I’ve written before about my love for football. My sister and I grew up hearing our dad’s tales of playing for Algona High and then Notre Dame. We loved his stories of being on the Knute Rockne-coached team with the famed Four Horseman in the 1920s. Later (obviously!) I married a football player whose love […]
Continue reading
All five of our children came home for the Labor Day weekend. The gang also included one spouse and one grandchild. They flew in from California or motored down from Minnesota or up from southern Iowa, depending, of course, on their respective away-from-home locales. To me, away from home will always denote where they live […]
Continue reading
Some of you may remember that last August, I wrote about a bat that came swooping into the TV room upstairs, sending me into paroxysms of panic. (I don’t think I’ve ever used the word paroxysms before, but it has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?) When my mother and dad lived here, […]
Continue reading
California has a lot going for it. Namely, it has three of our offspring living there, as well as their three amazing spouses and, of course, two top-of-the-line grandchildren. What it doesn’t have is a postal service that is even close to adequate. Case in point: We once mailed a large box filled with wrapped […]
Continue reading
Once again, I have planted some hostas. Some meaning about a thousand. It’s not that I’m particularly crazy about hostas, it’s just that in our yard we have lots of shade trees. Shade trees and grass are enemies, thus there are lots of bare spots in our yard. Lots. Huge ones. And each spring, the […]
Continue reading
Our five offspring, in addition to being the Medicine-and-Food-Expiration-Date Police, are also the Only-Healthful-Ingredients-Allowed-in-Food-and-Drink Police. Case in point: They roll their collective eyes at my preference for Miracle Whip on my peanut butter sandwiches. “Mom, Miracle Whip isn’t even food – it’s all chemicals!” Then there are their reactions to my choice […]
Continue reading
Don’t you hate it when some research firm, probably with nothing better to do, determines that something you have loved for years is very bad for your health? I can just see a roomful of bored scientists sitting at a conference table and tossing around the names of various desserts, candies, whatever. And then, stroking […]
Continue reading
Rumor has reached me that cursive writing is being downplayed in our school systems. In some schools, I’m told, it has even ceased being taught. I wish that had happened a few years ago and I would have been spared a grade-school humiliation that has scarred me for life. The (Dreaded) Palmer Method We were […]
Continue reading
There was a quiz on Facebook awhile ago designed, I think, to make me feel bad. And old. It listed 19 things from years past and quiz-takers were to check the ones they remembered. Things like home delivery of milk in glass bottles, tiny wax coke-shaped bottles with colored water in them, phone numbers with […]
Continue reading
My internet crashed again, this time taking the phones down with it. Or maybe the phone line crashed, taking the internet down with it. I’m thinking of resorting to communication by smoke signals. It took seven hours for everything to be fixed. During that time, I was able to use my new cell phone, […]
Continue reading