In the United States, today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday created to celebrate and honor the life and work of Rev. Dr. King, a man who literally gave his life in the fight to end racial inequality in this country. Less significantly, for me this day has also always marked the real end to the Christmas holidays, as the spring semester begins on the Tuesday after MLK Day. Again, in no particular order, #45 on…
A year ago today, my friend Becca and I were in Miami getting ready to board a huge cruise ship for a weeklong vacation with no agenda except rest, relaxation, and spending time with each other in the Caribbean. Becca is an occupational therapist and had just worked through the Christmas holidays and I was about to go back to teaching the spring semester. This was the one week where our schedules worked so we booked ourselves a mental health…
I miss going to the grocery store. Not because I miss grocery shopping…I have become quite the fan of grocery delivery, but because I miss looking at all of the things that I don’t need and end up buyig anyway. One of my favorite grocery store impulse buys is magazines. Sometimes it is magazines full of pretty food photos and recipes that catch my attention. If I’m not feeling like adulting, it may be puzzle or coloring books. Sometimes, usually…
January 1, 2021…I know that many people waited with anticipation last night as the clock’s hands moved to 12:01, hoping that they were a magic wand that had the power to sweep away all of the challenges that accompanied us through 2020. I am a realist and have never been one for fairytales. And honestly, New Year’s Eve has never been on my list of top days to celebrate. There is no magic that comes with a new year. The…
Back in the summer of 2018, I took a bucket list trip to Alaska, a cruise with several of my closest friends. It was an amazing trip, all that I hoped it would be and much more. I wrote a little about it HERE in a short-lived series of posts titled Sailing Toward Sixty. When I wrote the initial post about taking the Alaska trip, I intended it to be a series that I would write over three years, chronicling…
The pandemic lifestyle has challenged each of us to adjust our routines and redefine our notion of normal. Some of these changes have been tough; others have become positive ah-ha moments. It’s 2:20 on a Monday afternoon. Because I slept later than usual and thus ate a later=than-usual breakfast, the lunch debate at our house was just now happening. Since it was so late in the day, we tossed around the idea of skipping lunch and eating an early dinner. …
When I was in college, now forty years ago, my favorite breakfast was animal crackers and grapefruit juice. I would get up most mornings around 5:15 so that I could be in the practice room by 6am, getting in almost two hours of practice before my eight o’clock class. This college routine taught me much about the discipline needed as a musician, but maybe not so much about breakfast being the most important meal of the day. As a college…
I am an introvert, an introvert that thrives on the solitary creative process. So, being at home for all of these months has been a gift to me. I’ve had the time and energy to do the things I love to do as well as dabble in some new to me forms of creative expression. The one place, however, where I prefer being with others rather than going solo, literally, and that I do miss, is making music. Playing or…
Several of you asked to see a photo of the blanket I wrote about in my previous post. Here it is. I have finished 35 of its 55 blocks. Today had to pull out half of block 36 because I realized that I was not going to have enough yarn to finish it. That is the risk when working with partial skeins. Without doing more measuring than I am interested in, I have no way of knowing exactly how…
For whatever reason, the first thing that I feel called to do at the end of every semester is to go on a cleaning binge. This is likely due to the fact that housekeeping is never a priority for me during the school year. The kitchen and bathroom are cleaned regularly and are sanitary, but several generations of dust bunnies have taken up residence under my bed. I suspect that their gestation period is about four weeks so there are…