After seeing my SWAT Training post, a lawyer emailed me that she had taken all her secretaries to the gun range— and made them wear skirts and high heels! Afterwards, she took them out for a drink. I love this photo of the high-heeled shooter.  We could have used her at SWAT Training—much feistier than the Lara Croft look that the crazy husband envisioned. She would have shown those boys. […]

John got a hankering to take SWAT training so we went to the backwoods of Half Moon Bay near Mavericks, where they have Hawaii-5-0 sized surf waves in Northern California that few are willing to risk. I love that area, especially that funky restaurant called the Moss Beach Distillery, which has the Blue Lady Ghost, who they say haunts the bathrooms and steals earrings. (She was featured on Unsolved Mysteries.) […]

            Poor Zar had dysplasia in his elbows that if left unchecked was going to have him not using his front legs and hopping around the yard like a bunny. Out on his walks he would go on a sit-down strike if his legs hurt him. (He also does that if he gets too hot, but that’s another story.) So he had surgery in both […]

Writers are like hoarders—you stash all your little stories and lines from your life (my high school friends still remember me with my notebook). “Never date a guy who turns more heads than you do,” —interesting advice from a dear friend during college, which I had my character, Virginia, giving to her daughter years later in False Alarm. Your friends might be sick of your stuff, but writing is a […]

At the sports firm, one of my colleagues put up a trophy animal head in his office behind his desk. The implication is that he shot it himself (I sort of assume that when someone hangs a head), but no one asked any questions. Don’t forget this is downtown San Francisco, where you could be spray painted for wearing fur, probably shot for hanging animals in your office. We have […]

In Aspen we didn’t end up in a bomb shelter this New Year’s and Charlie Sheen wasn’t arrested, but that town never lacks excitement. With not much snow yet, Aspen was so jammed during the day you couldn’t get into a restaurant and we were living on hotel pillow chocolates and these horrible protein balls that the crazy husband eats. I wouldn’t have minded joining the masses in the streets […]

I’m no domestic diva, but when it comes to Burnt Cream (or crème brulee, the French translation) I may actually have a leg up on my mother this Christmas—sorry, Mom. Kate in False Alarm may never get to cook again with her mother’s new boyfriend around—he really is the Pillsbury Doughboy in the kitchen. But thanks to technology and the Crazy Husband’s 50,000 btu butane torch, my sugar crust is […]

The vet called this morning alarmed that Zar has ballooned up to 109 pounds from 90 pounds in just six weeks. She ran an extensive panel of blood work, certain of a thyroid condition, but turns out Zar’s blood was “gorgeous,” and guess what? He just eats too much. No more table scraps! the vet says, which puts a stop to the roasted Whole Foods chickens that my mother brings […]