I considered it a great compliment when my friend, Anne, said, “Your house is always so tidy.” And most of it is. But I have some “dirty little secret” areas (like my desk when I’m on deadline) that become cluttered and messy. Time to declutter. It happens on my kitchen table, too. I bring in the mail, but I’ve got to do something else, so I leave it on the table. For a few days. Where it piles up. This decluttering is ongoing. And our basement shelves. When we moved to West Michigan, those shelves were organized, things were in Read More
Category: General Musings
Reflections on life in general.
5 Ordinary Things That Brought Me Joy
My “One Little Word” for 2023 is “Ordinary.” I have been intentional in listening and watching for the sacred and beautiful in everyday, ordinary life. These five encounters really touched me recently. A Simple Flower The Stargazer Lily above suddenly appeared in our backyard this year. We’d purchased its great-great grandmother pre-Covid at a small farmer’s market and a bunny made a quick snack of it. It never sprang up again until this year. Now she sits directly in my line of sight when I sit at our kitchen table, and she always makes me smile. A Different Flower On Read More
My Latest Adventure: An Autoimmune Disorder
This was a really weird sensation… SHAVE As I was sitting in the balmy breezes on my deck, I felt a weird sensation, like someone slipped silk across the skin on my legs. When I leaned over and brushed off what I thought might have been bugs, or worse yet SPIDERS, I discovered the source. The breeze was tickling my hairy legs. Very weird indeed! I laughed out loud. Recently, I was diagnosed with IgA vasculitis which shows up as petechiae, or small red dots on my legs. IgA vasculitis is an autoimmune disorder and means the capillaries in my Read More
How Do You Break Up with Your Hairstylist?
There are many important people in our lives, and our hairstylist is near the top. Especially if you, like me, have troublesome hair. Let’s face it, for some of us, how our hair turns out in the morning can set the tone for the day. I have fine, thin, natural-curly hair. For years, I fought the curls and blew my hair dry, and it didn’t have much volume. A few years ago, on a trip with my daughter, daughter-in-law, and sister-in-law, my B&B room did not have a hair dryer. By the time I got one, my hair was dry—and Read More
Are You Prepared for a Medical Emergency?
Author’s note: This topic is far different from most I write about, but I think it is the most important blog post I’ve ever shared with you. This advice helped prepare me for an emergency. My husband Rich suffered a heart attack on January 5. He’d been having some chest pain, and our doctor instructed us on what to do if we had to go to emergency. For several nights one thing that kept me up was the fear that I would not remember my street address if I had to call 911. Our doctor ordered blood work and a Read More