The Blog: Spellbound by our own imperfect lives...

I'm feeling some renewal of my urge to purge. The pile of empty boxes and the stuff on the shelves in the basement are calling to me. I run out of gas in the winter...probably starts about November but I don't really feel it until January. I always blame it on the lack of sunshine and maybe that's it. Or maybe I'm just lazy. I can hear birds singing outside the window. Cardinals have been calling since January but this is a new sound. Lots of birds at the feeder and the squirrels are ravenous. And mangy looking. You're either walking on dry pavement or ice. Nothing in between. It's ten degrees over night then rapidly goes up to forty. That makes for lots of meltage and lots of slippery. Walk like a penguin. I get a few ideas about home improvements, DIY stuff, you know. I usually loathe that stuff but if I can figure out a was to make life easier, well...I'm all about that as the kids say. My current idea is to have a row of hooks installed on the sou...

We braved the icy roads this morning to take Gus for his grooming. (I had to point out that we go to a lot more money and expense to have our dog groomed than we do ourselves.) Then, because the cupboards are bare we headed to Mankato to buy groceries. My list making habits are constantly changing based on HyVee marketing. Currently, I browse the print ads and make a list on a notebook, but I also use my phone to make a list and download coupons. The problem with that is my phone has to be out and visible. This morning we finished our shopping, loaded the groceries in the trunk, I put the cart away, and down the road we went. I was digging in my purse for my phone. Calmly, then frantically. There were only two places it could be...on the checkout counter or in the cart. We find the cart corral and I find my cart...and there's my phone sitting in the freezing rain and snow. Good thing I didn't wait until I got home to look for it. Sigh. I have kind of a day off today (afte...

I'm sure I've written about this before...Sunday psychosis. When we were fresh out of college and the working life stretched out endlessly into the future, my good friend Mike talked about the dread of Monday as Sunday psychosis. He said it was so bad he would see amoebas. I'm not sure exactly what he meant but we thought it was hilarious. Still do. I dislike writing more than two sentences on an electronic device. I see kids type with two thumbs and they seem to be pretty fast, but I'm a one-finger typist on a device, something my typing teachers railed against. My computer gave me a couple signs that something was amiss. Black screen? Unrecognizable language? So...I'm lounging in the tub, late on a Sunday morning, typing my blog post on my iPad. Sigh. I've done a couple of the necessary things today like scoop the cat liter and get dressed but now I'm kind of done. Regis got my computer back on the rails. He says we should plan ahead for it going ker...

Many things have been conspiring lately to force me to recognize just how fast time goes. Other people's children who I thought were still small enough to ride in strollers are off to high school, or college. I see high school friends of mine have children in their forties and some of them are great grandparents. And then there is Ella. Ella was my first granddaughter and I was waiting in the hall the day she was born. I heard her first cries and I wept. She had food allergies as a tiny baby that caused her much misery. We would stare at her little sleeping face and talk about how sweet she was, but when she woke up and started to howl, our eyes bugged out and we froze. Then she was a little girl who liked to play with makeup, dress up fancy in long dresses, hats, and jewelry. She loved the camera. She loved to bake and cook. She loved to read books in bed. Suddenly (to me) she is 12 and she wears heels when we go out for dinner. I'm shuffling along in flat, fur-lined ...