A Daily Life

For those of you know me, you’re going – really?  This is a news flash how?  For those who have not met me, I am yes – pretty darn fat.  Getting on the scale is no fun and it never was. This is not a new problem in my life.  I was so fat as […]

I really despise the norms of culture – i.e., what polite society thinks I or others should or should not be doing. My earliest exposure to it was with my cousin.  She was born with Down’s syndrome in the 1960’s.  At least one doctor, maybe more, was very clear with my aunt that the fault […]

When we moved to Virginia in early 2008, we planned on staying for a while.  I hadn’t had a garden for years due to my hours and our moving so frequently.  The 2008 garden was a total failure – we threw seeds into the empty flower beds and hoped for the best.  We did learn […]

I loved Kerry’s description of how friendships through blogging is like what we used to call pen pals. Enjoy! Long ago and far away, when I was a young girl, I loved to write letters. This was a time when there were no computers, no cell phones, and… gasp… long distance telephone calls were very, […]

One funny thing about our yard is that we have two beagle trails through it.  The other two dogs run wherever, but the beagle generally always follows the same path back and forth to the back door. I’ve shown one of them here, with a black line to show the trail.  I’ve tried to photograph […]

Hovering and flying over the flowers at this time of the year are the bees.  While I’d mentioned earlier that I only saw one bee regularly on the salvia, my favorite boy toy said he’s seen quite a lot of bees during the day.  There must be – my squash plants, while not very big, have a lot […]

Growing up and living in rural areas means having well water.  I know there are places with good tasting and safe to drink well water, but I didn’t have that. My childhood home had water that stunk like rotten eggs – yep, sulfur – and was so mineral laden is could ruin any appliance or […]

Our miniature pinscher – being such a very small dog – loves to sleep in a blanket.  He gets tightly wound up in there and it’s like peeling back an onion to get him back out.  Even in his crate at night, he buries himself into his bedding. I wash it once in a while.  He will […]

The kitten grew into a hulking sheath of muscle from nose to tail.  Several vets checked to see if he was really neutered (he was) because he was so heavily muscled.  He also bent their needles on a fairly regular basis. I didn’t declaw him when he was a kitten.  Not every cat needs it and […]

My sister and I did not go trick & treating very often.  We lived in a fairly rural area with no close neighbors and my mother wasn’t very keen on us eating a bunch of candy, let alone from a stranger.  There were just enough occurrences of poisoning and tampering every year to make her […]

In this picture, my daughter is not yet walking or even crawling.  Within a year she would be and then the fun began.  As soon as I’d get on the phone, she raced off to get into as much trouble as she could.  Her specialty was climbing up on the kitchen table, then walking off […]

Albert Einstein once said, The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. Science explains so many things to us.  But no matter how much it is explained, I think it is still mysterious how the natural world works.   I’m amazed at our bodies ability […]

As I’ve worked this year on having more gratitude, I’m finding that my prayers need some work also.  This is especially true if I’ve gotten overly whiney with “I want this, I want that”.  Wanting does serve a purpose – it points me to praying for what I need. One of my big prayers earlier […]

Our miniature pinscher has dedicated his life to protecting me from everything and everyone.  It doesn’t matter how close or far they might be, if he can see you, you are a danger to his Momma.  I think he prays for danger – he wants to show the world how rough and tough he is in […]

The weather unexpectedly turned cooler this week.  It was so nice!  Days were in the upper 70’s, evenings in the mid-50’s.  It made for better sleeping and much nicer walks for my lunch. I was up early yesterday and spent a few minutes on the deck to pray and do my devotions.  Secretly, I’d rather […]

Yes, yes, I used that one!!  And I use it every time I go to Starbucks and get an iced tea – “I would like a black, unsweetened, venti iced tea.  Shaken, not stirred.”  They laugh at me, but the truth is that they actually make their tea by shaking it in a martini shaker.  And […]

I love, love, love mint.  That’s one of the best things about growing herbs is having mint in my tea every day.  I dry it to use over the winter, but it’s not as good as fresh from the planter right before making my tea.  I even have two types of mint – spearmint and […]

My childhood home was a bit unusual.  Entering it was a surreal experience for anyone who didn’t know my family.  My relatives thought nothing of it, but my in-laws were incredulous the first time they saw it. The room itself was real pine plank, not paneling.  It had antlers, guns, trophies, horse memorabilia, stuffed animal […]

It is no small feat to develop and keep rituals in our lives.  On the other hand, rituals need to change and evolve as our lives evolve. At some time during college, my sister and I developed a ritual of going into downtown Chicago the Friday after Thanksgiving.  Our purpose was to see the Christmas […]

I went to the botanical gardens yesterday to take more pictures.  The stick sculpture, Metamorphosis, by the artist Patrick Doherty, is done.  This is his second work in central Virginia, the first being done on a storefront on Main Street some years ago.  There is no picture of it on-line. I’d spent some time looking […]