I’m hunkering down, preparing for the big snow storm forecasted to hit Minnesota tonight. We don’t have to drive more than a few miles to celebrate Christmas, so I’m fine with the snow, but I hope all of you who DO have to travel arrive and return safely. Stella and D are out ice-skating for…
It’s been difficult for me to keep my eyes open this week. I’m fighting another cold, a cold I will continue to get—over and over again—because I’m always tired. I never get enough sleep. But what is the solution? Go to sleep at 9 pm? Then I have no time to unwind after the girls…
Over the last year, I have tried to be very deliberate about being thankful. We have continued are pre-dinner ritual of going around the table and listing things for which we’re thankful. D and I, especially in the last few weeks, have been thankful—very thankful—for his new job. But even when there wasn’t that prospect,…
I’m sitting here in my small office, that tiny room of my own, staring out the window. The wind is scattering the fluff of milkweed across our lawn, and I know that next spring it will pop up everywhere, pushing through grass, undeterred by the mower, which will plow it down, again and again. I…
Maybe you remember my grandpa. He’s 100 years old. Maybe you remember the post I wrote about him last January, before his birthday. Maybe you remember my post about the hectic nature of our weekly errand days, when I drive him and my girls out to West St. Paul to the grocery store, where, after…
D got a new job, which is, of course, a huge relief. It begins in a week and a half, and it means health insurance and a regular paycheck, a paycheck that will actually come when it’s supposed to come, a paycheck that won’t be a week late (or two weeks or six weeks late).…
Things have been hard around here, which you’ve probably gathered from my last few posts. It’s amazing how easy it is not to think about money when you have it, and how it’s all you can think about when you don’t have it. Ah. But things are looking up. I hope. I’ll keep you posted…
Beware: I’m a downer today. I’ve been feeling low the last few days—sensitive. The kind of sensitive that makes my feelings easily hurt, the kind of sensitive that makes it difficult to fall back to sleep if I wake up in the middle of the night. The kind of sensitive that makes me read too…
On Thursday night while I was nursing Zoë (yes, we’re back to bedtime nursing because of her recent cold and ear infection), I experienced a sharp pain in my chest, followed by a dull ache lasting about 10 minutes. I had been short of breath earlier in the day, so I thought I should get…
A few weeks ago, I posted about Mimi’s orchid, the one I chose from her greenhouse after she died. I had almost given up hope that it would ever bloom in our house, but five years since its last flowering, here it is, Mimi’s Vanda Rothschildiana: Whenever Mimi’s orchids bloomed, she gave me credit, insisted…