Value Vision

This is a SPONSORED post.  What does that mean, exactly?  It means that I received–for FREE–the item that I am writing about in exchange for posting a review of it here.  The good news is that I was going to write a post on this topic anyway, so it’s not going to sound fake like [...]

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Those Conversations You Don’t Want to Have with Your Kids

William (age 10) hit me with a couple of difficult topics right in a row the other night.  This post is part one. Many parents struggle with how to talk to their children about where babies come from.  When I was growing up, I had many friends whose parents completely ignored this essential topic, leaving [...]

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We were in Alabama over the weekend . . .

. . . but not to watch the big game. No, we were in Mobile, at Spring Hill College, to visit Emily, our oldest, for Family Weekend.  Emily is a Junior, and some of us have attended the weekend each year, but this time it seemed especially important for us to be together, since she [...]

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On Losing Everything Part Three

Of course losing sentimental items is by far the hardest part of a tragedy like ours.  Some things really are just things, and can be replaced.  The problem with that is that there are so MANY of them, and you don’t realize how many and much they cost and how long it took you to [...]

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On Losing Everything Part Two

On the loss of all we owned, someone commented to me, “You unburdened yourselves.” True, although not on purpose.  A lot of stuff we lost is better off as ashes, probably.  I wouldn’t have chosen this method of decluttering/downsizing, but it worked.  I don’t have to read that two foot high stack of magazines.  We [...]

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On Losing Everything

What’s so terrible about losing everything (okay, let me just say that there is LOTS that is terrible about losing everything) is that “everything” is too big to grasp or think of or remember all at once.  I KNOW I lost everything–every MATERIAL thing–I ever owned, collected, saved, cherished, treasured, hoarded, bought, was given, made, [...]

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Remembering Mima

Today would have been Mima’s 93rd birthday.   I feel especially melancholy today thinking of all the many treasures related to her that I lost in the fire.  You already know about the afghans.  But there was so much more.  Before Mima moved from the home where she had spent forty-odd years, she gave me many [...]

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Laundry Laundry Everywhere

Laundry was a big problem for me in what we are now calling “the burned down house” (to distinguish it from “our first house” and “the old house”).  In the not-quite-two-years we lived there I never worked out a good system for sorting, washing, and putting away like I’d had before, probably because there was [...]

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A Sorrow Shared

Friends from school and church have been bringing us several meals each week since the house burned, and even though we have a house now it is still a blessing.  I have not had time for a big trip to the store yet, and we don’t have any of the staples you need to have [...]

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The Lord Will Provide

My husband was the second reader at Mass today.  Of course I always expect to find meaning in the readings or the homily, but hearing John read the following this morning hit eerily close to home: Brothers and sisters: I know how to live in humble circumstances; I know also how to live with abundance. [...]

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