #payme

Facebook Post May 18, 2017

“In thy breast are the stars of thy fate”—Friedrich Schiller.

And there you have it. Happy one month of keeping this creature alive using only my boobs!

Facebook Post May 29, 2017

I just ran out to the bookstore for an hour for a non-mama moment. And now... "UFO researcher and freelance writer Len Kasten presents his latest book, in which he allegedly exposes "the sinister alien influence in world governments, financial systems, and institutions throughout history."

#neveradullmoment

Facebook Post June 5, 2017

Monday night convo about weening our child from breastfeeding using cabbage leaves.

“Do you have a bra specially for the cabbage?” Aaron asks me.

“What do you think?” I say seriously, “Do you think this is where cabbage patch kids came from? Like they were the unwanted second children of mothers trying to ween?”

Facebook Post May 22, 2018

Had to cut satellite radio years ago. My addiction to First Wave has only been tempered w/LA’s KROQ 80’s station. With all my editing, I can't stop reading into the lyrics.

Introducing overly analyzed 80s songs.

Do you over analyze song lyrics?

Twitter Post March 22, 2019

What the hell job did George Michael have in “Everything She Wants.” Was he a janitor? Working on Wall Street? A mortician?

Somebody tell me

Won’t you tell me

Twitter Post March 22, 2019

Big Country I know you need to represent your brand name. But I feel like singing “in a big country dreams stay with you...” is a little elitist. Fact: People from small countries have dreams that stay with them, too. Please be more inclusive.

Twitter Post May 22, 2019

Peter Godwin who are you? Your Baby’s in the Mountains, but she’s a spoiled brat. Most people in NYC are stuck working out their relationship problems in a tiny apartment, not running off to some fancy cabin in the woods. Get a new girlfriend.

Twitter Post May 22, 2019

I’ve written a dystopian play & sci-fi piece (this one’s unfinished). But I mostly write & teach memoir.

Reading fiction helps develop my memoir writing.

But does reading non-fiction help develop fiction writing at all? #WritingCommmunity

Twitter Post March 25, 2019

The cleverness of Toy Story’s T-Rex just dawned on me. I never caught the irony before. Some dino whose essential nature is all ID is turned into an anxiety ridden mess that’s all SUPER EGO.

Writers, what contrasts do you use to provoke established norms? #WritingCommunity

Twitter Post March 27, 2019

#WritingCommunity Ever get tired of all the magic and just want some normal, boring basic non-holiday days to write?

Twitter Post September 20, 2019

When COVID hit and my daughter's school closed permanently she was only 2 1/2. I couldn't write a sentence without an interruption. Now she's 4. She's still at home, but I'm getting so much more writing done. It's amazing the changes in such a sort time period.

#writinglife

Twitter Post Oct 13, 2021

Michael Keaton better get nominated for his role in Dopesick! Best performance I’ve seen this year based on actual events. True stories spark my creative juices.

#WritingCommunity #truestories #memoir

Twitter Post Oct 29, 2021