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Reliable?  Just reliable?

Someone told me recently that I was one of the most reliable people they knew.  And I thought to myself, “Reliable?  Really?” I wanted to go out with a reputation more along the lines of wild, dangerous, unpredictable, a force to be reckoned with.  But reliable?  I feel like my father’s station wagon. And not in the good way.

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It just seems to me…

…that once you’ve been married four times and had a child in almost every relationship and all of them have been in the papers, you should not be asking the general public to give you some space and privacy during this difficult time.  You should be on your hands and knees begging your children’s forgiveness for having the attention span of a gnat and the rutting habits of a mentally challeneged toad.

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Columns 2006

The death zone…my front yard

Having spent a good deal of my life in the Arctic, I think I come by my spectacular lack of gardening skills honestly.  In my 27 years in Barrow, the only thing I successfully grew in my yard was a wonderful little patch of tundra grass that seemed to be fine growing all by itself.  All I had to do each spring was look out the window and tell it how pretty it was.

Over the course of the decades, many houseplants came to live with me only to die after a very short visit.  The cause of death was

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A hint that will save you some grief

When your mouse starts to act funny, try taking the little ball out and cleaning out the accumulated dust that is covering the contact points. This works much better than banging the mouse repeatedly on your desk while screaming, “For what I paid, you damn well better not be broken so soon.”

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I wonder how poisonous Deet really is

I think I swallowed a mouthful of Deet while spraying mosquito repellent before my walk.  Now I feel nauseous and icky.  How quick does Deet kill?  And why don’t the mosquitoes seem half as scared of it as I do?

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The dust is winning

My sister and her friends show up in about ten days and suddenly I’m noticing the dust and cobwebs that seem to never be there when I’m home alone.  I take a broom to my shoulder and head into the webs with courage in my heart and the hope that the spiders are all away for the day.  If not, please just ignore the screaming you’ll hear emanating from my home.

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