Category: family
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Gone Camping
Kentucky is now the land of Grandmas. The First Reader’s Mom, and now my Mom! She’s arrived at the new Farm, and I’ll have a ton of photos when I get back. But it sounds like we may be camping in the barns and hotels while the old house gets some TLC and she can…
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Hurdles
I ran when I was younger. (Now, it would probably kill me, but I digress). No, really! I may be short, and as my beloved husband describes my body shape, sturdy, but I could run. I wasn’t a sprinter, but I could endure for the long runs, and I preferred cross country running, usually barefooted.…
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How Firm a Foundation
The house hunt continues. We’ve tweaked and expanded the radius of the search, which obviously yielded more results, but on the other hand it also brought us back to a conversation we’d had earlier in the search. What kind of foundation? The important bits of a house are roof, walls, insulation, but without the foundation…
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The Spice Basket
I came home yesterday to find my son with my basket of spices on the counter. Those who read the Case of the Pink Stain will understand why this gave me an uneasy feeling. He had a notebook, and was writing busily in it. “Mama! Come tell me what these are.” He pulled me over…
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The Case of the Pink Stain
Early one morning, the scene of the crime was discovered by the woman of the house, who was alarmed by the color and persistence of the evidence. What follows is an accurate recreation of the investigation, interrogation, and ultimate outcome of the case. As I was cleaning the house, I came across something mysterious on the…
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Houses
I went and looked at a house yesterday, and it’s got me thinking about the whole four walls and a roof thing. The basic needs in a home might be simple, but we all have the things that we just have to have, or the things we can’t live with. I loved the way the…
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Dungeons and Dragons: Passing the Torch
I got to be a witness to a sweet and rather manly nonchalant passing of the torch recently. The First Reader started playing Dungeons & Dragons in 1977, and he was gruffly instructing the Little Man in how to get started. This turned into him digging out his old books, magazines, character sheets, minis, and…
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Gifts, Traditions, and Trees
I’m still not up to deep blog topics, although I was awfully tempted by Derek Lowe’s article on chirality and the architecture of life as we know it. If you know anything about chemistry, take a look, it’s got some nifty ideas in it. Maybe I will come back around to that later when I…
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Musing on Gifts
I’ve been getting ready for a flying visit from friends, and as I was preparing the house for eyes other than family, and baking because my love language is ‘have you eaten? Here, have a cookie.’ I was also thinking about gifts, and their impact on our lives. It’s not easy to give meaningful gifts…
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Repost: Women and Children First
This was originally published on my blog on Dec 9, 2014, but was lost in the hosting shift. So here it is again, and none the worse for being three years old. If you’re looking for the science and speculation, that’s over on the Mad Genius Club post today, where I continue to talk about…
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Thanksgiving Day
As I write this I am on the road to family. We may stay down there over the weekend, if we don’t think we’ll wear Dorothy-Mom out. The dog and s at a sitter, because she and the family dog get wound up and might knock someone over. One daughter is at Grandma’s house, another…
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Glurge and Human Emotion
I’m not sure of the true origin of the word glurge. I’m not even sure it’s a real word. I know that I first heard it used to describe the masses of emails that came with the early advent of the internet. Perhaps before the ‘net, it existed – I’m sure some did, since I…