Sometimes I take my computer into our living room to write in our comfy chairs that look out onto our front lawn. The change of scenery sometimes helps my imagination kick in, or my resistance to let go, as I attempt to finish a chapter in a book or write the next blog. Sometimes I [...]
What if there was a delivery to your home every morning of everything you have ever desired. Every morning the doorbell rang, the delivery was made, but you never answered the door. Or, you opened it by a little sliver, stuck your hand out, and grabbed the closest item and shut the door again. Inside [...]
Writing in coffee shops is an interesting experience. Even though I am not there to listen in on conversations, in fact, I try to block them out, sometimes it can’t be helped. One Friday morning, I didn’t arrive early enough to get my usual by-myself-seat, so I ended up on the back bench waiting for [...]
Are you stuck in a story? Well, who isn’t? Sometimes we don’t care. If the story works well enough, let it be. But what happens when the story isn’t working for us anymore? Then we have a choice. Rewrite the story completely, or do just enough to be more comfortable. Sometimes we want to rewrite [...]
As we make no and yes lists, there is something that usually makes it onto the wrong list. On our no list, we may say, no to making mistakes. This is a mistake. Ha. See what I did there? Instead, we should put this on our yes list, yes to being okay with making mistakes. [...]
Nine months ago I bought a reclining bike off the Let Go app and started in on cycling thirty minutes a day. I was inspired by my daughter who has been doing this for years. If she could do it, so could I. I’ve enjoyed it. It gives me the perfect excuse to read a [...]
Sometimes to figure out what we want to say yes to, we have to first learn to say no. We can all look back on our lives and remember times when we wish we would’ve made different choices. When perhaps we should have said no, instead of yes, or yes instead of no. After a [...]
Throughout the years I have talked about the jail we put ourselves in because of our beliefs and perceptions. So when someone ticks me off because of what they are doing or saying—and lord only knows we have enough of that going on—and my righteous anger and upset wants to kick in and judge what [...]
Have you ever had that moment when something you’ve known, or seen, your entire life shifts in your thinking and becomes an ah-ha moment? I had one of those moments the other day. Actually, it came on the heels of a few days when I kept noticing things differently. Maybe it was because I am [...]
This is the time of year when I get to the point that I feel that if one more person gives me advice, I think I might explode. This is laughable because I learned a long time ago that I am full of advice. And I like to give it. However, by late November I [...]
I imagined little monsters, fairies, and witches walking by my house wanting something from me and I was terrified. So terrified, I was huddled behind the couch in the dark. As I huddled behind the couch, I knew I was being irrational. No one would think I was home. After all, it was just children [...]
We were sharing snail jokes. One of my favorites is what a snail would say if she was riding on top of a turtle. The answer I loved was “Wheeee!” But there is another punchline to this joke. In this one, the snail says to the turtle, “Slow down you lunkhead.” For a snail traveling [...]
In a world that seems to have turned upside down and has a massive and ugly dividing line between so many people, perhaps it is helpful to look both backward and forward. Did you know that America was entirely up in arms about the possibility of a Catholic being elected for office back in 1928? [...]
Just because a watermelon calls you, you don’t have to take it home. This is a critical thing to know. And of course, I’m not talking just about watermelons. Come with me. I promise it will make sense. As long as I have been buying watermelons, I’ve bought them in a particular way. And I [...]
One morning after watching Del drive off to his work in the woods, I headed to my home office to do my work. I had already taken care of answering pressing emails, and I was all set to do my writing for the day. Writing is not a simple or easy thing to do. Being [...]
Have you ever stopped to think how often you’ve been protected and didn’t notice? Protection is something that happens so often we often don’t realize it. But, what about all the times we’ve tripped, almost pulled over into a car beside us, banged our head, walked into the street without looking, and were protected? Thinking [...]
Looking for writing ideas, I decided to go for a walk. Out into the world, where all ideas are waiting for me to catch a glimpse of them I didn’t have to go far. I stepped off the back deck just in time to see a tiny house wren hopping after a moth and catch [...]
This is the year of the chipmunks. Not sure why. Maybe there was a blackout one night, and all the chipmunks in our area spent the night making babies. For whatever reason, this year chipmunks had taken over our garden. Chipmunks are adorable. And destructive. Put the two together, and that means we trap them. [...]
I looked up and saw a miniature Native American chief in full dress walking on the edge of my deck. Okay. Not. But, for a minute my imagination took me there. And what I really saw was almost as astonishing as what I imagined. I have been reading the She Who Remembers book series by [...]
Mother’s day is a day we all celebrate because every one of us has had a mother. But, it could be more than a day of gifts and food. It is the perfect time to reevaluate how well we mother the people, places, and things in our lives. How well are we doing? Because not [...]
Sometimes I have no idea what to do with myself. Usually it is because there is so much to do. When it gets to be too much, I don’t want to do anything. Or I have so much on my mind, I don’t know what is the most important, so I don’t feel like thinking [...]
My sister wrote me and told me I was pronoid. Was she saying something nice? It had to be, it was my sister. So I looked it up in the urban dictionary. Yes, I am. Are you? It appears to be a condition I was born with. I can’t remember a time that I didn’t [...]
For a few winters, I forced Narcissus bulbs to bloom in our home. I wanted their beauty while the wind raged and the snow fell. We watched their growth from bulb to bloom with anticipation and joy. One year I put the bulbs in different glass containers on top of rocks, added water, and placed [...]
Football and I are casually acquainted, but it often inspires me. What I love most about it is the artistry and awareness that can develop between players. The most visible sign of this connection is between the quarterback and the receiver of his passes. There is nothing more glorious than watching a receiver make a [...]
I didn’t always have bird restaurants at my house. In fact, living in the city, spending twelve hours a day in my thirty sixth-floor office, I rarely saw them. Until one day, a bird ate my peanut and then something shifted, and I became a bird watcher. I had gone away for a week by [...]