It's sad that Thanksgiving Day is getting crowded out as Christmas decorations go up earlier and earlier every year. When I was a child, Thanksgiving was the beginning of the winter holiday season, and only on the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving did Santa Claus come to the mall to hear little children's Christmas wishes. As a result, ( Read more... )

Yesterday we went to the family reunion on my dad's side. This year it was so small that we didn't even have the business meeting afterward, or the door prize drawings that we used to have. Other than two grandchildren one of the older cousins was babysitting, my brothers and I were probably the youngest people in attendance (and even my brothers ( Read more... )

Today would've been my maternal grandmother's one hundred eleventh birthday ( Read more... )

In the old days, childlessness (a couple who want children but aren't able to have them) was usually the result of fertility issues. One or both partners had medical issues that prevented them from having children.

Now we have a significant number of couples who really want children, have no medical obstacles to doing so, but some can't afford to ( Read more... )

I knew that today was going to be a busy day, between getting the car worked on and getting my husband to his cardiac rehab session. But I didn't expect to need to squeeze in a visit to the eye doctor's to have my glasses repaired -- but I didn't have much choice when I pulled off my glasses and one of the nose rests came off ( Read more... )

On the whole 2023 was a fairly decent year. I more than doubled my income from my writing -- I haven't made so much on that front since the days when I was cranking out articles in job lots for ready-reference publishers, back in the mid-noughts. Of course putting out a collection and re-releasing a serialized novel helped, but I got a fair amount ( Read more... )

Today was a rather quiet Christmas. For the first time in almost a decade, we put up the tree again. It was nice to see it all lit and pretty, even if it didn't have any ornaments.

Still, it was nice to eat Christmas dinner together, then exchange presents. Maybe not as fancy as a decade or so ago, but times change and life goes on.

Here in the US, today is Thanksgiving Day. It's a harvest festival, but focused upon gratitude, and has its roots in the early days of the Plymouth Colony, one of several established in what is now Massachusetts by English Calvinists ( Read more... )

When I pulled the van into the driveway after Grand Rapids Comic Con earlier this month, I thought that would be the last time I would be looking out over the steering wheel of the van at that long double ribbon of highway until Hall of Heroes Comic Con next year. Sure, I'd be driving it some so it doesn't stand idle over the winter (which is hard ( Read more... )

Today would've been my mother's 87th birthday.

Sometimes it seems hard to believe she's been gone for almost six years now.