Image by author It’s April, so that means one thing for marathon runners out there: Boston Marathon time. It also means I receive my annual flick of a reminder that things don’t always pan out as you fear they will. I learned that at my first Boston Marathon, and I’ll always thank that race for this life lesson. It was April 2007 when I stood in my hotel room in Boston, eyes glued to the TV screen while readying myself for the most exciting race I’d entered to date,  the  Bos

Image by author You won’t believe me when I tell you this, but last week my sister texted us siblings that she’d just won $38 million. She included a photo of her hand holding the ticket. I lay in my bed, having just woken up, stunned. What on earth? I looked online, and indeed the number on her ticket was the winning number. The pot stood at $38 mill. My mind halted. This is insane . I texted her back. This is crazy!! I checked the number online, and, yes, that is the winnin

Image by author It was a magnificent day to be outside, and everyone knew it. This must have been clear to anyone with a drone view of the area, or to a bird: scads of people along the side of the road, in their yards, scattered about on the trail, everywhere, and dogs, too. Spring had, without question, sprung. I was upbeat. Shorts and short-sleeved shirt for the first time this year. A pack on my back with a water bottle because no doubt, I’d be thirsty. I had goals — walk

Image by author, originally published 4 years ago Hey, friends. I hope this post finds you well. I'd like to make you an offer you can't refuse. I'm taking the week off from the blog, and this enables two things: more time for me to get things done over here, and a bit of time for you to do something on your end over there. My offer: If I can take this time off, so can you--even for the five minutes you'd normally have spent reading this. What could you do in this moment that

Image by author The other week, I was invited to a 95-year-old’s birthday party. While it was a celebration of the impressive span of her life, I realized it was also a tribute to human resilience in its many forms. At one point, I stood there in the community room at the nursing home and looked around at the partygoers. What struck me was how much tenacity must be sitting in that room. Then I was hit with a somewhat sad question: How many of those who hold this tenacity don’

Image by author I could see it as soon as I sat down at the kitchen table. It was fussing with something on the ground, perched slightly above on a piece of decayed branch. I immediately ran for my birding binoculars. A hawk so close to my view, a busy one at that, possibly perched there for longer than a fleeting second? What luck! I skid back into the chair and slammed the binoculars onto my face. Check it out. A hawk fiddling with something. What is that thing? I watched,

Image by author There were two soccer-mom teams: one slated to win, and one certain to lose. The teams had mirror-image opinions on which was which. They both knew they were going to win. Win at what? A puzzle contest, of course. What else would we aging soccer moms decide to do together after all these years as friends, long after our kids have grown and moved on? One of the esteemed members of our group knew of a wacky event a half hour’s drive from our general locale, wher

Image by author It was the weekend, and I had the calendar clear — no work, no meetings, no in-person events. Just time, beautiful time. I could read, work on my writing, do online puzzles, do the dishes slow and easy, do the weekly hot-water wash of the bed sheets because I’m allergic to dust mites, or do none of that. Plus, wet snow was falling from the sky. I wanted to walk, an adventure it would surely be, but as soon as I opened the front door to get a sense of things, I

Image by author Whenever I see an athlete have an accident like US figure skater Ilia Malinin  did in the men’s singles event at the Olympics recently, my heart breaks. He fell twice, though he was favored to win. It’s hard to watch a stack of intense dreams fed by years of hard effort crash to the ground, or ice, in a split second. Accidents, things we never wished for, mistakes, bad luck — they are some of the most painful life lessons the Universe so generously shares with

Image by author I took my last breath four weeks ago. More specifically, I saw  myself take my last breath as I sat at my desk listening to a woman named Aba tell the story of this final breath, in 2nd person narration, with great detail, minute by minute, until, with the safest wording in the softest voice, she showed my keenly engaged imagination how okay everything was, that it was time, and I let go. Seventy-five of us let go together on a shared Zoom call in a death awar

