another intrusion

November 11, 2022 ~ katiecoolady ~ 1 Comment

some flowers I saw at Pike Market yesterday as some brightness before what you’re about to read

I realized this week that I’ve been dealing with issues around Cindy’s murder for over half my life now. Not just the grieving process, but the constant intrusions by the men who killed her and those who champion them (most likely them to be honest).

This week was no exception.

Once I decided I was finished with my writing for this visit, and taking a little transition break for myself doing some fun things, DING DONG, not so fast.

I was contacted by my Victim’s Rights Attorney in Phoenix about yet a new wrinkle in this fully-wrinkled map that was created in 1988.

Some background.

When we went to trial in 1990, the AZ Victim’s Bill of Rights was pretty new and of the many protections, one was that representatives for the killers could not contact us, as victims, without going through a representative for us. Some of you may remember the woman the Federal Legal Defender’s office sent to my doorstep one cold mid-December day–the day I had hauled out my decorations for my house–and sat in my living room trying to get ME to help THEM get leniency for Cindy’s killers. I was so disoriented as to who she was, as I trusted the mandate that I could not be directly contacted. I thought she was someone for our side when I let her in from the cold. But no, when I confronted her on that, she had the loophole she slipped through on the tip of her tongue. I kicked her out of my house and she left me her card.

I contacted our prosecutor who put me with the AZ Crime Victims Legal Assistance Project, who represented me, then used that invasion as an example to close that loophole, which was successful. Keli Luther, may she rest in peace (gone too soon), was who championed that cause. There is a whole chapter in my book that details this story. Likely the most egregious event that happened to me after the murder–driven by those who champion the killers.

Well, guess what? That statute has been overturned. Apparently they argued that it doesn’t matter who contacts a victim–the prosecution or the defense. Or who ambushes them in their home, the trauma is the same,

Yeah, no.

So, I’m being asked to retell that story in order to help the AG’s office appeal this reversal, which I will do.

Once I think I can compartmentalize this stuff, there it is again, reminding me of its ever presence. For the first time in over thirty years, I found myself wishing Michael Apelt would be executed, die of natural causes in prison or otherwise just disappear. I’ve not for one moment been invested, but as his execution looms, so do these traumatic invasions. I’ve been pretty neutral and detached about his execution, but these folks fighting against it are making me a staunch desirer for this sentence to be completed as ordered. Guess that backfired, huh?

I’ll do my part. But living in a mine field requires a certain type of resilience and I’m just tired.

Anyway, that’s that.

I just found the listing for the show they are doing on Cindy:

AMERICAN MONSTER

New Episodes Premiere Sundays at 9/8c on ID and Available to Stream on discovery+

If you looked into the eyes of a killer, would you know? Yet, on any street, behind any smile, lurks an AMERICAN MONSTER. Never-before-seen-video footage looks straight into the eyes of a killer, hidden in plain sight. Mom next door; dad across the street; the kid who never broke the rules. Anyone can be a MONSTER.

· Brothers and Sisters Premieres Sunday, November 20 at 9/8c on ID

Cindy Monkman turns heads wherever she goes, but by age 30, she’s looking for something more serious. Michael Apelt, a handsome German businessman, seems to be the answer to her prayers… until their first Christmas together turns into a horror story.

It’s interesting they titled it Brothers and Sisters. That’s the first I’ve seen that.

I have a Youtube channel now that I’ve done nothing with, but I have a potential upcoming project that I will be using it for.

I may schedule a live chat to talk about this episode after it airs.

Let me know if that is something you might want to participate in. Like just a “filling in the blanks” or Q and A or simply gathering for support.

Love you all out there continuing to care and read.

Kathy

I went to Biscuit Bitch today in Seattle.

I really look forward to the day when I can just enjoy my life vs. enjoying it in spite of…..

healing

November 2, 2022 ~ katiecoolady ~ 1 Comment

I took this photo, unfiltered, this morning–wow what a view

This last year has been tough.

