Word Quilt ~ Word Quilt

I don’t sew, but I write — patching together pieces of my life.

Connections

Big little things can be so important in one’s life. For example, when Uncle John and Aunt Anne decided to pop in and visit us during their trip through the northeast, it seemed like a little enough thing for them. For us? It was a really big thing. To think that in their travels they […]

Valentine’s Fortunes

Soooo. It was our Valentine’s celebration, and we were at the local Chinese food restaurant. It came time to read our fortunes, and Mom cracked her cookie open. Empty I so wish you could have seen her face as the 86-year-old woman commented something like … Well, that’s not a good sign. Does that mean […]

Rise of Empires: Ottoman

History is so fascinating. I love comparing life today to life in the past. What have we learned? What errors are we repeating? My Uncle John got me hooked on history through tales he wove somewhere around fifth grade for me. I will be the first to admit I’m not one to dig through dry […]

2020 Starts With Change

While I’ve been mostly silent on the blog for a few weeks, my life has been anything but quiet. During this time, I’m reminded that I am a small piece in the part of a very large play in life, and everything happens for a purpose. To be honest, this might be a very boring […]

Grandma Joy

Last Monday, January 13, while driving from northern NY to Connecticut, I passed the Amsterdam exit and realized it’s been way too long since I had visited my grandma. That evening we got an email from my aunt telling us Grandma wasn’t doing so well. Since we were heading back to NY on Tuesday, it […]

A Calm Thought

The other day I went for a walk and listened to a meditation on the Calm app. In a little ten-minute session the narrator was focusing on thoughts and had some advice that has been resonating with me for over a week now. Shen mentioned that our minds were like radio stations that are constantly […]

Impromptu anniversary date with Taco Bell

Our 28th Wedding Anniversary

On Saturday Chris and I celebrated 28 years together. We were sitting in our living room having our morning coffee and reminiscing when we suddenly decided to have an impromptu date. Off to the mall we went for some cologne for Chris and a bit of lunch before work later in the day. (And unbeknownst […]

Christmas Letter 2019

Our 2019 Christmas letter.

Beer and Carols 2019

Now that sounds like fun! One of my favorite finds here in Massachusetts is the monthly Jazz Vespers service at Zion Lutheran in Pittsfield. I should blog about it sometime. When I can’t make it live, I love watching along on their Facebook page. The church has lots of events I’m never around long enough […]

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My Aunt Anne’s Wonderful Posts

Godparents' Day

We had a true Godparents’ Day in Massachusetts, though I didn’t tumble to it until the end of the day. We visited niece Chrissie and Chris in the ski resort where they live, and from there we drove near Boston to see nephew Anders and his daughter Rowan (4). We are godparents for both Chrissie […]

Toilets while Traveling

It amazes me that toilets come in all sizes. I’m sure there was one standard size when I was young, but no more! The first motel had a toilet designed for a two-year-old. The seat was almost on the floor!! You might think the room was meant for a very young family, but there was […]

On the Road Again

Day one of travel was easy for me, since John did all the driving. The day was sunny and warm for a winter’s day. We left North Carolina in the morning, and I took a photo of the visitor’s center sign before we stopped for the night. Having gone further than John thought we would, […]

Logan's Tail

Neighbor Bob came over for a road association meeting. I heard him say something to Logan (9) and thought it might have been “inside out”. I paid no attention to it until grandson David batted a balloon around the room with him while the meeting was going on. Logan seemed to have a tail flapping […]

Snow and a Flat Rainbow

I have three photos that don’t belong to a story, so they are being lumped together. The first I’m calling Foot Traffic on the Deck. The bird feeder was hanging out of sight on the metal stand. I think there are squirrel prints there, too. Surely Sadie’s paw print is not that tiny. That day […]

Barefoot in the Snow

Neighbor Logan’s visit was planned ahead, because his parents went to a dinner. He might have come over slightly before Shawn and Bob told him to. How do I know? They must not have seen him leave the house. The first thing I noticed when I opened the door was that he was barefooted. “Where […]

Better than a Gun

Two squirrels were determined to cheat the birds out of their seeds. Seeds on the deck were fair game, but I didn’t want the animals to hang on the feeder. I got my exercise jumping up to run them off. One day Sadie saw a squirrel and lunged at it, pawing the glass door. The […]

Mountain Flooding

I thought you might like to see the extent of the flooding of our property after days of rain. There was one little pop-up stream of water that flowed behind our back porch and down the yard. A small drainage ditch between us and our neighbors carried a rushing stream to join the run-off. As […]

Twice-ironed Waffles

I’ll tell you from the outset that twice-ironed waffles were not the goal. I wanted breakfast on the table by 9, a compromise between John’s early rising and night-owl’s delayed struggle to wake. Waffles take time, even when you have a fairly hot iron, so I was doing other things in the kitchen while they […]

Logan's Accuracy

Neighbor Logan (9) came over to visit, and one of the things he and John did was toss a tennis ball. When I went onto the deck to watch, Logan was counting the number of times they threw and caught the ball without dropping it. He is much more accurate than he was five years […]