On the freeway of life, Lisa Watson was stuck at the entrance ramp, trapped behind a cautious old lady in a Buick.

My glass is not only half-empty, I'm convinced someone spit in it.

Like so many named places in California it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts--census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to its own freeway.

It was like being in a car with the gas pedal slammed down to the floor and nothing to do but hold on and pretend to have some semblance of control. But control was something I'd lost a long time ago.

building a life, not a bomb.

There are ten or twenty basic truths, and life is the process of discovering them over and over and over.