Beth Dolinar

Sometimes a girl needs to get out of her comfort zone and get some local culture. That is how I found myself sitting on the bleachers one warm spring night, watching cars smash into each other.

Saturdays around here are for cleaning the fridge.

The music died last week.

There’s a sad truism that will appear in media now and again, the one that reminds us that for all mothers, there was (or will come) a moment we would pick up, change, or feed our child for the last time. The melancholy of it lies in our not knowing it would be the last time – that the child…

This new car of my is a real kick to drive. It’s lower to the ground than my previous, larger Subaru – but not so low that I have to make grunting noises when getting in and out of it – and it hugs the road. As someone who can be stricken with remorse after buying a Starbucks latte, I’m happ…

There’s a mean little riddle I have to play every morning these days.

My neighborhood reeks.

It was the first pedal stroke, looming there like a question mark over my winter days.

Maybe it was because it arrives long past Christmas, but come every spring, I’ve decide that Easter’s the better holiday. Early Easters, the ones in March, sometimes bring snow, but the later ones, as in this year, come with blue skies and yellow patches of daffodils popping up all over.

Some of my neighbors up here on Mt. Crumpit put pretty wreaths on their front doors, red heart-shaped ones in February and green shamrock ones in March. Now that Easter’s coming, the doors are festooned with pastel flowers. I like seeing the wreaths when Smoothie and I take our walks down to…

It’s tax season again, and as always, the job of getting things in order sent me traveling back in time, wandering through the last 12 months. It’s an annoying task, off course, but it’s also weirdly revealing. Collecting all the business of the past year has a way of dredging up things I’d …

My new car came with satellite radio, that place with dozens of stations that offer genres of music so specific you never hear anything except what you’re in the mood for – and no commercials, either.

After seven years, my car had become like a shaggy old dog, lovable in every way except that it can’t really do things anymore. My Subaru Forester had seen me through more than 110,000 miles of sunny open highway and a few snowstorms.

A few weeks ago, this corner of the newspaper was devoted to my devotion to Junior Mints. I went on and on, 600 words worth, about the minty deliciousness of the Junior; how I regularly visit the Dollar Store to stock up on the slender white boxes; how I keep a row of them in the cabinet to …

Looks like this will be the year of great big pants.

The first time I heard my voice on a recording, I was horrified.

I live on Mt. Crumpit, a windy peak high above a couple of bustling suburbs. Drive down the mountain to one side and I’m in Bridgeville. Drive down the other side and I’m in that land of chain stores and restaurants known as Robinson.

Five-point-seven weeks. That’s what the calculator on my phone showed me when I punched in the numbers our human relations director sent in an email.

My children have never starred in my dreams, probably because they’re always in my waking thoughts. Around the time they left the nest for school, my dreams turned to the worst kind of nightmares: the one where I was hundreds of miles away and couldn’t find my way back to them. I’m glad that…

Once every week or so, I drive the five miles to a shopping center near me. There are plenty of places to spend money, on hardware-related things and groceries and those inedible pickle-juicy sandwiches at that chicken place.

For the longest time, I thought the smell was seeping through the painted wall.

“You’re bossy.”

This is my least favorite week of the year – of this year and most other years.

As he headed upstairs to the guest room, my son told me not to fuss in the morning.

Annette and I were back in the Benedum Center in downtown Pittsburgh Sunday evening, continuing the Christmas tradition we’ve been doing for 20 years. Our seats to see the Nutcracker ballet were down front, in the center section about seven rows back.

This is going to be a bit unpleasant, but anyway.

Every few days a poem crosses my Facebook feed and it makes me stop and think.

This holiday weekend will be spent off my feet.

Is there anything as frustrating, worrisome and inconvenient as having a weird light start flashing on the car dashboard? On a Saturday? When a ways from home? When you live alone?

Beth Dolinar’s is off this week. Her column will return next Friday.

So I’m lying there in my paper shorts and thin cotton robe, opened in the front. And my legs are in the tube, but they left my head out, which is a good thing because I might be a teensy bit claustrophobic.

The handsome doctor took my knee in his hand, pushed the kneecap around a bit, then rolled his chair over to the exam table; on the paper cover he drew a diagram of a knee.

It wasn’t until the landscaper rang the doorbell that I found out that Smoothie and I had been in danger.

\It’s that time of year when people are rolling up their shirt sleeves for a flu shot.

Good thing the package arrived in time, because otherwise I don’t know what I would have worn. Last weekend was the Mid-Atlantic Emmy awards, an event that would have me traveling to Philadelphia to sit in a room with hundreds of attractive people, half of them handsome men in tuxedos.

Wrenched my back this week. It was all Smoothie’s fault, but Elvis was complicit.

Cocoa Puffs helped make a good reader.

My new axe is large but not too large, and it’s golden brown and a real beauty.

The hardest time in my life was about 23 years ago, when my daughter was a baby.

The dishwasher has been useless for going on three weeks now, its control panel goading me with two blinking green lights.

Someone lives on the other side of the wall we share.

For two summers during college, I worked full time at a farm. Except for my writing and television work, that was by far my favorite. It was there, at Simmons Farm in McMurray, that I built my affinity for any work that would put me under all that blue sky.

Reentry after time away is always tricky. I’m thinking of what the moon astronauts must have felt like hurtling toward the ocean at 6 miles a second in the Command Module, thinking, “Well, that sure was fun, but now it’s back to the real world, ugh.”

Tucked inside this 600-word story of flop sweat is a lesson in adulting, which will become evident shortly.

Last week in this space I whined about the leg cramps I get the nights after riding my bike too hard on hot days, and you all came through for me.

Is there anything more painful than a leg cramp?

The signs around town were inviting people to a concert in the park.

My Allen wrench game is strong, very strong. This I learned in the way we all learn that we have this skill: by building furniture.

The two weeks it took to get cable, I was without television.

It’s been three weeks in my new place.

Twice in the past few weeks a friend told me how hearing music from the Eagles band makes him feel young.

Everything about moving is dreadful, an exercise in endurance. The packing and the lifting, the sorting and the tossing out, the donating and the keeping – all of it is exhausting and irritating.

It’s been 25 years since I first wrote a column for this space.

This is the story of how I found myself sitting at the piano that was played by Fred Rogers. The very thought of it made me nervous and humbled and so very honored.

I was standing by the road waiting for my ride, holding onto the large sheet of parchment paper to keep the wind from tearing or creasing it, or carrying it away.

Nothing will force you to take a good look at your stuff like being told to hide it all away. I know this because I was up until 3 this morning jamming all of it into closets.

So I bought my next home.

It’s time to put on our shoes, fix up our hair, and head back into the world.

Thirteen years ago I got cancer and went bald from chemotherapy.