I should have known I was in trouble as I sat down in my grandson’s kindergarten room ready to serve as a room parent assistant for my daughter for whatever party this was. For starters, I don’t fit on kindergartner chairs. For another, I’d taught college-age students for a reason. For yet another, I’ve never …
Category: aging
A Tribute to My Sister Esther – 1937-2017
I have her shoes, the new white Skechers she’d packed carefully in her “wear home from the hospital” bag. There’s something not right about this. We did not expect her death. We were ecstatic when we heard her surgery for cancer was successful. We were relieved when she transferred out of ICU, then greatly worried …
Join South Dakota Authors Saturday – 3-25-17
Support many South Dakota authors on Saturday, March 25, from 10-3 at Prairie Hills Covenant Church off Hwy 11. Come for lunch and help out the PHC youth! My Caring Lessons: A Nursing Professor's Journey of Faith and Self will be there, along with a new collection of essays: Starting Over at Seventy-four: From a …
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Flu as Time Waster
Not in a long time have I so effectively wasted time. You’d think being grounded for a week with the flu—the coughing kind, not the other—would open about ninety-six hours of time to catch up on sedentary tasks like reading the accumulating journals at your couch-side, sending a few cards out to cheer others, cleaning …
Nostalgia for Nursing
Oh no. That was bad. After being happily retired from nursing for nearly seventeen years, I had a severe attack of nostalgia last week. We were on our way home from AZ to SD and stopped at a niece’s along the way. An RN, she offered me a tour of her hospital where she’s worked …
Wintering in Warm Weather – Yes or No?
After a 30-day trial of wintering in warm weather, I’m not convinced. I find this humorous because this is something I’ve long wanted to do. When we lived downtown Chicago, leaving didn’t make sense, because we could always get out in the winter: public transportation and an undercity pedway made moving around relatively easy. But …
Growing Older: On Turning Seventy-five
Here I sit by a fire pit at a lovely resort in AZ thinking about turning seventy-five. What a year it has been. Last year, when I posted Growing Older: On Turning Seventy-four, I pondered what the next year might bring, not anticipating a move from Chicago to Sioux Falls, SD, and for sure not …
Starting Over at Seventy Four: Finding Friends
As we say goodbye to 2016, I invite you to consider, along with me, how we've met our friends, those special people in our lives who are there for us no matter what... *** “What about your friends?” my six-year-old granddaughter asked last spring when she was visiting us in our Chicago condo overlooking Lake …
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Our First Day of “Brutal”
We'd been warned, of course. "Just wait," we'd heard. "Winters here are brutal." So it happened; winter started today. I awoke to my usual news station: sections of I-90 closed; schools closed across the state, from Rapid City on the west to us, Sioux Falls, on the east. All schools, I think, but my grandchildren's' …
Drowning in Applesauce
I never dreamed I’d complain about applesauce. But picking apples and making applesauce have become my husband’s new BIG hobby. It started when he helped his sister pick her apples while visiting in MN a few weeks ago. When we got home, he started on our daughter’s trees. And then the applesauce binge started. After …
Write Along with Me 