Elise Sereni Patkotak

I woke up yesterday and, per my usual morning routine, headed into the bathroom to check my blood sugar. As I did, I noticed that my left thumb and its base were a mottled, scary looking purple. “This is it”, I thought, “My circulation is shutting down and it’s beginning in my thumb. At a minimum I probably threw a blood clot last night that lodged in my wrist and cut off circulation to my thumb and was now waiting to break loose and head straight for my heart.” I debated putting 911 on notice and thought I’d have my

Let me point out to the producers of such shows as CSI, CSI Miami, NCIS, NCIS Los Angeles and all the rest of you people out there who think it is appropriate to leave us hanging at the end of each season. First of all, most of us who faithfully watch your show are old and have trouble remembering where we parked the car yesterday. This means expecting us to remember in September the threads of a show seen in May is a largely foolish expectation. Let me add that the plots you are throwing at us are getting so

Then you didn’t get raptured yesterday either. Makes the world a nicer place, I think, without all those self righteous people around spoiling our fun. Let them be raptured. I’d prefer to hang here with the rest of the “not-good-enoughs” – and you know who you are!

Went to Costco this week and bought a large jug of Tequila. If I’m not going to be raptured to heaven today, and my guess is I’m not, I plan to be dead drunk on my way to hell.

Move over, Osama. Here I come. And I am NOT a virgin!

News organizations and others seem to think the American public is full of idiots who will only understand how much debt we owe if they put it in some kind of visual… like how many time a stack of one dollar bills equal to our national debt would reach the moon and back. Let me let them in on a little secret… I don’t need a visual to understand that being multi trillion dollars in debt is a lot of debt. I get it.

I know that by railing against the possible demise of bookstores as they now exist I am merely showing how old and out of it I am. But I don’t care. Walking into a bookstore has always been one of those moments that immediately lifts my heart and soul and brings a smile to my lips. There is an atmosphere in a store full of books, an atmosphere that implies adventures, knowledge, fun, friends and worlds beyond imagination.

Growing up eons ago, travel was not as common as it is nowadays. The parents in my neighborhood didn’t routinely get in

Walked Blondie the other day. She got to a little mound of dead leaves off the side of the road and became very interested in its contents. Since the sun was out, the breeze was blowing and I wasn’t being assaulted by bugs, I drifted off and let her sniff to her heart’s content. After a few minutes of quiet daydreaming, I realized the leash was no longer pulled taut as she yanked to reach every inch of the mound. I looked down and there she stood, in all her dirty nosed glory, with something that might have once had

Avert your children’s eyes. It’s a gruesome, ugly scene.

When I was young, I’d watch dancers and acrobats and think that with a little effort, exercise and practice I could do what they were doing. Now I look at them and think, “Sweet Jesus… they’d have to hospitalize me for a year if I ever tried that.”

Here’s the problem with aging eyes. I go to put my dog out a few days ago. I open the new French doors just installed that lead to my deck wherein there is a stairway down to the yard. The dog heads out but stops short and her back legs go out from under her. I watch her pick herself up and think that maybe she just slipped. She tries again and again seems to hit a wall as she exits and her back legs go down. And I think that Karie, the love of her life, told me that