Image by author, with the help of coffee First, I know nothing about AI. If you truly have no idea how it’s constructed, I know a bit more than you do. This is only because I took a few coding classes back in the day, but mostly because, for my birthday one year, I asked one of my sons for a walk in the woods so he could explain machine learning and AI to me. That’s the extent of my expertise — a 90-minute woodland workshop on AI. Second, big news, we got snow . Nothing too f

Image by snow-loving author [Warning: If you live in an area that gets excessive amounts of snow, and you’re beyond sick of the stuff, this post might cause harm to your certainty that snow should be exterminated.]   I remember back to the days when I used to live in a snow hut. It was more of a cave—three snow walls, a frozen ceiling, and the great gaping mouth. The mouth is where my siblings and I would crouch through to gain access to our home, which sat in the yard of our

Image by author Jupiter, Night #1 : The first night I saw Jupiter from my yard, it dominated the night sky, a reminder that we aren’t the only things around, and that we’re tiny. Jupiter cannot, by any stretch of the imagination , see us, even in the collective. If Jupiter had a decent telescope—not the birding binoculars I was using that night—it could see our moon nearby, some mountains, but not much else. And I’m only guessing. I have no (earthly) idea. I stood next to my

Image by author My grandfather was an executive at RCA back in the shadows of the long-ago mid-twentieth century. From his time there, he accumulated branded goods — RCA playing cards, cufflinks — and like other archaic family possessions, they were treasured. This past Christmas, my mother decided it was finally time to disperse some of these relics. Whenever my grandparents enter the room of our family gatherings — be it via relics or reminiscing — these two long-dead come

Image by author The other day, in the throes of the holiday mayhem of the things that needed to be done or might have needed to be — but good luck with that — a young man made my week. It started in a parking lot, of all places, between my car and whatever store I needed to visit for the umpteenth time. For the record, I do shop online. I’m not a cave lady, though I endeavor to be one, but not everything is best attained right outside your front door, packed inside three nest

Image by author Dear readers of this blog, Just a brief, though heartfelt message of good cheer as we go into the end of the year and the holiday celebration period. I hope these last days of 2025 are joyful for you. I want to thank you always for stopping by this blog and reading my thoughts on various subjects. I'm always thinking, that's for sure, for better or worse. May the new year be a good one for you, and for us all. Above is the cartoon I sent out to family and frie

Then he gave me a piece of his Image by author The other day I went to the mall to see Santa. I had a beef with him, and I was determined to straighten it out — straighten him  out. I’ve written clear, explicit letters to him every year, stating precisely what I want for Christmas. I put a seasonal-themed postage stamp on the upper right corner of the envelope and send it off, each year, certain it’ll be different, that he’ll finally bring me what I want. But what does he do?

Image by author I was standing in line at Old Navy, a pair of sweatpants in hand, waiting to check out. The two cashiers working the registers had a series of complicated customers — lots to return, lots to buy — so those of us in line did what we could to pass the time: scroll our phones, peer at the tchotchkes surrounding us, daydream. Sometimes I might strike up conversation in a situation like this — yes, I’m that lady — but no one seemed to be in the talking mood. Frankl

Image by author My sister-in-law said to me the other day, “How many times did you see your mom this past year?” I teetered, the answer unsettling before I even calculated the number. I knew it would be regrettably small. I live three hours from my mom under the very, very  best of circumstances. Meaning, .00005% of the drivers between the DC metro area and Philadelphia couldn’t be on Interstate 95 at the same time as me. More than that? Oh dear. And, there’s always more than

Image by author with special thanks to Chick-fil-A Dear Readers of This Blog, Thank you so much for stopping by, for reading, for checking out what nutty cartoon I have going for the week, for any comments and likes, for emails of sharing, for mentioning this when I see you, for your kindness and thoughtfulness--in short, for you. I always wanted to write, but didn't. This is why I started this blog. I had no idea how much work writing is, but a lot of things that turn from n