Everybody has these days. For no real reason, you can’t sleep. You’re not particularly tired and there’s not really any purpose in staying in bed until your alarm. You get up and go about your morning. For me, instead of things around the house, I always find myself going in to work early. There’s always… Continue reading That’s what I miss.
Daughter has spent the last weeks preparing for her very first high school social event- homecoming. She’s shopped for a dress, talked makeup and hair, been all abuzz with her friends about how they’ll get to the dance and who they’ll hang out with. She did the parade and danced alongside the float for her… Continue reading What is happening to us?
A few people have asked me about my remarks for my mother that I had the privilege to speak at her mass yesterday. Here they are, with one tiny edit. All but one of you won’t even notice… Thank you for coming to show your love and to honor Eileen Helen Crilly West, the greatest… Continue reading Words of remembrance
I’ve discovered in the past few weeks that there are things I thought I’d never be able to do, but that that I can and did accomplish. There are things I never considered in my life, and some I can manage but some I cannot. And there are things I thought I could handle that… Continue reading There are things
Hello again, my loyal friends. It has been a very long while since I posted. I had this vision that the pandemic would have me introspective and posting all the time, or at least once a week. Boy was I wrong. So many people around me (yet far away) were super productive. While Husband was… Continue reading Tell Me Lies
Tonight I began a text which I then cut and pasted and began a post instead. Here’s what I was writing to my friend. I can’t sleep and I have no idea why I did, but I suddenly started thinking about you. I was remembering when I lived in Colorado and thoughts about how we… Continue reading I want to be remembered
I’ve been thinking about ranting. I’ve almost been obsessing over it, to be honest. It’s what I spend the bulk of my time doing in the shower. I am on social media too much in my down time and it makes me start thinking in Facebook posts and I have really been saying to myself,… Continue reading Socksy
I have been trying for almost two months to find the words to express how I have been feeling about moving my mother into an assisted living facility. I’ve been failing. I have not had to make any of the hard decisions in this process. I have not been responsible for anything, really. There are… Continue reading Can’t find the words
I did it. I made an extraordinary number of phone calls, researched, analyzed what I felt went wrong before, and I made my appointment to get prosthetics. I asked all the questions I worried about beforehand: what exactly does insurance cover? will I get them the same day? do you carry things in my size?… Continue reading Say Yes to the Breasts
There’s a phrase that I learned early in my career that has proven helpful in many aspects of my life since. I remember someone talking about how the best thing you can do for a child is to “set them up for success,” and it has been my number one rule as a teacher. It’s… Continue reading Setting myself up
Elephants in the Room 