Wake up and roll out of bed … Hug the husband, Start the coffee, Make the bed, Water the garden, Empty the dishwasher, Take out the trash, Scrabble together some lunch. Morning chores … mundane, monotonous; the ordinary stuff of our ordinary days. Necessary jobs using up (wasting?) our precious time. The boring by-products of […]

I have been doing dip manicures for over a year now. If you don't know what a dip manicure is here is how the Cleveland Clinic defines it: "a popular manicure technique where your natural or artificial nails are brushed with a resin/glue base and dipped into a finely milled colored powder. The process is […]

I have been reposting older content lately. I like going back and reading my own posts. They make me smile and they make me think and I hope they do one or the other for you, too. If they do both, all the better! But I am committed to a bit of a new thing: […]

Memorial Day is past; it is now officially "The Season of the Porch!" I have declared it so! We live in a very old home. The exact date she was built is sketchy. We have some books that came with the home when we purchased her almost 26 years ago, and they allude to the […]

It's allergy season in Iowa and my husband is suffering. Sneezy, red, watery eyes, head stuffed. It's rough. So rough that we decided -- for everyone's sake -- he should sleep in our guest room for a bit. Usually this means I don't have to use the white noise machine placed perfectly on my bedside […]

I love the newsletter The Marginalian by Maria Popova. It's brilliant and so well curated it is almost as if you read an entire life-altering book (or two!) when you immerse yourself in her musings. She wrote this recently and I cannot stop thinking about it: "You are the only custodian of your own integrity […]