When I started high school my mother said: “You are going to college, but because you don’t know what the future holds, you are also going to learn how to support yourself. Therefore, you are going to take typing and shorthand.” (more…)
I’ve been watching the birds at the feeder out the dining room window. Before this particular feeder, which hangs from the house, and can be filled merely by opening the window, I had tried others. These others were all out in the back yard, visible, but not reachable from the house, so I had to go outside to fill them up. This fill up did not happen as often as it should have. It did not happen when I had to pull on boots and wade through snow. It did not happen when I had to put on a coat because it was -4. And it did not happen in warmer weather when the grass was wet with the dew and I only had on slippers. In short, because at the time I bought the first feeders I did not know my limitations (anything that required effort), I was a crap bird whisperer. (more…)
When we were in grad school, Suzanne and I used to talk about how hard it was to be Irish. You might have thought that we would obsess more about the difficulty of going to grad school in our 30s while looking after small children. But no, we were obsessed with the Irish question. Our (more…)
Leaving The Hunter – who hates long flights – at home to do all the kinds of things that hunters do, I recently hopped the pond to enjoy a spot of grandmothering. There are many benefits to doing this, not the least of which is a huge arrears to be made up in the hugs and kisses department. Another benefit, but way down on the list, is that I thought I could leave the political climate behind, at least for a while. (more…)