Dad died leaving a complicated estate for me to wade through and I’m still not done. My brother and I came way too close to losing access to our entire inheritance thanks to Marjorie–thankfully detected and corrected before Dad died. That was just the beginning of the gauntlet of complex banking and property/insurance/trust issues I’ve been working through for over a year now. I detailed that harrowing experience in the book so stay tuned for that story.

Plus my brother has been hospitalized twice, so managing him and taking care of our own lives with Lillian so she didn’t get lost in the shuffle; it’s just been a lot.

I told my husband this morning that I came on this trip as much to heal as complete the book. Don’t get me wrong, I’m writing, editing and re-organizing things for a few hours each day, but there is no urgency to finish things up as I’d planned. This is therapy for me, as is being here in Edmonds which is like a familiar safe cocoon. I love this little cozy studio and it has everything I need. I have my favorite haunts like restaurants, the Korean spa, the ferry and this view of course. It all nourishes me.

I think once Dad died, it really set me free to more deeply explore the abuse we experienced as kids and the impacts on each of us. It’s always been so much easier to focus on Marj, as we just didn’t love her, but the betrayal of our father, that’s the sting. With his being gone now, I no longer feel like I’m betraying him, by looking at how he betrayed us if that makes sense.

I keep finding myself winding back in to the chapters related to those traumas–adding, editing, honing in on what’s important and in what order to reveal it. It’s so important to me to at least look at our childhood trauma as a backdrop for the fatal choices Cindy made. It all fits together so clearly in my head and I hope I’m conveying it on the page.

Here is a snippet I’ve been working on this morning:

This juxtaposition of a life, led us to focus on the good times, while doing our best to deny and avoid the violence, desperately trying to cling to a vision of normalcy. At that age, the only thing you really want is to fit in and be normal. This very style of coping is evident in Cindy’s journal years later, when the stakes were far higher. Life and death, literally.

I’m in a whirlwind situation with so many confusing feelings. I need more than ever to give myself positive self-talk. I feel opposition in what I am doing and am not comfortable covering up the truth of what my new relationship with Michael is. It’s like I’m living two lives.

Cindy and I created our own little world, our own languages, our own forms of blocking ourselves off to Marj’s invasions, which angered her even more. “No one can get close to you girls” she would say, blaming us for her emotional distance.

Cindy warned me not to share too much with her, definitely not secrets. “She will use it against you some day” she intuitively seemed to know as a tween. Cindy was right, not that I always heeded her advice. Marj, a social worker, did have a skill in extracting people’s most intimate stories. She was easy to talk to. Yet in our case, she would stockpile the most vulnerable aspects of our inner suffering, then hurl them at us sometimes years later in the form of words like “well, as we all know, you’ve had problems with insecurity your entire life,” she’d say with a sympathetic looking nod. A passive-aggressive confusing message which made you think she was trying to help you, while feeling like shit at the same time. At one time or another, Marj heard from each of us the question “Why do you always need to see me in the most screwed up way possible?”.

It was like our problems/insecurities/struggles gave this woman life.

I’ve been up writing for hours now, so time for a break. It’s a blustery day outside, so I’m enjoying staying in watching these amazing textured clouds float over the Puget Sound.

I was going to run some errands, like getting the tire light checked on my rental car, but I’m thinking I may just take a wander over to my friend DoorDash and be an inside girl all day today. It’s so nice to have no schedule and no plans.

It’s one of my favorite ways to live.

me. at the movies last night to see Tar with Cate Blanchett

snippet

October 29, 2022 ~ katiecoolady ~ 2 Comments

snow on the mountains across the Sound

I finally got clear of my medical dramas for the most part (still coughing so staying sequestered for the most part–I hate being disruptive in places like restaurants or movie theatres with a cough).

