A Lost Art
“I can relax really well here,” my husband says, propping his feet on the ottoman and settling comfortably into the chair.  We’re sitting on the lanai at our home in Florida, watching the sun set behind the pond across the road.  His bottle of Yuengling beer sits comfortably next to my glass of Clos du Bois chardonnay, each one

Pretty Good Day
Today was a pretty good day.  I can make that statement with certainty, because I’ve had some really terrible days in the past few months.  Days when I literally had to make life and death decisions for people I loved.  Days when I had to sort through the belongings of those same people and decide what they should be buried in.  Days when I sat staring at lists of bills and endlessly adding up numbers in my head, trying to make the bottom lines come out somewhere within arms reach. But today wasn’t that kind of day at all.  Oh, there were frustrations.  At work, one of our client’s appointments got moved up

The End of the Tunnel
It may be the sunshine and unseasonably warm temperatures… It may be that I’ve had three days off in a row… Or it may be that I’m beginning to see some light at the end of this dark tunnel I’ve been traveling through… Whatever the reason, I awoke this morning feeling  ~dare I say? ~ hopeful ~ for the first time in a long while.  As if the tipped axis my world has spun upon for the past four months might be starting to right itself.  As if I might begin to breath easy once more, to stop looking for danger and disappointment around every corner, to actually smile an

Women at Work
Last spring, I was sitting a lunch with my co-workers, several of whom are young mothers, and they were discussing the woes associated with finding (and keeping) good daycare/preschool situations.  “This is the third preschool we’ve gone to this year,”  Anna moaned.  “Josh had just gotten to know the teacher and made a few friends, and now they’re closing!”  Not surprising, of course, but the stagnant economy here in Michigan affects daycare and preschools too, and they find themselves unable to stay in business. As this discussion swirled around me, I reminded myself to give my husband a hug, kiss, and a big t

Stacked Up
When I was a little girl, one of my favorite games was playing office.  Our first home had a half-second story, one big room tucked under the attic, with a sloping ceiling and one small window that overlooked the sidewalk.  There was a wooden desk tucked into that alcove, with an old-fashioned manual typewriter and a vintage adding machine, the kind you operated with a pull down handle.  At the age of 3 and 4, you’d find me up there happily pounding away on that old Remington, writing