We are back to the "Year of Unending Winter" (one of my past titles – twice!). It’s always hard to take these repeat winter tantrums when we get a 50-60 degree day, but it is still March and March is one of those months that can go either way – and usually does go both ways. Teasing us with warm-ups, then slamming us with winter again. Those of us who suffer from S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder) will find it even harder to push forward. But do so. We know, like everything

I have a favorite video of one of my grandsons when he was only about a year and a half old. He had a new game, and he was taking the pieces out of the box and saying “game.” With each piece: “gaaame,” A least a half dozen times, “gaaame,” with an emphasis on the “ga” part and holding the “a” out. You think that is cute, but then he says “fun, fun” almost as if it is par for the course – a game means fun. Then he comes to the gameboard and says, “paper,” and we smile. So smar

Do you LOVE   emojis? The expressions emojis give us help us to communicate what we are feeling. Some people may think emojis are silly, for kids, or a waste of time, but for some of us they give us joy in the visual tool and power with our conversation. If we really love a post on someone’s Facebook page, text, etc., an emoji saves time if we click on that heart or “like.” If we want to sympathize with someone going through a tough time, there is the teary face or two people

She built tall foreboding walls like that of a castle. They surrounded her. Around the walls was a moat Made from the tears that came from her soul. Her walls grew higher Her moat grew deeper Until, finally, she becomes the walls she has built Walls that will inevitably crumble to their death.   Redemption   The waters have receded now. She reaches heavenward to the Light. Brick by brick She painfully struggles to take the walls down. The moat has dried She can feel the warmt

I have done three blogs on wallpaper. One on an antique wallpaper, one wallpapering with friends, and one on miraculously supplied wallpaper. I wonder where I can go with this? You know I must find a rabbit hole to jump into.   How about the wallpaper of our lives – what does it look like? When we were babies maybe the first roll was just pink, yellow, or blue because we hadn’t lived life yet – no one knew who we were yet . Or maybe it had pink flowers or basketballs on it, p

Have you ever had something happen that had an extraordinary connection to you and you couldn’t explain the timing or situation?   One of my sisters told me that when she bought the wallpaper for her stairs and hallway, she needed a lot, and she was afraid she wouldn't be able to afford it. She went to the local wallpaper store and found a whole box of wallpaper priced really cheap. She loved it and asked the owner why it was so cheap. He said it was purchased for the house t

Working on the last couple week’s blogs, got me thinking about time. A hundred years ago – 1926, my grandfather was 26 years old, had a wife and a family, and would live to see some of the most innovative changes of all time. It was only a hundred years ago. A hundred years always seemed like forever to me. Like, FOREVER. If someone reached 100 years old, they were OLD. It was amazing and celebrated – whether they were happy to be alive or not. But now, as time passes on and

I promise! Next week I’ll get off snow and cold – we’ve had enough here in Michigan! But last week’s blog on Michigan’s storms made me wonder if there were snowblowers in 1959, and I know some of you like my informational blogs, so I had to check it out.   Before there was snow removal equipment (we won't get into shovels, which have been around since the caveman), people with wagons would switch out the wheels on their carriages for ski-like runners. Then there were horse-dr

Those of us in the northern climes understand snow. We understand how to drive in it (rock and roll, turn the steering wheel, etc.), how to walk in it (trudging through or like a penguin when it’s slippery), we understand that it is coming whether we want it or not, and we appreciate the beauty of it when it forces us indoors. The soft, white blankets covering everything, formed layers on windows, magical artwork of drifts, and the intricate detailing of each individual, uniq

Some of us prefer, or get, a simple life fraught with no more danger than relatively minor or unlikely fears – perhaps just missing being in a car accident or having “difficult” family members. Forget about real fear. The kind where you push someone aside to save them and hope the car doesn’t hit you. Or you stand in line with protestors who are fighting for peace while there are guns pointed at you. Or being an African American child who walks through aggressive lines of hat