I’ve been digging in to writing, ordering takeout and reading everything I’ve written thus far. I like it.

my favorite, shredded, writing sweater

I’ll share a snippet this morning that I’ve been editing about my police interview. I flew back from IL to AZ for one day–not even an overnight–to be interviewed before the brothers were arrested. I was too scared to stay even one night knowing they were out there on the loose.

Here is one snippet from that chapter:

I carried my purse and paper bag lunch up to the homicide department floor at the Mesa police station and Debbie met me there. She waited in the open waiting area as Davis escorted me to a small interview room. I ate my tasteless, crumbly sandwich in there alone, waiting a long time for the detectives to join me. I wondered why Debbie couldn’t just hang out with me while I ate and waited. The whole thing was oddly strained and awkward. Later, I wondered if they’d been viewing me through some kind of one-way mirror or hidden camera. I got about half-way through the disappointing sandwich, which was all I could stomach, then stuffed the remainder back in the white paper bag and waited.

Ron Davis finally returned with Homicide Detective George Felger who I met for the first time, although had spoken with numerous times on the phone in those five days. They sat at the bare table with me, turned on a small cassette tape recorder and started asking me questions. They started with the basics then the questioning directed fairly quickly toward Mark Maurer. I referred to the pages of notes I’d made on the plane.

KM: So back to the conversation with Mark, I, I just wrote down things that I, I put ‘em in quotes as they, as I remembered the conversation, that’s what I wrote down.

RD: That’s fine. Go ahead.

KM: “I told him I was still married but that I still loved him” That was something that she told me several times in the conversation, that she felt good about that, like she was, because she was, it was like in a way that he was upset and she wanted to console him, so she told him, it’s not that I don’t love you anymore, but it’s that I’m married to somebody else and we can’t be together’. And that, she said, ‘I felt good about that because then he wasn’t so upset.’ You know, it was like comforting him was the way she was feeling really good about the fact that she said it, ‘well, at least I was honest and I admitted the truth that I still care for him and I’m, I still love him’.

I could not impress enough on these investigators that Cindy believed Rudi and Anke had been back in Germany for weeks, and the fact that they were in Mesa holed up in the Village Motel together the whole time, was the biggest clue that they were all involved in this.

**************

After spending a few hours with this this morning, I’m headed to this cool spot downtown Seattle for a fun break–a flower mask making class. I’ll post pics later of how mine turned out. I’m going to box it up and send it to Lillian as a surprise–it will keep as we are working with dried flowers.

As always, thanks for being out there and caring,

Kathy

back in Edmonds

October 24, 2022October 24, 2022 ~ katiecoolady ~ 5 Comments

*took this the day after the smoke cleared–I couldn’t even see the Sound for two days prior*

Hello!

I’ve returned to my happy place, Edmonds, WA to finally finish this book.

I had a bit of a rocky re-entry though. I was quite sick the week before leaving, got a positive Covid test, got better quickly and made the cut for traveling post-Covid symptoms, so I was able to travel on this long awaited and planned trip. Also, my brother went off his meds again, and was admitted to the hospital the week before I left, so I had a lot of involvement with that and setting up a likely discharge plan for while I’m gone. Never a dull moment.

I landed in Seattle during an air quality issue, rendering it “the worst air quality in the world” (!). This kicked up my lungs again, landing me in an Urgent Care center for more albuterol for my nebulizer my husband wisely ~~forced~~ encouraged me to pack.

I started to hunker down and start my reading/writing process, only to come down with my first, aggressive, full-body case of the hives three days after arriving. Concerned this might be a reaction to my three-times-a-day albuterol treatments, I landed back in the Urgent care who also couldn’t figure out this new twist. It was kind of scary honestly, as it came on quickly in the evening, and Dr. Google kept talking about anaphylaxis, which just the mere mention of it caused my throat to constrict (ugh–I’m so suggestible). After a dose of Benadryl, I succeeded in knocking it back and knocking myself out and having a day-long hangover the next day, rendering it impossible for me to think clearly, much less read or write.

So I caught up with my ~~obsession~~ curiosity with the NXIVM case, watching and rewatching some episodes about it. As coercive control is an element of my book, this kind of thing is something I study. It’s fascinating and terrifying to realize how vulnerable very smart people can be to this kind of manipulation. Just as Cindy was. It’s not about intellect, usually. It’s about vulnerability. It’s still mind boggling, to me, how long these strings of influence can have over a person, and how damaging they are.

It’s a beautiful cloudy and cool day here in Edmonds, and I have a dinner date tonight with my cousin, so I’m making good use of my brain and this time to read everything I’ve written so far on this book and taking notes.

During my first days, I read Ruth Markel’s true crime memoir about her son Dan’s murder which was very good/heartbreaking/sad/inspiring. It was a perfect way to set my trajectory to getting back in to my writing. I realized I was missing some tonal aspects, and frankly, was just good to feel the solidarity with someone who is ensconced in the same web of murder survivorship and the legal process. I’ve been following that case closely, watching the dominos fall toward justice.

I’ll likely start writing some more tomorrow and share some snippets.

Oh, also they are doing another show on Cindy’s case, which will be airing on Investigation Discovery sometime this Fall or early Winter. I’ve been very involved in that, being interviewed for it, providing lots of video and photos and other material, so that’s been a project. I’ll definitely post when I have more information about when it’s being aired.

Here is one photo I found that I shared with them–not sure it will make the cut for the show, but it was taken on our last family trip to Maine the year she was killed.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned. And, as always, thanks for being there all this time and caring.

rising

October 16, 2019October 16, 2019 ~ katiecoolady ~ 1 Comment

I worked all day on writing and organizing chapters. I finished one entirely that was kind of a breath of fresh air, as it was more about the rising out of the mire, than the quicksand of Cindy’s murder, the investigation and trial.

I treated myself in the evening to a dinner at a restaurant not too far away called Mkt. One of the ladies at the flower class had recommended t, and boy was she right. I had just a wonderful time there.

snapped a couple of pics of myself before I went out to document my attempt at using the curling iron on my new haircut–I look so relaxed, and was–my skin is also really improving with the fasting lifestyle–can you believe I turn 60 in two weeks?

I’ve done quite a bit of solo travel and one thing I’ve learned that works really well for me is to eat at the bar. Whether it’s a sushi bar or in this case “chef’s table” which was a five seater bar overlooking the cooking and prep area. It makes you feel part of things sitting there.

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I had a gorgeous glass of Sangiovese and these incredible grilled green beans with lemon, then their ahi crudo and my third course was a burratta salad. I topped it off with a lime coconut sorbet with shortbread cookies for dessert. I did indulge and had the stomach ache later to prove it, but it was worth it. I just can’t eat as much as I used to now that I started Intermittent Fasting…dammit.

On the way home, these two bugs were mating on my windshield, literally the entire drive home, including on the freeway. They were serious about it.

Been writing off and on all day. I also planned my next trip to come back in three weeks. Long story, but she got a cancellation, I needed to spend some money on the airline before the year was out and I’m riding a wave of momentum right now. Plus I need to get some more documents that are packed up in our garage at the moment.

Today was one of those days that I had my jammies on at 3pm. I was sitting on my perch–the fold out sofa in the studio–and there was a knock on the door.

My sweet husband sent me a gorgeous dozen roses to enjoy for my last days here. He’s so sweet and thoughtful.

Well, here is a snippet of a chapter on Michael Apelt’s sentencing that I worked on some today. Still pretty raw, but it’s on paper.

Topped off with my two views–to my front and to my left. I’m sure you can see why I have such a hard time staying away from this paradise.

I sat with my family and Janine in our regular spots–the second row on the right side behind the prosecution. There were more press in the gallery that day than on other days. The Death Penalty tends to draw that.

