My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
I remember reading Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, by Judith Viorst, to my kids when they were young. At the time, I was a working mother in my thirties, and I was sure my days were more terrible and horrible than any kid’s could be. I didn’t have a whole […]
Farewell, Bald Cypress Tree
I’ve written before about my husband’s bald cypress tree. We had it chopped down last week, at our neighbor’s request. If it had been my doing, it would have been chopped down many years ago. In my earlier post, I explained the bald cypress’s messiness and the inconvenience of raking it to keep the grass […]
More Treasures: Decluttering My Son’s Room
I’ve discovered that my son is more sentimental about the past than my daughter. That doesn’t really surprise me, despite gender stereotypes. He has always been a thoughtful kid, and he is (or at least, was) a “Feeling” type on the Myers-Briggs scale for decision making. When I involved my daughter in decluttering her room, […]
April Fool’s Day, 1975
I’ve never been one to play practical jokes. And I don’t like them played on me. But when I was at Middlebury College, I remember one April Fool’s trick I played on a professor. In the spring semester of 1975, I took a class from a professor who had intimidated me during my freshman year. […]
Spring Floods and the Oregon Trail
Here in the Midwest, we are experiencing serious flooding this spring. St. Joseph, Missouri, one of the prime “jumping off” points for the Oregon Trail, has had worse flooding this year than in any year in its long history. On March 22, 2019, the Missouri River reached 32.11 feet at St. Joseph, which was higher […]
Not So Random Photos: Spring Break 2003
Most of my photos are now packed away in boxes and would be difficult to rummage through. So I decided not to use a random photo for this post. Instead, I deliberately sought the oldest pictures we had in digital format on our PC—it’s much easier to search a PC than multiple boxes. My husband […]
Treasures That Might Have Been, and Those That Survive
As I’ve delved deeper into closets and drawers and boxes, I’ve found all sorts of things. And on a recent visit, I had my daughter go through her belongings to decide what we should save. She is far less sentimental about “things” than I am, and she kept very little. “There’s a bunch of jewelry […]
No March Madness Anymore
I was perhaps programmed from early childhood to work for Hallmark Cards, which I did for 27 years. When I was growing up, my mother made a big deal of celebrating birthdays. She sent cards on every holiday and on innumerable birthdays of relatives and friends. She mailed several greeting cards a week, and almost […]
Story Arc, as Depicted in George Caleb Bingham’s Election Series
On Saturday, March 2, 2019, other family members and I attended the Friends of Arrow Rock First Saturday Lecture presented by Dr. Joan Stack. Dr. Stack is an art historian who serves as the Curator of Art Collections at the State Historical Society of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. Her topic was “United We Stand: Bingham’s […]
Why I Write—It’s Not (Much) About the Money
It’s the middle of tax preparation season, a time of year I hate. I am still amazed that when my father died on January 5, 2015, he already had his 2014 tax information pulled together. Even now that my husband and I use an accountant, it takes me weeks of moaning and groaning to compile […]