Thank you for visiting Camp Strange, my little corner of the online world. This site contains a collection of some of the stories I have written over the past 6 years since I first began blogging at the now-defunct Beauty Dish, as well as new stories. You can read some of my funniest Avon Lady …
Tag Archives: Featured
Don Juan Miguel
Every couple of weeks or so I buy two chocolate croissants and two Mexican mochas with extra whipped cream at the French bakery and carry them across the parking lot to the 76 gas station garage. I give a pastry and coffee to the mechanic, Miguel, and we sit on oil-stained metal folding chairs and …
Vegetable Dreams
Little 7 walked into my bedroom this morning, rubbing his right eye. I scrutinized his swollen lid, decided it might be a bug bite, and groaned out of bed and into the kitchen to get a cucumber. Everyone knows that cukes reduce puffiness and pull toxins out of your eyes. I’ve seen countless magazine ads …
A Mom Called Paladin
A man walked across a desert wash. His black boots hit dry ground. His hand didn’t hover near his holster. He let it match his stride, let it swing in a carefree arc that spoke of contentment, of a man fully present in his body. The sagebrush rustled, almost bowed in pleasure as he passed. …
Marty Cherryseed
My youngest son crawls beneath my gramma’s quilt these mountain summer mornings. I brace myself to brave the scuffed pine floor in my bare feet as he flops on his stomach and places vintage comics on my extra pillow. I leave him to my warm bed, leave him to carefully turn fragile pages, to become …
State of Confusion
When movie cameras focus on the dusty Mexican border replica spanning the University Avenue bridge, they will capture the dark hours before sunrise. A man bleeding from a bullet wound will carry a battered valise filled with two million dollars cash, money found in a West Texas field littered with a dozen dead victims of …
All We Want
My youngest son, Martin, turns 10 in a few days. He woke me an hour ago. “I can’t sleep.” He tossed his art supplies on the bed and crawled in after them. Graphite pencils, rubber eraser, ruler, a pad of heavy paper. I flicked the lamp switch, let the soft light compete with the moon’s full glow. …