I had a perfect view of Michael as they brought him in, clad in the jail’s orange jumpsuit, socks with plastic sandals and shackles–both wrist and ankle—with chains. It was the first time I had seen him like that, ever. In the trial, he was always restrained beneath his casual slacks.

I watched him, knowing this was likely the last time I would ever lay eyes on Michael Apelt. I witnessed him awkwardly sit down. I watched his always-present interpreter hand him the headphones he wore daily in court. I saw him pick them up with his manacled hands, clanging, and restrained together at the wrist.

What happened next, is one of those moments you will never quite catch the essence of, in either telling it, much less writing it. It was a miracle of sorts that occurred in my heart that day.

It was as if the environment around Michael Apelt both paused and went black and white, like a scene you’d see in a movie. He became like some sort of spotlighted hologram, and he was the only thing moving in the room, but in slow motion. The air around me shifted to a stillness the courtroom had never held before. It was as if I could hear his every move, amplified in my mind.

abundance

October 14, 2019October 15, 2019 ~ katiecoolady

It’s Monday and I’m up early and getting to it! I just have four more writing days while here in Edmonds, so I’m going to make the best of them. I had a little fun last week and over the weekend, so time to buckle down. I read through almost all of my chapters yesterday, editing and making notes and I like how things are coming along. I just have a very few chapters left to write, and I’ll complete one of those today.

Not gonna lie, I’m already dreaming about my next trip here. I just love it so much.

So to follow up with where I left off last time–the fantastic flower class I got in off the waiting list!

I always do my research, or at least as much as I can, before venturing solo in to a new neighborhood to see what I might not want to miss. The London Plane is in the Pioneer Square area of Seattle which is kind of between the train station and the happenin area of Pike Market. There are new places popping up around there, so I decided to go early to check out a local happy hour, have dinner and plenty of time to find parking.

Well, had no idea the traffic going IN to the city on a Thursday afternoon would be so brutal. It took me over an hour to get there and another 20 min or so of roaming looking for parking, so the happy hour I’d planned at a place I’d scoped called Good Bar was out. I squeaked in just in time for the class.

It was amazing. First there was a bar of really nice snacks, which was nice because I had been fasting all day (I’m doing Intermittent Fasting now). They had three selections of wine and delicious cheeseboard type of nibbles.

There were buckets and buckets of flowers, branches, berries, fruits etc. all around the tables that were preset with artisan vases and clippers (that we got to keep!) at each spot. I switched out the vase at my spot for a white and blue striped pottery vase.

The women hosting the event were both the owner of The London Plane and a local floral artist. I gleaned so much from just listening to them and watching. The LP is a unique concept which houses a flower shop/wine bar/coffee shop/pastry shop/cafe/boutique with handmade items for sale. It’s like everything I love under one really open and charming roof. I loved it and would totally hang out there if I lived in the area.

We got some intros to the flowers and their backgrounds, while the Jeni the floral artist created an arrangement as a demo.

They then basically set us free to choose what we wanted of probably 50 different varieties of the above options and we all spread out and went to town. I dumped my entire arrangement about half way through and started over…arrgh. I’m still very much in a learning curve. By the end, I was really happy with what I made. They also gave us boxes filled with tissue to easily cart them home (great idea). I learned very much about the direction of my new business and where I want to take it (and myself) in the coming year.

I am really interested in developing my skills as an artist and have decided to break out my easel (well get a new one as mine was lost in the flood) and get to painting again.

Oh! Almost forgot. Pat, my host here, had told me that day that she was planning on taking out her dying fig tree the next morning, asking me to park my car elsewhere to make space for that project. Well….I got a wild hair. I asked the London Plane owner if they might like the dozens of green figs/ branches/ leaves that would be coming off and discarded and she said yes! She offered Pat a $50 gift certificate for her fig remnants which was perfect as I really wanted Pat to get down there to check out the place–it’s totally her, as well.

