Open and Closed.
Darren and I recently had the opportunity as grandparents to watch our just barely one-year-old grandson for a weekend while the rest of his family took a trip. Yes, we survived. (And our marriage did, too.) One of Finn’s favorite tricks was to pull himself up to one of the big drawers in our kitchen […]
Order of Operations.
One of my sisters texted me the other night and said “I need you to do this math problem and tell me the answer. I’ll explain later.” She attached a picture of a scrap of paper with this handwritten on it: 3 (5+3+45) – 12 – 16 ÷ 8 x 3.14 I did the […]
Ride the wave.
When summer started 4 months ago, one of the first things Darren and I did was go with all the kids – and their kids — to California. There were 12 of us together for several days and it was all we wanted it to be. We loved every minute. At the end of […]
A green grape and Highway 6.
Many of you who read this blog know that I am prone to falling. I could write a book about all the times and ways and places I’ve fallen down. And maybe someday I will. Recently my husband and my step-kids have been re-living a fall I had over 5 years ago. Re-living it […]
Madame Zeroni and the mountain.
I used to make my high school students watch the movie “Holes” in class each year. It was one of the only ‘legal’ PG movies we could show back then that didn’t require a permission slip. But that’s not why I had them watch it. It starred a high-school-aged up-and-comer named Shia LaBeouf and […]
Mr. Nobody
In the house in which most of my siblings and I grew up, there was a long straight hall in between my parent’s room and my dad’s study. The hallway had dark brown short shag carpet, two electrical outlets, one picture of Jesus, 6 doors, and an attic access on the ceiling. Does it sound […]
Nourish and Strengthen.
‘Rote’ is defined as a routine, mechanical way of doing something. I would wager that a lot of folks who pray regularly have some rote phrases that show up in their prayers, passed down from family to family. In my family of origin, this was especially true in prayers over the food. A […]
The part that will change everything.
8 years ago I started to feel the pull to move from the condo that I had owned for 18 years. I didn’t have a great ‘reason’ except that I knew in my heart that it was time. I thought it was maybe because I needed to be closer to my parents. My dad’s […]
Risk Management.
Early in the morning in early January of this year, my mom and all my siblings received a text from one of my older sisters telling us her oldest son had crash landed a small airplane he was piloting. Realizing some of us are worriers (ok, one of us) she started the text with “J.R. […]
You’re making it harder.
We have a house rule about paper towels – whoever uses the last one replaces the roll. It’s pretty straightforward, right? Well, the lengths Darren will go to to be the one NOT to replace the roll have gotten pretty extreme. This afternoon the roll was getting low, so I put a new roll on […]
