Last Monday marked my fifty-first first day of school. Some of those years were as a student, some have been as a professor, and the years in graduate school were both as a student and a teaching fellow. That is a lot of years of school! Most days I still love it.But, having not taught summer school for the first time in many years and thus having a peek at what retirement might look and feel like, I have to…
Here is what my June looked like in a picture a day… June is a few hours from being over. We are now halfway through 2017. And we are also closer to Christmas 2017 than Christmas 2016. You have 177 shopping days. The word that comes to mind when I look back at my daily photos from the month and I think about all the experiences that June brought with it is growth. The biggest event during this month is…
I was standing in the closet looking for a t-shirt to match my workout capris. We all know that time on the treadmill feels much better when your clothes match. Since tomorrow is laundry day and I’ve done my time on the treadmill 7 out of the last eight days, my clothing choices were limited…as in I had one pair of clean capris. And as it turned out, my choice of a matching t-shirt was equally limited. I pulled out my Human…
No fifty-something year old woman with no children or grandchildren around and who is fairly competent in the kitchen should be making a special trip to the grocery store to buy cream cheese, pretzels, Cool Whip, and Jello, all to be used in the same recipe…and be excited about it. But, this is exactly where I find myself today. I partially blame my Sifted Together blog buddy, Tracey, for this predicament in which I find myself. She gave me a…
It’s been a whirlwind of celebration and good times around our house for the last five days or so. I know how blessed I am to be able to say that as there are so many people in the world who have nothing to celebrate and not much to call good in their lives. My hope is that I’ll never take any of the gifts of this life for granted. A good friend flew in last Thursday to spend a…
I said yesterday that I am a minimalist. I don’t like to be surrounded by a lot of “stuff.” I also said that the one exception to my own “if I can’t use it right now then get rid of it” philosophy is books. I like books. All kinds of books. Weber likes books too. This is good for our relationship and bad for our bookshelves. When we got married, we had limited shelf space. We agreed that we would…
In the eleven years or so that I have been blogging, I have written this same post countless times…the one about having gone missing for months and now being back. They always come with a promise to do better. And countless times I have failed, but I keep coming back and trying again. Before writing this tonight, I have given some serious thought to why I keep falling short with regular posts lately. It is easy to blame a busy…
A friend recently texted to ask if I was OK because I haven’t posted here in the last week. I am as OK as anyone is who is sad and angry about what is happening in this country right now. I have not written because all I had to write about were things that I didn’t want to write about. Lol! More words about discrimination, families being torn apart, innocent people being treated like criminals, power and money prevailing over…
I am kind of in a creative slump right now, but I keep on keeping on, trying to work myself out of it. One thing that always helps is seeing this sweet little face…even when this face is up in my face at 3am because it needs to go outside. No matter what she does, it is impossible to get upset with Piper because she is such a happy and lovable little girl. Today’s Capture Your 365 prompt was open. You…
There is so much going on in this world right now that is not pretty that for the last few days, I have tried to stay away from the media, searching elsewhere for alternate truths. 🙂 It hasn’t been easy, but even in the midst of winter, the natural world is still full of beauty; it and my camera provided just the diversion that I needed! Seeing the movie Lion on Friday evening and the musical 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling…