I don’t know where or when he heard it and got it stuck in his head, but my husband was singing and humming a line from an old Irving Berlin song all weekend. The line is, “And you’ll fall asleep counting your blessings.” With Thanksgiving just a few days away, ‘tis the season for counting our blessings. Which we should do all year long – and many of us do, of course – but it’s more on our minds, and talked about out in the [...]
Our last Toastmasters meeting had a theme of “Trick-or-Treat.” As the Table Topics Master at the meeting, I decided to have a costume party as the focus of my questions. The purpose of Table Topics is to help people learn to think on their feet and organize their thoughts quickly. The Table Topics Master will ask an open-ended, no-right-or-wrong-answer type of question, and then call on a member to respond. They have to talk for one to two minutes, and responses can range from serious [...]
I don’t know if it has anything to do with the students I worked with and wrote about in my last blog, or the college students I – along with several other members of my Toastmasters club – recently helped prepare for a career-oriented Elevator Pitch competition. But I’m getting ready to go back to school – sort of. And I’m really excited about it. Also, just a little bit nervous. Like many people, I consider myself a lifelong learner, and have always enjoyed the [...]
It was gloomy and rainy here for most of the past week – to the point where we had some lakes forming in the low spots in our yard, and the storm was regularly knocking out our satellite TV reception. When the sun came out briefly toward the end of the week, it looked so strange I almost called the authorities to report seeing a UFO. Gloomy weather usually doesn’t put me in a gloomy mood, but it was definitely heading in that direction, especially [...]
“Isn’t it wonderful to find people who have kindness in their heart?” That’s one of several comments I received in response to last week’s blog post. The person who wrote it added that she enjoys telling people who are waiting on her what a great job they’re doing. She specifically mentioned a grocery store she shops at that employs baggers who have disabilities, and said they are all smiles when she compliments them on their work. This reminded me of a column I wrote years [...]
We were returning home from Chicago after attending a family funeral, when one of the car’s warning lights went on. A rear tire was losing air. We weren’t exactly in the middle of nowhere, but it sure felt like it. We were somewhere between Nashville and Chattanooga, Tennessee, in an area of mountains and trees and a number of miles between towns. We finally reached the next exit, and pulled into the gas station closest to the interstate. My husband put air in the tire [...]
“It feels so good to get together again,” I said to a friend the other day. “It feels so good to laugh again,” she responded. And that, I think, pretty much sums it up. We were part of a neighborhood group that used to get together once a month to play Bunko, a dice game that’s fairly mindless, allowing for plenty of chatting, joking, and nibbling on snacks in between taking turns rolling the dice. It requires 12 players, who switch partners after every game, [...]
“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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]