Photo by Reid Champagne    Carol asked the Mesa, AZ Verizon representative whether, because we’d forgotten the Samsung charger back at home, getting a new charger cable would be covered under our device insurance. I’m not kidding. I asked her to repeat what she actually asked, and she confirmed her question both times.    Although […]

Photo credit: Carol Madigan    Carol dug up one of our first written exchanges, courtesy of my fledgling widower travel blog showing up on her Facebook timeline. It would be a little more than two months before we actually met face to face, but by that time we’d already exchanged the L word. While it […]

Photo Credit: Carol Madigan    Carol and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary on Saturday. It’s called Paper. I mention that only because I’m hoping a joke or smart ass remark about it will occur to me before I get to the end of this.    And yeah, virtually this whole first year was spent […]

Photo Credit: Lovisa Photo    Carol had stumbled across an old blog where I’d recorded that Carolyn had once told me I was the most romantic man she’d ever met. “Wait,” Carol said, “she thought you were the most…etc., etc…” The incredulity that hung in the air was so thick you could hit it with […]

Photo credit: Lovisa Photo    The other day Carol referred to “our” new air fryer as “your” new air fryer. Later she returned from running errands, and said, “I took ‘my’ car to the car wash.” And she added, “By the way, did they deliver ‘your’ wine order?” Maybe it’s the quarantine, but I’ve found […]

   It happened again, just the other night. I’d gotten up from the couch, a rare enough daily occurrence that it prompted a comment from Carol. At the time, I was headed for the freezer to take out some cornbread for dinner that evening. The cornbread was to go with the red beans and rice […]

   I asked Carol if she was feeling the Christmas spirit this year, and she just shook her head. I really didn’t have to ask, though. She’s already had to miss all her grandchildren’s holiday shows, because there weren’t any. She’s not going to see her beautifully wrapped gifts torn apart by small, impatient hands. […]

Here’s an example of one of my earliest icebreaker/pickup lines. See if you can see what it might have foretold of my future as a “player.” I was working at my first job in a snowball shop. I had my back turned to the window. And when I turned I was startled to see two […]

With both our families either being isolated or atomized in different locations because of the pandemic, putting the thanks in Thanksgiving might have seemed a threadbare task this season. But Carol found a sweet little cabin near the recently renamed Yo Semite! National Park that promised a more positive spin on the phrase “cabin fever” at the start of this inaugural Covid-19 Holiday Season.

Monday was just going to be an easy prep day of shopping and perhaps a little pre-packing for our short Tuesday and Wednesday trip to Crystal Cove, a scenic state park of 1930’s era cottages along Laguna Beach’s oceanfront. Monday morning, however, my phone buzzed the calendar notice, “Crystal Cove.” “Hey, I thought you said […]