Thank you all for your thoughts and good wishes for my grandpa. He has done the seemingly impossible and bounced back at 102 years old. On Friday afternoon he had a pacemaker put in, and he felt so good after the surgery that he wanted a plate of BBQ ribs. “I know I’m talking too…
Thank you all for your warm wishes for my grandpa (and me). I went over to see him yesterday afternoon, and if you can believe it, he HAD bounced back, just as I had hoped he would. He was sitting in his recliner, talking a mile a minute. Seriously, he covered the food he’d consumed;…
I’m sorry I’ve been quiet the last week. (And I’m sorry I was late on drawing names for the autographed copy of Hot (Sweaty) Mamas. I just had one of my fine coffee shop friends pull a name from a bowl, and it’s Cath C! Cath, send me your address, and I’ll get the book…
Imagine being alive for over a century and still not being ready to die—to be interested in and excited about (and sometimes disgusted with) the world. Some of you will remember my grandpa Spencer, who was ill a year ago when his abdomen filled with fluid, which made it difficult for him to breathe and…
I hope you all had a lovely holiday. We spent the week after Christmas up at my mom’s cabin in Northern Minnesota, and it was just the change of scene I needed. Stella and D cleared an ice rink on the lake, and Stella skated back and forth, undaunted by the number of times she…
We’ve had a lazy morning so far. Stella sewed a skirt for her Our Generation doll with her new sewing kit. Zoe has spent the last hour dancing around the living room in her frilly new dance skirt. There is fresh snow on the ground outside. Coffee and eggs for breakfast. I’ve even had a…
Across the Twin Cities, snow is heaped in piles as tall as houses. The roads have grown narrow, encroached on either side by towering boulevards. Cars inch across the city and back again. I have taken to driving with a shovel riding shotgun so I can leap out and clear a path through freshly plowed…
It’s been a dark fall for me. Even the sunny and warm days that stretched into November couldn’t pull me up and out of myself. And when the more typical cold and gray November weather set in, I could feel my energy sink further. It’s only in the last few days that I have felt…
I feel as though I’ve spent so much of the summer juggling and fretting that I’ve forgotten to enjoy these last months. I have been snappier with my girls, who are both in high-parental-involvement stages—Zoë is potty training and fully embracing all of the defiance inherent in being a two-year-old; and Stella is suspended somewhere…
We’ve gotten more snow here. I pulled back the curtain this morning, and said, shit, more snow. But now, as I stare out the window in my tiny office and I’m blinded by whiteness, by the glinting and sparkling of billions and billions of snowflakes in the bright sun, I have to admit that it’s…