So the next morning, I pruned that tree to an inch of its life and stuffed my car with figs and branches and toted them back down to the shop. It was a great caper, got me outside and a little bit of gardening as I miss my own garden so much!

After the class, I walked with my arrangement back to my car, kind of hungry still so thought about where I might grab a bite back in Edmonds. The neighborhood felt very different at night, so not a place I’d venture out on my own. As I sat in my car, checking my phone for directions, I glanced up and right across the street, just steps from my car was something that looked familiar. It was the exact type of font as the Good Bar lounge I had been researching earlier and lo and behold there it was! Literally in front of my face!

Well, that was a no brainer. Popped right back out of the car and walked across the narrow street and right in to this very cool spot in an old bank. The vault is still there even!

I ordered myself a cocktail and perused the menu. I had read one review where the man said he rarely would go to a swanky bar like that, but the sloppy joe was so beyond, he kept going back just for that. So, that’s what I got.

I was looking around with this goofy smile on my face, which caught the attention of the owner across the room and she mouthed “do you need anything?”. I motioned her over because I wanted to share with her good fortune in finding her place.

Well, we ended up talking and talking as she joined me multiple times as I enjoyed my cocktail, a “not cocktail” later as I was driving, my sloppy joe and then she comp’d me this delicious “Swiss Miss” ice cream that tasted just like hot chocolate, but frozen. Complete with mini marshmallows! Thank you Nancy!

I’ve found that when I travel alone, I often feel less alone because I’m more approachable and meet more people. Always sit at the bar is my motto.

I’ll end this with a snippet that I edited yesterday. Coming in to the home stretch. Once I get home, I’ll spend time getting back with the agents who expressed interest and likely reach out to new ones. True crime is at a high now, so I think my options are much better than even when I started this four years ago.

Back to writing!

It was all very robotic and infused with denial. I just kept reinforcing the story in my head—that Cindy had gotten a call from Mark, that he was in the parking lot of her apartment, threatening to come to the door, so she ran out to head him off at the pass. He was the “angry man” Michael was referring to. The only person she would run off like that to. Then the two of them went somewhere and were holed up in a hotel or something. This was the only story I could allow myself and I was holding on to it for dear life.

Meanwhile, the Mesa police were making the off-policy decision to forego their policy of waiting twenty-four hours to declare Cindy an official missing person. Maybe it was the fact it was Christmas Eve, maybe it was the life insurance I mentioned, or Michael’s strange drunken story that didn’t make sense. But the police declared Cindy officially missing by 6:00 that morning, just three hours after they had been contacted. And they sent a report to the media. The people of Phoenix were waking up on Christmas Eve morning to my sister’s face on their screens, declared “missing”.

With my permission, my friend Debbie had a key to my house and let the police in. They retrieved the note I left and Cindy’s airplane ticket.

Then they went looking for Mark Maurer.

back in Edmonds

October 5, 2015October 5, 2015 ~ katiecoolady ~ 4 Comments

Greetings from gorgeous Edmonds, WA where I am again for the fantastic Write On the Sound annual conference which was my entree to this beautiful part of the country that invited me back earlier this year to write 30 chapters of this book.

30 chapters which I , due to my own naivete and stupidity, nearly lost. I had a mini meltdown when the first day we got here (yes I brought my darling husband this time) I realized I’d forgotten my password for the online site LitLift I’d used to write my book on, without backup (yes, I said stupid). Well, apparently LitLift exists out there with no one at the wheel. The password reset email they generated sent me to an error message and no one ever replied to my emails on their contact form–scary! I sat and sat and finally made a jab at a password that *might* have worked and voila I was in! Whew! My husband stuck his flash drive so fast in to my travel laptop and we got all of my words out of that site as fast as we could. Talk about dodging a bullet!

