D for Dunce

The schools are back. Can you hear the cheering of parents relieved of that 10-week-long slog that is summer in Tucson? Honestly, it amounts to purgatory, putting kids out to pasture like that when the mercury’s hitting triple digits. Yeh, purgatory for the kids too. I used to think keeping yourself entertained during rainy or [...]

Keep on trucking

You know when you think you’re just not cut out for being a grown-up? That’s me, fairly frequently in fact. If anybody had seen me on Sunday afternoon they would have shouted, “That woman’s mental! If she has children, please take them away from her. If she’s planning on having children, tell her not to. Here, [...]

Oh balls. I dropped the ball.

Ms Fix-It is back! And thank goodness. This week we were back to our Wednesday morning DIY date – in fact we met twice, for good measure. Admittedly, our first hour was spent catching up with each other and drinking cups of tea. And admittedly also, I did bugger all. While Ms Fix-It tried to fix [...]

Cargotecture, duck boats and a man called Boris

Cooooool. And it’s a shipping container, no less. Sunset magazine, which features it in its latest issue, took a 192-sq ft mini-home it’s calling Cargotecture (clever) and made a showhome out of it. It features bamboo flooring, a galley kitchen, and sleeps up to 4 people. The cost? $59,500. The reason I’m sharing it is [...]

Space management (or, keeping one’s hair on whilst on hols with the family)

We’re ba-ack! Yes, us. It feels like we’ve been away for ages. And it looks that way in my front garden, where the weeds are so rife it almost has the makings of a lawn. Q: Why is it hard to grow the green stuff you want in the southern Arizona desert, and yet lush-looking [...]