I Love a Good Funeral
My husband’s aunt passed away a week ago. She’d been ill with brain cancer for nearly three years, and had suffered greatly in the past few months, and so we’d had time to prepare ourselves. But I don’t think you’re ever fully prepared, even if you’d prayed for that person’s release and wished for their […]
Tears for the Hashtag
A couple of days ago I found myself in a Twitter blur, just scrolling through strangers’ tweets, wondering what makes people want to broadcast 140 characters of … whatever… into the cybersphere. It’s fun. I like Twitter. It’s kind of a noncommittal medium. You say it but it floats away. Like on the wings of […]
Warm Winter Wonder
I know the November public thank-a-thon is over, but I have to publicly state something I’m thankful for: heat. By heat, I mean central heating in my house. What a fabulous invention! I love it so much that I find myself rejoicing in it every day, especially after going without it for so long. It’s not like […]
Agonizing Christmas Card Etiquette Debate
This decision is stressing me out. It’s worse than the stress I’m feeling about the three writing deadlines I have coming up right after Christmas. It’s more stress than getting all the shopping and baking and visiting and serving done that makes it feel like “the season.” The decision? Whether it’s okay to send my […]
Two Kids Down, Three to Go
Over Thanksgiving, we went to my husband’s aunt and uncle’s house for the big feast. We go every year, and even though the aunt and my mother-in-law are the only two children from their family, their posterity really is quite vast. This year there were 55 there, and two of the larger families were missing. […]
Real Men Wash Their Jeans
Hey, my little novella Super Daisy! just got a fun review: “If you’ve ever had an unrequited love, a mean girl who terrorized you, a family business that’s struggling, a dead end job, and strong-as-diamonds-fingernails then you’ll totally relate to this delightful tale. Give it a read.” Nice, right? Granted, it was from my sister. […]
Living Up to My Privileges as a Parent
I *finally* shampooed my carpets this morning. It’s such a disgusting task. Not the actual scrubbing part. I’ve got a carpet shampooer. It’s fine. It’s the dumping part–when I pour the sucked-up cleaning water down the drain. Gross. It’s just almost sludge. While I like the illusion of cleaner carpets, I wonder how many, many […]
America’s Best Kept Secret
We travel to Idaho every summer. My family is there, parents, at least. Since we live in southern Arizona, we’re still in the West, and I always tell myself it won’t be that different from here. The southern part of Idaho is still considered part of the Great Basin, it’s a desert, there’s a drought […]
Blast from the Past! Why I Love Old Tech
I am an unabashed Old Techy. In my opinion, DVDs were the dumbest invention ever. Music CDs were a close second. Why did we have to be so danged careful with something that cost $15-$20, an item which a single scratch (or sometimes NOT EVEN a scratch) would make it unusable? I ask you! It […]
Meeting Contestants from “The Voice”
I can’t believe it’s been a whole week since we lived out my Mother’s Day gift dream and went to the LOCAL concert featuring some of this season’s best singers from NBC’s “The Voice.” Time flies! We took the whole family to see rocking songstress Amy Whitcomb, folk rock duo Midas Whale, and our hometown […]
