Recovering

Where am I? Who am I? It was a great weekend, don’t get me wrong, but it ended as it began on Tuesday (though that wasn’t the beginning of my weekend; I had to work on Wednesday), with ten hours of driving to collect two little birds from two different college campuses. The good thing […]

Weekend Update

Good morning! Disorganized rambling from me today…. -Went to visit the triplet nieces this weekend. They turned four a week ago. Last time I saw them (1-1/2 years ago) they pretty much ignored me. By the end of that weekend, I think I was able to sit on the floor and have them play around […]

Insensitivity

Years ago, when I lived here… …we received permission to throw a party. We sat down to plan and arrived at the only weekend date between Thanksgiving and Christmas that was available. That day turned out to be December 7, Pearl Harbor Day, which commemorates those who died in the Japanese attack in 1941. The […]

And Now…Deja Vu

Three (!) years ago, I wrote a piece here called The Second Week Blues, in which I chronicled how The Magpie had done great at school for the first week plus, then hit a bump. What I didn’t tell you is that there was more to the story. Yes, she had picked up a nasty […]

And Now We’re Empty

One week ago today we left home to take the Magpie to her penultimate semester at college (no telling if next year we’ll be taking her to grad school, but I seriously doubt it). This was an easy trip, as her campus is a little over an hour away, and easy also because by this […]

Droning On and On

When I was a kid, one of the coolest things anyone could get was a free-flying, radio controlled (RC) airplane. No one I knew had one, but I recall one of my friends was building a model airplane (one of those made out of a forest of balsa wood, covered in tissue paper) that he […]

Monday Musing, Full Nest Edition

Well, it’s been a while. When I posted last, I kind of thought I’d be back last week, but time and circumstance worked against me. It was rather low on my priority list during the week. The big news is we picked up the Magpie at JFK airport on 8/7. After almost a full year […]

The Inescapable Cellphone

Back at the beginning of May, I worked with a group of 9 girls from one of the local colleges, organizing a clean-up along the trail at a local state forest. It was part of an effort called “Into the Streets,” where teams of students go off and do community service projects throughout the area. […]

Monday Musing: Hugs and Brain Cramps

Over the last few weeks there’s been a flurry of hugging going around. It’s a natural consequence of high school graduation–people suddenly come at you with arms open, as a way of saying both “Congratulations!” and “I understand the emotional whirlwind you’re going through, I’m there, too.” It’s not unpleasant, but it’s a little strange […]

We Made It…Now What?

Each year, our local high school holds its graduation ceremony at one of the loveliest sites in the area, a sloping sweep of lawn overlooking the lake. For the 12 years we’ve been here, I can’t remember a day when the weather is bad–not that we were in the habit of attending graduation, mind you. […]