Hi Reader, Last fall, I told you I’d been accepted into an anthology called Animal Mayhem: When Wild Things Go Wilder. As promised, here’s the rest of the story. My contribution began over coffee with friends — the way many good stories do. I told a tale about a dear friend’s pet. There was mistaken identity. Absolute confidence. Spectacular wrongness. It became legend. Eventually, I wrote it down. It lived briefly on a long-ago blog. Then it went into a drawer. Where it has been sitting for...

Hi Reader, Release the doves. It is the day you have all been waiting for. April 13th—my birthday. (No gifts necessary; send cash.) And in case you’re new here, I share a birthday with Alfred Mosher Butts, the inventor of Scrabble. This feels correct. So, in honor of this auspicious alignment, I present: Scrabble Myths… Busted. Myth #1: I am a cut-throat Scrabble player. You may have heard the warnings. “Don’t play Scrabble with Judi unless you’re prepared for bloodshed.” Friends, nothing...

Hi Reader, April 11th is 4/11 Day around here. Which means it’s my personal holiday dedicated to clarity, context, and actually knowing what’s going on. So let’s apply that energy to one of the most common things people say to me: “It doesn’t sound like me.” That sentence isn’t about confidence. It’s about confusion. In Scrabble terms, it’s having letters on the rack but no clear move on the board. The writing is fine. The words are accurate. But the strategy isn’t clear. Usually, one of...