When You Sing

As a gift, I received from my daughter a little book called, What I Love About Mom.  The book sets up a sentence and she filled in the blanks. I had a good chuckle over a few of them. If you were a scent, you’d be Warm OceanBreeze. But one of her responses took my breath…

When Stars Scatter

Do you remember the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? Although some of the finer points have been lost to me over the years, I remember that Ferris faked sick so he could stay home. Once his parents were sufficiently convinced of his feverish illness—all carefully executed—and his parents on their way to work, he conspired…

Measuring the Cost

My husband is dangerously close to running out of peanut butter, our car needs gas and I need to replace various items in my wardrobe. For me, hopping into a vehicle and running to the store, popping by a station to fill my tank and a brief detour to Kohl’s pretty much satisfies all those…

Feeling the Heat

I hope your summer is going better than planned. With longer days, the workload has been ramping up here – but that isn’t a complaint. With extended hours of daylight, I’m inclined to go out and enjoy the company of others. Last week I overheard someone say that though it’s just now July, for them,…

The Tail of A Year

I’m not big into new year resolutions. I find that turning over a new leaf does hold a lot of promise, but without an actionable plan, most new endeavors fall flat fairly fast. I think about the recently passed NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) as an example. While a great many people are able to…

Beautiful Things

There are times I’ve looked at my life and seen only lost opportunities, broken relationships, and devastating mistakes. My attempts to move forward in different careers or straighten out finances were tripped up by numerous setbacks and delays. Even now, I can point to others who raised their children better, found their perfect mate and lived…

Are You Making Room for Big Rocks?

Priorities determine how far we get in life. Imagine with me if you will, an empty glass jar. Next to it are three fist-sized rocks, river stones, pebbles, sand, and a cup of tea. The jar represents our day. If we pour into our jar a lot of sand, which represents all the small stuff,…

The Tongue of Life & Death

“How do you make the switch from a negative mindset to a positive one?” It begins with a simple process: awareness, reflection & rephrasing. 

A Thousand Miles

  “The Journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.” ~Lao Tsu I read in an article that people with positive attitudes are more likely to see opportunity. Although it comes in many disguises, opportunity can be disguised as failure. It may come clothed as a bad turn of events. It might even reveal…

The Road Not Taken

I was very young the first time I heard the poem The Road Not Taken. At the time “a yellow wood” had little meaning, except in the context of fall. Mrs. Carpenter read the poem full of thoughtful meaning to a class of wriggly 6th graders who were more concerned about lunch or recess or…