Oh and Litlift finally did get back to me–via another “undeliverable email” message. It’s kind of unconscionable to me that no one has deleted that site or their Facebook/Twitter pages or made a notice that it’s defunct. NO ONE is minding the store, obviously. And people are signing up, trusting them. Ugh! I’m just glad I got my words.

In celebration, I will share some that I just opened to randomly and read to my husband the day I found them. Hope you like them too:

Cindy and I became famous for our spontaneous road trips. We would look at each other and almost simultaneously say “let’s go”. We would jump in the car and head to another city to visit a friend in college or in some cases make more dramatic adventures like that one time to Rocky Point Mexico on an impulsive Spring break weekend.
This trip was where I had the one and only foreshadowing of what was to come several years later. It was the trip where Cindy went missing and scared the living shit out of me.
“Come on, we’re going to Rocky Point” she called excitedly that day. “We’ll throw some stuff in the car, grab our sleeping bags, I have some food and we’ll play it by ear”.
As was often the case, this wasn’t a question or even an invitation. It was a mandate–we’re going. This was how things often went between us. Maybe I was having a rough moment, stressed in college, going through a break up or she was just having an itch. All I knew was she was driving and we were going. She streamlined it to what I had to bring, told me what time she was picking me up and that was that.
I loved our road trips. We had so much fun in the car. We’d make mixed tapes for them and catch up. Often it would start with “let’s obsess” once we hit the highway.
We were often going through something and with each other, could hash and rehash it to our heart’s content. It was almost always about boys–a world we were collectively befuddled in and failing at usually.
“Why is it that I’m not so in to a guy, then as soon as I have sex with him, I’m suddenly caramelizing for him and he’s not in to me?”.
Cindy created nicknames for everything and everyone.
Caramels somehow became a derivative of the word “karma” which was used, inaccurately, for being attracted to someone. “We have the karma” she’d say.
Then it turned to “I have caramels for him” which later became a verb “we were caramelizing, heavily” and on and on.
There was one road trip to LA where Cindy produced a tape recorder she’d borrowed from her work at the school system office. She’d brought it home for a project then got a wild hair to bring it on our road trip to visit Buddha in Santa Monica.
“I have a great idea for our trip” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “We’re going to interview each other”.
She named this interview show, via cassette tape, “The Dan Rather Show”.
For some reason, she spoke this name in in a semi British pretentious accent so it came out “The Dahn Rahthah Show”.
“Welcome to the Dahn Rahthah Show. Today’s guest will be….Oprah Winfrey!” and then she would interview me, using that five inch microphone tethered to the bulky cassette player while insisting I stay in character as Oprah Winfrey the whole time. Until she decided she was bored with Oprah and needed a new guest.
“Well, thank you for joining us Oprah. Now on to our next guest on the topic of ‘fame in America’ we welcome…Madonna!” and on and on with her in character questions.
She would stop the tape from time to time to listen to ourselves back as we laughed hysterically all the way across the boring desert to LA. Everything was a game with her.
Oh how I miss that. And how I wish I had those tapes. Even one of them.

I came here to this Conference the first time three years ago by myself. I’d never been to Seattle and it was such a magical trip, it took me five blog posts over on Two Innocents to write about it. I still feel the magic here but this time it gets doubled with my husband. We’ve slept well and dreamed here, written, shared, eaten great food, drunk wine he carried from PA, stared and stared at the gorgeous Puget Sound. And he’s teaching me chess. I lose every single time but last night gave him a run for his money holding him off my King for over an hour. VICTORY!

Today we take a train–the Amtrak Empire Builder–in to Seattle just for the experience of riding the train. We’ll bring our travel chess set and drink coffee and see a movie at the famous Cinerama theatre and then ride back. Not a bad Monday at all.

Hope you all out there are enjoying your Fall. I’m energized again to finish the book and I have a plan for another Sabbatical this Fall–in another part of the country. I’m ready to take this story to the next level.

Stay tuned…