Some things from my boxes I can't throw away. Yet. I was doing fine with my purge until the final box labeled jobs/MS/PhD. In other words, my nursing career and advanced degrees in nursing. As I paged through the piles of papers I had saved, every memory came springing back. piles Job application letters, letters …
Category: retirement
Throwing Away My Past Life
Terri Lee (worth a lot now online!) and Baby (who cries) George Burns once said, "You know you're getting old when you stoop down to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you're down there." This idea has been part of my life since late last fall when I developed hip …
Wintering in AZ
I'm getting ready to say goodbye to my winter hideout in AZ; in a few weeks, I'll be heading home to SD. As this reality settled in last week, I snapped a bunch of pictures on my walk. I wanted to soak in the bright blue, red, and green colors. (Clearly, I'm on the edge …
Growing Older: On Turning 80
"What are you trying to prove?" my friend asked in a text. I had just sent her a photo of me stuck in my closet. I'd been trying to put a new recliner together and had to get behind it. Since it was somewhat heavy, I shimmied myself behind it into the closet. To see …
T is for Taxes
An Entry in the Blogging from A to Z in April Challenge Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com Taxes. I've made my fifth trip to my CPAs office. A record. Last year it was once. The year before, my first year to gather the tax information, once. Taxes. Why the difference? Can't tell you. My …
S is for Saying Farewell to My Nursing Files
I stand here by a wall of metal file cabinets—three in a row, four drawers each—a nursing career of memories nestled in the southwest corner of my study. My life’s work written on hundreds, maybe thousands, of pages hanging neatly in file folders. After twenty-two years in our three-bedroom house in suburban Chicago, I am …
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N is for Normal
An entry for the Blogging from A to Z in April Challenge I wince when I think of normal, especially as used in the phrase getting back to normal. In several discussions this past week, I concluded many of us feel rudderless. What do we do now that we're vaccinated and things are starting to …
K is for Karaoke
An entry for the Blogging from A to Z in April Challenge: As a member of a Writing Circle at the Chicago Cultural Center some years ago, I wrote the following one page story using the assigned word of the week--dark. It's based on a diary entry I made on a trip to FL with …
J is for Jinx, Jabber, and Jumble
An entry for the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge J is such fun letter that I could not decide which word to use. As an aside, I've had a lot of youngish, handsome handyman-type guys in my house since my husband died, and most of their names started with J! I've regaled my …
I is for Idiot
An Entry for the Blogging from A to Z Challenge in April "This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it's always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is. Especially …
Write Along with Me 