One day I happened to look across the room I was sitting in and saw a box that had been delivered a short while earlier. It was an Amazon box, which means the smiling arrow was on the end I could see. I am not sure if it is meant to be a smile or just a “going out” logo, but I always see it as a smile – going out. Anyway, their orange tape happened to be strapped across the smile as if someone was trying to cover up or stop the smile. That made me think about how sometimes we

We lost a son/brother/-in-love/husband/father/grandfather late 2024. He not only had a big heart and a big voice, but he was hilarious. When the year 2000 rolled around (Y2K, do you remember it?), everyone was petrified that the computer systems were going to crash. Tons of extra computer programmers were hired to get the systems ready to flip to 2000 (instead of 1900’s). There was a great deal of commotion leading up to it. Some people bought or created survival kits. Others

What are your favorite memories of Christmas? Was it a special gift that you REALLY wanted? Was it the traditions that the family did – stringing popcorn, eating at grandparents’ houses, putting the tree up, or was it the giving or getting of gifts?   I remember my great aunt telling me that when she was a child, the present they got from their grandparents was a cookie that grandma made with an iron shaped tool that was dipped in batter and deep fried. Grandma would hang the

Since it’s almost Christmas, I thought I would think about angels. Angels We Have Heard on High…and all that. Who heard them? I googled it. Google didn’t have an answer. It just brought up Revelation 5:11 from the Bible, “Then I looked again, and I heard the voices of thousands and millions of angels around the throne and of the living beings and the elders.”  (New Living Translation) Of course we know the shepherds heard the angels announcing the birth of Jesus and that’s wh

I have a friend who I seldom see anymore, but we hung out a fair amount when we were raising our children. This is sad because she is one of the funnest people I know. When we get together, we laugh. A lot. We will call her Mable.­ One of our episodes revolved around hanging a wallpaper border in her dining room.­ You probably had to be there to appreciate it properly, but it was pretty comical – especially when you get two laughers together. It began at the beginning of the

I was listening to a post of the Beatles singing "Hey Jude" and thinking music is our universal language. But then I saw that laughter and tears must be. Unless we have a poker face, an expression on our face would definitely help communication – if we are noticing. Music feeds our souls and breaks barriers to connect us – to ourselves, to each other, to our surroundings, to God, but laughter and tears – they speak volumes. And our response to seeing someone either laughing o

Remember the first thanksgiving dinner? It was a three-day harvest celebration. In 1621, the Plymouth (Massachusetts) Colony Pilgrims who had survived the prior winter (half of them died; about fifty survived) and the Wampanoag tribe (Native Americans) numbering about ninety feasted together. In that first year the pilgrims were in North America, the Wampanoag tribe had helped them, including teaching them farming techniques. Do you remember Squanto from your history books wh

What is just around the corner, you ask? Maybe it’s a “boo!”? (It was just Halloween…) Or is it a surprise party…? Or a disaster…? Tons of stuff are just around the corner. But in this case, it was a restaurant.   One of my brothers lived in Chicago for a number of years and while he was there one of our daughters was looking into colleges in the Windy City. So we stayed with him for a few days, and he graciously helped us get around. After one of the college tours, it was so

Do you feel like you are in a low valley? Craggy mountains rise all around you, closing you in. Not a patch of green for hope or any way out? Have you been there for a while?   We all have these times. Sometimes, they are part of us: depression, loneliness, fear, anxiety... Other times, they are thrust on us – an unfaithful spouse, a sick child, bad health, the death of a loved one – things we cannot control. Things that slide us down to that pit that gets a hold of us, if we

Suppose the earth flipped upside down. Would we be upside down, too? Are the people on the bottom of the globe upside down? (How amazing is this earth and its gravity?!) Suppose…your pets could talk. Would you listen to them? If you have a number of them, it might be a challenge to keep up with them.   Suppose there were no starfish in the ocean – or dolphins, or whales or coral or…? Would the oceans be bland and boring? Would we “see” them differently? Suppose…an ice age cam