My personal goal year ends today, so it’s time for another check-in. Not a lot has changed since my last review, but I need closure. Also, looking at what I’ve done and failed to do is a good preparation for setting goals for next year. Goal #1 – Body: I declared success on this one […]
I read something a little while ago that’s got me thinking about right and wrong in our everyday lives. A woman writing about the movies she’d seen recently mentioned, almost as an aside, that she and a friend had seen these films by buying a ticket for the first one and then going from theater […]
Kayaking season has started, so Mr. Karen took off for wetter and wilder parts east this weekend. Often when I have a Saturday alone I’ll cocoon at home, listening to NPR and working on whatever quilt project I’ve got going. Today NPR was not an option, because I did not want to hear the all […]
I’m learning Japanese, I think I’m learning Japanese, I really think so. Tonight with tell, as we have our first quiz in the class Mr. Karen and I are taking at one of the community colleges. We took French there before we went to France some years ago, and that worked out pretty, so we […]
In honor of my Irish heritage this St. Patrick’s Day, I’m wearing a little round pin with my maternal grandfather’s picture on it. He gave this pin to his sweetheart, the woman I knew as Grandma, to mark their engagement until they could afford a ring. Before I got married, Grandma Bess gave me both […]
Today is my 41st birthday. I’ve reached an age at which the only people who consider me young are senior citizens. Conventional wisdom says I should be feeling at least a little down about this, about getting older in a society that prizes younger women. I’m not. I didn’t have a fit when I turned […]
I’ve reached goal; I’m done losing weight. I succeeded not by dropping ten pounds in a week to reach 140, the number I’ve been aiming at for the last two years, but by changing the target. Yesterday I went to Weight Watchers and officially changed my goal there from 145, a number I’d picked so […]
I was late to work again this morning, but not due to snow. This time it was because Mr. Karen and I went to get our mortgage refinancing paperwork notarized. I thought finding a notary was going to be the hard part of the process, but it turns out that there’s a Mail Boxes etc. […]
My calendar says the first day of spring is a week from today, but there’s no hint of it outside today. Or if there is a hint of it, I can’t see it because it’s buried under the two to four inches of snow that fell just in time to mess with my drive to […]
When I saw “clutter” on the AlphaBytes word list, I knew that was the C word for me. That one resonated. But when it came time to start writing about it, my reaction was akin to what I feel when it comes to dealing with the actual stuff itself– overwhelmed. Should I write about the […]
Today started well enough, especially considering it’s Monday. I woke up a little before the alarm and my morning routine went smoothly. Deciding what to wear was even easy; when the temperature is this cold on a work day, it’s wool sweater time, and I’ve got only a few of those because I hate washing […]
After I finished the zoo baby quilt, I planned to work on a quilt for me, one of my unfinished objects. I got the blocks for that quilt out and put them all up on my felt wall to ponder whether I wanted to change some of them or just start sewing them together. What […]
I’m covering for one of my coworkers this week. He’s on vacation in the northern woods, unreachable. One of his customers, let’s call him Weasel, phoned this morning with a problem. We discussed it, identified what appeared to be the cause, and I told him I’d look into it and call him back as soon […]
One of the segments on This American Life this past weekend posed the question, “Which superpower would you choose, flight or invisibility?” It didn’t take me long to decide– flight, definitely. Flight is the stuff of my dreams. In that space where anything is possible, I’ve soared over the landscape, able to move easily from […]
Sally Hansen done me wrong. I thought we had a solid relationship. I thought I could count on her. I was sadly mistaken. Sally’s been leading me on, and this morning I discovered the deception. The day started well enough. Tired of looking at the bruise under my toenail, I thought I’d put some polish […]