There's nothing like a headstrong woman to make you happy to be alive.

Girls don’t fight fair. They pull your hair and gauge you and pinch you; then they run off gasping to mommy when you try and defend yourself with a fist. Then you get locked into time out, and for what? No, my friend, the secret is, don’t snap at the bait. Let it dangle. Swim around it. Laugh it off. After a while they’ve given up and try to lure someone else.

It was beyond embarrassing or humiliating or even mortifying. It was ego-slaying!

Was it so much to ask just to be left alone?

I write early in the morning at the computer, and people think Im crazy, but I still use my Mac-Classic even though we have a state-of-the-art PC. There are just less distractions with the simpler machine.

It's funny how you can think you know someone pretty well, and then something happens or they do something that makes you understand that you didn't really know them at all.

I liked it. I liked her. And every time I saw her, she seemed more beautiful. She just seemed to glow. I'm not talking like a hundred-watt bulb; she just had this warmth to her. Maybe it came from climbing that tree. Maybe it came from singing to chickens. Maybe it came from whacking at two-by-fours and dreaming about perpetual motion. I don't know. All I know is that compared to her, Shelly and Miranda seemed so...ordinary.