family
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Valentine’s Day has come and gone. My opinion of the holiday has had it’s ups and downs throughout the years, usually tied to the presence of someone to celebrate with. This year, I welcomed the simplicity of it—a day to celebrate love for others, traditionally by way of flowery note. I have a great appreciation…
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We don’t have a lot of rules in our house. You do have to finish your dinner (well, most of it) to get dessert. You have to keep the floor of your bedroom clean. We don’t allow running in the kitchen, or playing on the stairs. But for the rest of life, we tend to…
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After the Thanksgiving holiday my sister-in-law came by to spend time with her brother and our kids. I asked her what she and her family did to celebrate the day. We chatted for a while and she mentioned she’d noticed that their holiday traditions seemed to change every five to ten years. She was resigned…
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Staying through the raw There is construction directly across the street from the apartment my husband and I share. We’re never in it at the same time. It’s a bizarre way to live with someone. We are separating our lives after 25 years together, and we were in need of a new living situation. I…
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Music and Time I listen to a lot of music. Well, maybe I should say I listen to music a lot. It’s usually the same songs over and over. I’m fond of familiarity. Whenever I drive, fold laundry, or tackle the mess in the kitchen before cooking dinner, I put on my headphones and play…
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One of my favorite mom duties is making costumes for my kids. When they were younger, I made it a month long event, spreading materials out over every work surface in the house, using any free moment to glue on another plastic leaf. When my oldest was too young to decide on his own costume,…
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The complexity of zoning permits I am not able to trust. I know I am supposed to be careful with my words and never say that I can’t do something I want to do so that the possibility remains open in my mind, but on this one I need to be honest with myself. I…
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What changes in the present when you set your site ahead When we moved into our house nearly two decades ago, it was like stepping into a well-preserved time capsule from the 1960s. The only previous owner was a childless couple. Presumably the wife had a fixation with trendy interior design when the house was…
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Camping with kids I bet Socrates was insufferable to be around. If you’re not familiar with the Socratic Method (named after the way Socrates practiced philosophy), he was basically a “Why?” kid. He’d find a willing participant to engage in debate and then he’d question their beliefs relentlessly until they came to an agreement on…
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Tomorrow I will embark on another RV vacation with my kids. This time I’ll be the only adult in attendance and to my recollection (which admittedly isn’t very good) it will be the first overnight adventure I have done on my own with all three of them. The RV enables my hyper-independence. It provides the…
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It’s going to be a quick one today. First of all, I have no idea what I’m going to write about. Usually by Sunday morning I know the topic and at least one shrewd play on words I want to squeeze in somewhere, but this week I’ve got nothing. Second, I am preoccupied with planning…
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We should have made that last left A few days ago, I watched a PBS interview with journalist Kara Swisher and at the very end of the talk, it was announced that the administration issued an executive order for the corporation for public broadcasting to freeze federal funding to PBS. I’m not great at identifying…
Life with ink 