Church

Perhaps the best thing about writing a column is having a forum to work out what I believe.
It’s also a great place to air my petty beefs and hope that somehow I can find a nugget of truth about God and his kingdom to help us all.
But mostly I just like to publicly tattle about people who irritate me.
For example, people who invade my personal space. This happens mostly at Walmart while at the register waiting for my grocery total.

Ed Preston died Oct. 5. He lived across the street from us. He had been at the Hospice House and his wife, Lillian, asked my husband to watch over their house while she stayed with him.
They were married 64 years. Ed turned 94 on Sept. 30.
The evening of Oct. 5 — it was a Wednesday — I saw our other neighbor drive off with Lillian. When they returned a few hours later I knew something had happened.
My husband and I went across the street, and as Lillian got out of the car she said, “Ed died.”
His memorial service was Monday.

Tachycardia is a dangerously rapid heartbeat, arrhythmia is an irregular heartbeat and dead is no heartbeat at all — and I had all three recently.
That may be a slight exaggeration and a bit of melodrama, but the truth is I experienced severe panic recently.
I lost my camera.
And by “my camera” I mean the one the Chronicle gave me to use and not mine to keep.

My daughter Alison writes a blog, “The Neurotic Housewife” (www.neuroticalison.wordpress.com).
Recently she fumed about a woman named Beverly who, unknowingly — or maybe not — “stole” her spot at the gym. Alison wrote: