I don’t give up easily. Stubborn, hardheaded and tenacious, that’s me. It also takes me a while to get the message when I make bad choices and I’ve made a lot. If this sounds like you, read on. Actually, read on anyway. I graduated high school in Indiana with honors a semester early. Four
Read MoreFailure
Learning to Chill
Geez, I’m tired. What about you? Have you ever had a week where everything seems overwhelming? That’s my week. Every time I turn around, I’m rushing off to the next thing. I did this complete overwhelm to myself just as you do it to yourself too. I scheduled lots of events and fun things that
Read More
Sweet Potato Madness
Have you ever had one of those times where you try hard to do things correctly but you’re so stubborn you do it your way regardless? Thug Kitchen (Rodale, 2014) is an irreverent, f-bomb dropping cookbook. It’s not for everyone. And my tale is not about a recipe from their book. I’m sure they’d thank
Read More
Artists Aren’t the Only Visual People
Are you a visual person? If you are, you have a hard time not seeing things. Around here there are people who can’t possibly be the visual type. Their front yard is strewn with torn open trash bags and crushed beer cans. Or broken-down cars, washing machines, refrigerators, and tetanus incrusted swing sets. No doubt
Read More
Trash Panda Invasion
We have a problem. Maybe you have this problem too. In the last 8 years, we’ve caught over 72 raccoons, 36 possums, a skunk, a feral cat and our two housecats in a Have-A-Heart trap. . Ken and I name all the captives. We started with random names, went through the Presidents, various famous women,
Read More
Chicken foot dominos
Here in the Midwest, people still get together and visit on the porch, make music, play euchre, and have happy hour together. And they play chicken foot dominos. There are quite a few versions of chicken foot but it’s an easy game to play. Everyone makes mistakes, laughter can be uproarious and prolonged, the players
Read More
Driveway Follies
It rained last week and then sleeted and snowed. Then it snowed again and the temp dropped to 9 degrees. Net result was the mile gravel road down to our house was a luge run. . Three of the neighbor guys got together and spread gravel on the steepest parts of the hills and curves
Read More
Mrs. K and the Cadillac
As a kid you always know when adults dislike you. No matter how you try to behave in front of them, they’re suspicious. And did you ever notice how when you’re trying really hard to not piss someone off, you unintentionally end up doing the very thing that does piss them off? That’s what happened
Read More
Revenge: It’s a Family Thing
My family on my dad’s side was a close knit, clannish bunch. They have roots going back so far in that one time my grandmother called people who came over on the Mayflower “late comers.” They were a tough bunch, hacking out an existence by hand on their farm. They never did have running water
Read More
Never Too Late to Be Schooled
Wanna be schooled by an entire group of women you’re leading? That’s what happened to me when I innocently asked my Starfish Mothers Sphere the following question, prompted by reading Brene Brown’s Rising Strong. . “Do you think people are doing the best they can?” . I was in the “hell no” camp. People can
Read More
Email Fungus Among Us
Why does your email reproduce mysteriously until one day you find you don’t even know how many addresses you have? . I created my first email account with Yahoo. Seemed to work fine except friends weren’t paying attention and kept misspelling it. Result: I didn’t get the messages and they were mad at me thinking
Read More
Interrupting the Play
I have a confession to make. I can be a bit of a troublemaker. It’s put me in some dicey and some hilarious situations. When I was in college, I went to a lot of the campus theatrical productions. It was super cheap, usually good entertainment and a place to explore new ideas. Occasionally there
Read More