“Okay, I’m leaving now,” I told my husband. He glanced up, with a momentarily confused look on his face. “Oh, you’re going there. I thought it was here,” he said, nodding toward the room where I usually “attend” meetings and events, sitting in front of the computer and logging in via Zoom. An understandable mistake, even though I had told him I would be going to the Writers Museum for a workshop. For a second, an old television commercial popped into my head, the one [...]
No one has ever accused me of having a green thumb. Yet I’ve enjoyed herb gardening ever since the day, years ago, that I read an article claiming that most herbs thrive on neglect. The more you ignore them, the better they grow. I try not to neglect them, but knowing they’re very forgiving – and that most of them aren’t finicky about growing conditions or treatment – gave me the confidence to try growing them. I’ve had an herb garden ever since. They’re pretty, [...]
I spent part of this morning rereading some of the newspaper columns I wrote years ago in the days leading up to Memorial Day. Two in particular tugged at my heart. One of them was from when our son was in the Marines during the war in Iraq. That’s where he spent Memorial Day that year. The other was from a year later. The Iraq War was still going on, and our son was still in the Marines. But he was on leave, and would [...]
“Another thing I am enjoying about in-person meetings,” a friend of mine said, “is the excuse to perk up my wardrobe and do a little shopping!” Her comment was in response to my blog post last week, about going back to in-person meetings and events after a year of doing them online. I was noting that we once again had to factor in travel time and traffic, which we didn’t need to do when we got to these meetings by sitting down in front of [...]
The monthly book club I belong to meets on Wednesday afternoon, and is usually over by 4:00. A special, one-time event at Georgia Writers Museum, where I serve on the Board and am an active volunteer, was originally scheduled from 5:00 to 7:00 on the Wednesday before Book Club, but suddenly had to be postponed a week – which gave me a bit of a scheduling conflict. “Not a problem,” was my first thought, since a Zoom meeting that ends at 4:00, and another one [...]
I want to wish a Happy Mother’s Day today to all the moms reading this, and also to everyone who’s done any “mothering” – especially over the past year. The need for caretakers has been astronomical during this extremely challenging year, and many people have taken on roles and responsibilities they never imagined themselves in. People I already considered to be unsung heroes – teachers and healthcare workers being high on the list – found their jobs becoming even more demanding. Many of them rose [...]
I had an appointment for a medical scan Friday morning in Atlanta, which is almost a two-hour drive on a good day with little traffic. Since there is rarely a good day with little traffic in Atlanta, and since I had to be there at 8:30, we left our house around 6 a.m. It was still dark, but before long a pink glow in the eastern sky signaled the coming sunrise. My husband was driving, so I was able to sit and watch the sky [...]
We visited our daughter in Florida last weekend – the first time we’ve seen her in almost a year and a half. It was a much shorter drive than when we visited our son and his family in Minnesota a few weeks ago. Plus it didn’t involve any overnight stays along the way. Still, we took all the necessary precautions, plus a weekend’s worth of masks and hand sanitizer, as we hit the road. On the few stops we made – for gas or a [...]
Maybe it’s because the weather is getting summery in our part of the country, and we’re able to sit outside on sunny days, waving to neighbors who are also out in their yards. Maybe it’s because we just had out-of-town company, and we’re now enjoying leftover snacks, meals, and memories from when they were here, and the clean house that’s also left over from their visit. Maybe it’s because a few of the clubs and organizations I belong to are starting, cautiously, to meet again [...]
It’s been more than a year since we’ve had company at our house. Real company, not the occasional repairman, delivery person, or someone in the neighborhood picking something up or dropping something off. And in that year, we’ve done the normal chores and tasks that go with housecleaning and home maintenance. But we haven’t done the heavy-duty cleaning and decluttering we do when company’s coming. Until now. Some friends from our hometown – they’re our age, and, like us, were recently inoculated with both doses [...]