I went to a writer’s conference over the weekend. The morning after, I usually wake up filled with ideas about what to do with many unfinished writing projects. Not today. I woke up this morning feeling embarrassed. Why? It took a second to remember. I’d dropped my phone Saturday. More correctly, I’d let it slide …
Continue reading Growing Older: Getting Use to Embarrassment
“Everything is different now,” a friend said last week. At 80, she questioned why she’d had a $400 increase in her car insurance. She wondered if it was worth it yet to invest in granite counter-tops for her kitchen. And she reminded me to be thankful for my husband, that her evenings are still the …
City life brings surprises every time I leave our apartment. But our street reversal this past week not only brought surprises but almost took my life. Due to massive L-train station destruction/construction projects just west of us, our one-way street north reversed flow this week to one-way south. Since I drive very little, I thought …
Continue reading City Life: Street Reversal Causes Close Call
As I look back over my 40-year nursing career, I sometimes wish I were still in the classroom so I could tell my students a few things I’ve come to believe are important on the road to becoming leaders. I say leaders, because we need leaders at this time of transition in our health care …
Continue reading Passing Along Advice to My Younger Nursing Colleagues
“You must love shopping,” a friend said at lunch. She’d asked what I was wearing to my granddaughter’s wedding and, before she could stop me, I told her the long story. You see, I love to shop for clothes. Years ago when I was teaching nursing, I learned that the most cheerful pick-me-up on wintry …
I was feeling pretty good about my plans for Mother’s Day. I knew both of my out-of-town kids would contact me and my day would be full—church, lunch out, piano concert. But an article I read about how women honored the memory of their mothers on Mother’s Day started to bug me. Those women had …
I’d taken a nap before the piano recital of my three grandchildren, but when we got home, I needed another. I looked longingly at G2’s (grandson, 10) twin mattress, wedged between floor-to-ceiling packed bookshelves, in my son’s library. Twenty shelves in all, books ranging from Hardy Boys to Bobbsey Twins to Dreikurs’ Children the Challenge. …
Continue reading Grandma Remembers Reading Trio with Piano Solo
Dear Readers, Last Saturday, WordPress informed me that I started this blog five years ago. After resisting for a few years while writing my nursing career memoir, Caring Lessons, and being told by writing teachers that I must start a blog, I stopped Helen Gallagher (teacher and blogger extraordinaire) after she gave a presentation at …
On a flight recently, I spent some time reading blogging friends who have fibromyalgia. Having FM myself, I always marvel at the resilience with which these gals, with chronic muscle pain and oftentimes foggy brains, valiantly face each challenge. Also, on my flight, I read a piece that said we should be thankful for our …
Proverbs 18:26 Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family. Readers of Caring Lessons know I was desperate to find a friend when I was in my early thirties, someone like me, a nurse and mom who wanted to go back to school. That friend turned out to be …
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