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Give me stripes or give me death!
Does everyone else make up back stories for their pets or is that just me? One of our cats is a tabby with beautiful dark stripes on top of a fluffy caramel base coat. He is small and fierce, and he doesn’t like snuggles. He’s a real cat’s cat, always a little suspicious of our…
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It doesn’t have to be every year!
It occurred to me yesterday, after posting about our 2023 Halloween season, that some people may find that long list of festive(?) activities discouraging. Most people probably won’t care, and will just add “way too focused on cemeteries” to their mental list of reasons I am both strange and interesting. But some people (in particular…
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Halloween Season
We had quite the Halloween season around here! Every year it gets a little a little spookier, a little scarier, a little more. It is possible we hit peak Halloween this year. (Lists are not rankings.) Scary Movies Watched Spooky Books Read Cemeteries Visited Haunted Experiences Survived
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Variations on the Theme of Kindness
We had the big Halloween event at my kids’ school last week. My husband and I were both on pretty major committees and wow that is not my favorite thing. It was stressful, and I’m glad it’s over. But my oldest got to make his big debut as a scare actor in the haunted house,…
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Strong
We began fall clean-up at the cabin this past weekend. I raked and piled leaves into a wheelbarrow and then pushed it up the hill and to the back of the property where we dump yard waste. I did this about three billion times. I mowed every blade of grass, and ran the mower out…
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Stout
My husband took a picture of me this weekend with the kids. This was significant for two reasons: Guys, I am no longer just adorable and fat, I now qualify as stout. Jeez. (And I am trying to use “fat” and “stout” as neutral terms here. I did not say I was a bad or…
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Mrs. France & Childhood Memories
A memory bubbled up from the depths last week, I can’t figure out why. Kindergarten. 1990. I had a necklace of rainbow plastic beads with a pink plastic heart in the middle. It seems out of character for me now, but I loved that necklace and wore it to school frequently. The necklace broke one…
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Drained
I spent several hours this morning cleaning out the sink drain in our upstairs bathroom. I just unclogged the bathtub drain last week, and I thought that was a disgusting job but the sink was much worse. There was gunk in there that was at least a decade old. I almost died from the smell.…
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An Outside Child
As I mentioned in my previous post, my youngest has strep throat right now. In an effort to avoid germs, my oldest has been avoiding the youngest as much as possible. In a surprising gesture of kindness last night, the youngest volunteered to eat dinner alone on the patio and spare his brother the germ…
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Bob
My youngest has strep throat for the fourth time this year. Due to various poor decisions on my part, he only just got his first dose of antibiotics an hour ago even though he was diagnosed with strep yesterday. He’s been miserable off and on, but mostly he’s been curled up in the basement diligently…