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 …
Category: memoir
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 …
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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A little bit of kindness can go a long way…
I’ve had it with mudslinging, most of it untrue, and thought it would stop after the election, but it hasn't, so I want to write about being kind. I got the idea this morning when I was sitting in a coffee shop and overheard a conversation. A gal was interviewing for a job that could …
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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' …
Meeting My Same Name New Friend
Imagine checking your emails and seeing one from yourself. A similar thing happened to me in September of 2015; I opened my blog one morning to find a comment written on a post by "Lois Roelofs." Imagine my surprise. How could that be? I had not written myself. I opened up the comment and read: …
Cartwheels in my Living Room
My daughter reminded me on Facebook that four years ago now I blogged about my husband and I spending Labor Day at Navy Pier in Chicago. She wondered what I would be writing about this Labor Day from our new home in Sioux Falls. Well, it’s this. My life has changed. It’s not been my …
From City Walker to Granny-on-the-go
After six weeks in our new home, I’d say most things are good but some things not. I’ll deal with a few “not’s” today. In my effort to be open to new experiences, I joined my daughter’s fitness center. To my surprise, my husband joined too. Not a problem really, but yesterday we had our …
Writing Essay at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival – 2016
I spent last week at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival taking a class in writing essay, using process pedagogy and taught by Nancy Barry. Look at it this way: the writer explores (writes into) a topic, several iterations, to find out what they really want to write about, and the writer also uses feedback to …
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The Move (8) — Settling In
I’m sitting here at my newly configured desk in our joint study in Sioux Falls that looks out on grass and trees—at least three evergreens and some maples, I think. I will learn more about the terrain as I go along. For now, I see green; no more skyscrapers, Lake Michigan or Millennium Park. Green …
Write Along with Me 