As connections between cities and people go, Houston and I have not had the best relationship. "What could make you dislike Houston so much?" my dad asked me recently? "It's not like you had a...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2015/04/texmudgeon-meltingjust-little.html
It was a crappy job compared to the others I had been able to get shortly after I started it - sometimes, when it rains, it pours - and after only a few days, I had to quit being a cashier at Dea...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2015/03/about-girl.html
A couple of weeks ago, I was waiting for my turn to step off a platform and ride in a harness that, if all had been checked and re-checked correctly, would safely carry me down most of the length...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2015/03/giant-step.html
Yeah, this is the only thing I want to do on a day like today, when the temperatures have dropped again, reminding us we aren't out of winter's woods yet... I'm beginning to think my adju...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2015/02/hummingbird-snore.html
No, WAIT...NO NO NO... Unlike a certain RIPOFF GRAS near the Texas Gulf coast , the following event is FREE to attend. I will be in New Orleans for Mardi Gras day, ensuring that y'all wil...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2015/02/krewe-of-pancakes-and-syrup-2015.html
I returned to New Orleans this past weekend for a wham, bam, thank you, Krewe du Vieux semiforced march through the French Quarter and the CBD dressed as an artisan bag lady with a jacket made o...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2015/02/how-not-to-move-back-to-near-where-you.html
Thank goodness. The jackhammering outside my door has stopped. For the time being, anyway. Some days, some times, just...suck. I can't put my finger on the exact time when things got so dull, s...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2015/01/tuesday-bluesday.html
Between raking and mowing the front and back yards so that the Swanky Haciendaland homeowners' association doesn't fine our lowly renters' asses , ferrying the kiddo back and forth to school, an...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2015/01/texmudgeon.html
I've been reviewing music and books for Antigravity Magazine since 2011. Most of my reviews have been limited to 200-300 words, which has been both an exhilarating and excruciating challenge dep...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-strange-crucibled-case-of-lena.html
We are not gardeners, my husband and I. It's been a while since I tried to coax anything out of the ground or out of a pot. Our house in New Orleans had paved yards in place of grassy lawns and o...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2014/10/why-i-now-mow.html
Although Houston itself has quite the deserved reputation of obliterating its historical spots in the name of progress, expansion, and strip malls (it gets exploited for a bit of satire on occas...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2014/09/my-1835.html
I had been reduced to this: Sobbing at my kitchen table. "I don't think I can make it through another week of this," I wailed to Dan, all the unsolved problems of our move looming like an ins...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2014/09/texass.html
Thought I am not there physically - and I was not there nine years ago, either - this is the ninth anniversary of the levee breaches in New Orleans and the start of a hard Gulf Coast area recover...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2014/08/home-sweet-home-challenge.html
Because I am an incurable Twitter addict, I have been getting eyefuls of Ferguson, Missouri coverage and reactions in my timeline and have been repeatedly shaking my head over mistake after sick,...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2014/08/betrayal-grudge-envy-gossip-liessilence.html
My parents and I used to do the drive I took to my new home in reverse, going from southwest Houston to my grandparents' in Knoxville with the windows down, the Beach Boys, John Denver, or Fleetw...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2014/08/texas-remembered-and-seen.html
This is how my brain works: I reserved a few CDs from the ones I've had to pack recently to play in the wheeled stereo system that is my car (and the boom box in my kitchen), among them the Old...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2014/07/remove-my-head.html
I was determined. Dan was going to drive into Houston the next day, I'd slept all morning, successfully snoozing away the remains of a headache that had begun the night before, and I was primed t...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2014/07/when-it-hit.html
Allow me to re-introduce myself. I've been running for a long while, much of it in place, but fate has conspired to drag me back in close proximity to one of the greater sources of anxiety I've e...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2014/06/hello-houston-hate-love-story.html
We'd sing the rhyme, among many others, when we were being bused to and from day camp, all of us settled into our seats (some of us in the best ones at the back, anticipating the bumps in the roa...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2014/06/peanut.html
It seems I only fire up the ol' blog these days when the news isn't so great. Perhaps when things get better…and my Twitter addiction lessens… 'Til then, I go back to the days when I first ...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2014/03/rest-in-peace-morwen.html
Head here to view an enlarged version of the comic above. I first posted it in 2009 shortly after it came out. It's well worth reading, as it speaks of the health care dilemmas we all sti...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2013/08/head-here-to-view-enlarged-version-of.html
I'd read a few reviews about the flick, and since it's about one of my favorite bands, I saw Big Star : Nothing Can Hurt Me last night. My attitude towards this documentary, having read a ...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2013/07/it-turned-me.html
"What you mean we, white man?" There's no point in (black people) trying to ingratiate ourselves with these people because we're not...WE didn't come here right. We're not in the situation in t...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2013/07/oscar-brown-jr-on-citizenship.html
At 16, I'd hit a strange crisis. Nearly always the too-sensitive misfit all through grade school, I'd managed to make it to high school and reinvent things for myself - new friends, an eye on an ...
http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2013/07/carrying-on-through-it-all.html