A Wish for the Wall
I know what I want for Christmas: a magic wall. Like many Americans, I’ve had difficulty tearing myself away from election news coverage this past week. I’ve watched split screens of four different television stations at once in order to see different predictions, projections, and perspectives, as well as the latest up-to-the-minute ballot counts in each of the battleground states. One of the things I’ve been mesmerized by is a “magic wall” – the name given to a giant computer monitor [...]
Scary Movies
It’s Halloween weekend. Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, which is the best day of the week for trick-or-treating, although the streets won’t be filled with nearly as many ghosts, goblins, spirits, and superheroes this year as they normally would. Still, it’s a scary time of year – more so this year than most, for a variety of reasons. This is also the best time of year for scary movies. My husband and I just finished watching The Haunting [...]
An Organized Mind?
There are people who consider me to be a very organized person. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. Actually, it’s not that I don’t consider myself to be organized. In some ways I am. If you mention something I wrote about in a long-ago column or blog, I can usually go back through my files and find a copy of it within a matter of minutes. Or if you ask me for the recipe for something I brought to a [...]
A long-distance goodbye
My father-in-law passed away last week. When it was clear he wouldn’t be with us much longer, my husband drove to Chicago to be with him during those last few days. Before he left, we made the agonizing decision for me to stay home. Actually, making the decision wasn’t the agonizing part; accepting it was. In earlier times – meaning any time before the pandemic – we’d have been traveling back and forth to Chicago regularly, especially as my father-in-law’s [...]
Right Name, Wrong Story
I was well into the book for my next book club meeting when I saw an email from the leader of our group. She always keeps us up to date, sending out reminders of upcoming meetings and including in each email a list of the books we’ve got scheduled for the next few months, and a comment about the book we’re currently reading. In this email, her note said it was “a very interesting book, about an eight-year-old girl who [...]
Doctor’s Orders
I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday. Nothing’s wrong, and the doctor gave me an “All clear” report, along with the standard advice to come back in a year, or earlier if something comes up in between now and then. I’ve always stayed up to date with my annual check-ups, and any other medical appointments that are warranted on a regular or occasional basis. More and more often, I seem to be hearing, “At your age, you should probably think [...]