Don’t Take It Personally

Spurred on by my mother, I left home at the age of seventeen. It was the right thing for all involved, but when my parents replaced me with two cats, I couldn’t help but feel slighted: I’m deadly allergic to cats. When my mother-in-law spiked a meal with milk, hoping to prove that food allergies […]

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Good thing we didn’t give up!

Title is borrowed from a blog post entitled Disappointment and Then. It has me thinking. How many times in my life have I almost talked myself out of progress? Teaching is the example that stands out the most. I wanted to be a teacher ever since I lined up dolls for lessons as a child, […]

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Decisive Action

Life presents challenges and I stumble to keep up. Chronic illness continues to form the backdrop of my life, so it becomes the baseline for any actions I take. Ric and I made a commitment to our health and our community this year, and that means that I have been more physically active than usual. […]

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Choosing Life

Buying time –resetting the dial,deviating from the norm… a healing place, here we go again,600 miles from home,recharging batteries… this might have beenan un-lived life. (My challenge this week is to make poetry from previous post titles.  For this one, I chose to select only the titles that related to our recent journey.)

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Resetting the Dial

At fifty-nine, I was certain that I knew myself – accomplished, defined and established – but illness changed the framework from which my remaining time would unfold.   I became a non-entity in my former career, and a ghost to friends.  My children mourned the loss of their vibrant mother and settled into lowered expectations. […]

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And the Winner Is…

What I didn’t tell you in my last post is that we put an offer on Option #1 immediately after viewing it.  It has everything we want and more.  We had driven to this community and looked at houses before, but they sell fast, so when we found out this one was sold conditional on […]

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Pain Fog

The hockey game blares from the front of the bus with a confidence I am not feeling. Yesterday, I had two cracked and very infected teeth extracted, and my jaw is in intense pain. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” the dentist told me.  Apparently, I had clenched so hard that I split my back […]

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Dental Decisions

“Have nothing to eat or drink after midnight,” the woman told me on the phone. “They are going to put me out,” I tell my daughter, “I’ll need someone to drive me and be with me the rest of the day.” “It’s only a tooth, Mom!” says my eight-month-pregnant middle child.  “I’m happy to stay […]

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