THE LAST WORD . . . by Ruth Howell

Strange things happen at the laundromat. This isn't a place I'm used to spending time, so maybe the regulars, sensing I was an outsider, were testing me. Maybe it was some kind of laundromat initiation. Doing the laundry has never been one of my favorite chores. It’s right up there with peeling potatoes. But having to do laundry at the laundromat is in my opinion, cruel and unusual punishment. The whole idea of schlepping baskets of clothes down the stairs, out to the car and to a public place where everyone gets to pass judgment on your taste in clothing, not to mention underwear just doesn’t work for me. Anyway, one day years ago, our washing machine was on the fritz and the repairman couldn’t get to us for a week. Given my disdain for doing laundry, I usually let it pile up until we we're down to our last pair of underwear. Well, that day had come. Unless I planned to beat the stuff on a rock in the river, I had no choice but to go to the local laundromat. ...

La Casa Que Canta (The House That Sings) We hadn't planned on moving to Mexico. Actually, we hadn’t planned on moving anywhere.  And we certainly hadn’t planned on buying a house we had never seen, over the Internet, in a town we had never heard of, in a country we had never visited.  But in a period of two week’s time that’s exactly what we did. Friends and relatives were in a state of shock when we announced our plans to move to Mexico. As if that shock wasn’t enough, they needed to be picked up off the floor when we told them we had wired a sizable sum of money to a realtor in Mexico to purchase a home.  Sight unseen! Not normally impulsive people, within hours we had made the most impulsive decision of our lives. And it was no spur of the moment let’s buy that sexy little sports car decision.  This was a potentially life changing one. It’s difficult to say what prompted our new found impulsiveness. Perhaps it was an unusually brutal Maine w...

Border Crossing One week, four days and 3000 miles   later we finally arrived at the Mexican border. My husband John was driving our Jeep packed with our five barking dogs, a cat and all the personal belongings we could stuff into the car. I was driving the VW Beetle packed with my jewelry. The American border agent checked John's FM3 visa and quickly waved him through. I was questioned. I am always questioned. The border agent looked at my visa rather suspiciously, carefully comparing my face to the photo. Then he looked through the window into the back seat of my car. "What's in the back?" he demanded, which sounded more like an order than a question. "You're moving to Mexico? Permanently?" "Just some clothing and stuff." "What kind of stuff ?" he asked. "Just some sheets and towels," I said. I was beginning to get a little nervous. John warned me not to take my jewelry in the car because I was supposed to ...

HAS ANYONE NOTICED  a peculiar trend in women’s fashions? Well, I mean more peculiar than usual. Pregnant women are wearing clothing that fits like a sausage casing, showing off more than some of us care to see. In the meantime, non-pregnant women of all ages are wearing clothes, especially tops, that look like old  maternity smocks. Pregnancy Fashions As for pregnancy fashions, I wonder whether people unrelated to the pregnant woman really want to see her huge, protruding belly and belly button. And do we really need to see pregnant women on the beach wearing bikinis? I'm not implying that pregnancy is anything to be ashamed of. Quite the opposite. But from my perspective, those kinds of revelations are a personal thing between the woman and her husband. But that's just my opinion. Anyway, I wonder how this trend came about. Perhaps the trashy Kardashians had someting to do with it?     I'm not suggesting women wear those old fashioned...