I'm not really sure what it is about my front porch chimes that make me want to just sit here, listen, and think stuff. I also had a couple of rather lengthy drives today, and since neither of them involved M59, I94, or I75, that also provided me an opportunity to just think quietly all by myself. I love my chimes, and I love days like today. I've got a box sitting on my kitchen table filled with all sorts of things for a new baby - diapers, rattles, bibs, and infant clothing for our sweet little baby that the entire family has fallen head over heals in love with. He is beautiful, and sweet, and squishy, and he has stolen every one of our hearts. No one in my family has ever been a foster parent, so this is all pretty foreign to me, but it sure hasn't taken very long to learn ... View Post
Keep the Botox
Ten years. That's how long I've been an empty-nesting, former single Mum of two sons. They are only a couple of months away from turning 31 and 33; thus, the reason I call myself a "former" single Mum. Now I'm an empty-nesting single "Gummy." I've blogged often about the journey - more so in the years immediately following - certainly not because my empty nesting life has become routine; it has definitely not! I write for a local newspaper, as well as for an online digital magazine, and remain employed full time as an RN - so that does take up a lot of my time! Also I spend evenings with my almost 88-year-old Mum, and try my hardest to get one day a week to spend with my son, daughter-in-law, and grands - in between necessary appointments and life in general. It doesn't always ... View Post
Don’t Balance – Prioritize!
There is a gentleman on my porch right now blowing away the leaves that have fallen from the trees in my front yard. There's also a pumpkin spice candle burning in my dining room, I just finished a pumpkin-pie-flavored protein shake, and today I'm wearing a bright orange t-shirt with a blue jean jacket over it. I stopped at a road-side market this morning and bought a squash and some green peppers for soup. Do you see a theme here? It's Fall here in "Pure Michigan," or "sweater weather" as I like to call it (because I probably own about 40 beautiful sweaters, including one I haven't worn yet - made by my friend's mom to resemble one I wore back in the 1970's). The seasons are changing fast, and we all know exactly how to prepare. We can tomatoes, store food, freeze soup, attend ... View Post
“Old MacDonald” Spaghetti Sauce
Ingredients: A green pepper A red pepper Small vidalia onion 3 crushed garlic cloves 1-1/2 pounds ground sirloin 1 Can tomato sauce 15 ounces 1 T Worcestershire Sauce 1/3 Cup Ketchup (this is the not-so-secret EIEIO ingredient, which makes this spaghetti sauce a little less Italian, and a lot more Old MacDonald) 4 T tomato paste 2 T honey 2 t mustard. Yes, mustard. salt and pepper to taste Instructions: Heat up some olive oil in a skillet, chop and cook up your peppers, onion, and garlic for a few minutes and then add your ground sirloin to it. In the meantime, combine all the rest of your ingredients in a bowl, and then add them to a crock pot with the rest of your fully cooked meat sauce mixture, and let it cook for about 1-1/2 hours. I like ... View Post
Please. Help Me Get To Colorado!
"I wanna call Aunt Ayley!" I hear it every time I visit little Miss Maci. A couple of visits a year just leaves her wanting more Aunt & Uncle time, snuggles, giggles, and love. And a trip to Colorado to see them this summer has left her missing her Aunt & Uncle, and Loki, their black lab, more than ever. Holly, my daughter-in-law, says Maci makes a sad face and shares her heartache of missing them all with random cashiers while in line at the grocery store. "My Aunt & Uncle are in Colorado," she says. So when I visit, she's after my phone because she knows she can see their faces and hear their voices live! A few weeks ago, Maci dialed them, and while talking she took the phone into her room. There, she put the phone down and then changed clothes into her favorite ... View Post
My 2 Cents On Social Media Etiquette – Kamala Harris & Donald Trump Name Calling
This morning, again this afternoon, and yet again this evening, I was reminded of an important event in the lives of my sons. The first time was within 30 minutes of being awake, the second time I was convinced I needed to journal, and by the third I knew I needed to start jotting it down tonight. There was this time - long, long ago. It was a time in the growing years of my sons when they were going to church every Sunday, going through the motions because they knew it was expected of them, but they really didn't have a clue what they believed or why they were supposed to believe it. They knew what they had been "taught," but they weren't convinced any of it really had any significance or truth to it. But there were people in their lives, one in particular, who they both watched ... View Post
Transformed by the Renewal of My Mind (and vacuuming couch cushions)
There aren't very many mornings I get to sleep in, but today was one of them. A list of chores and to-do's jotted down last night on a piece of note paper awaited me on the kitchen table this morning. On the top of that list? Wash and iron my kitchen tablecloth. Well, you know how it goes... Pretty soon all the windows were washed, the ironing was done, I cleaned behind the washer and dryer, got up on a stool and washed the ceiling fan, wiped floor boards, scrubbed bathrooms, washed toilets, shook rugs, vacuumed, cleaned door wall tracks, and on and on. You get the picture. After a three-hour deep cleaning, my home smells really good now. But my biggest accomplishments? 1) I never touched or looked at my cell phone. 2) I removed all of the couch cushions and vacuumed, ... View Post
Becoming A Mother-in-Law
For 10 years I've wanted to write about becoming a mother-in-law, about my sons leaving home, leaving me with an empty nest. For 10 years, on multiple occasions, I have sat down to write and just known I wanted to go in 100 different directions, and yet have not had the courage to follow through. And to be completely honest, I haven't had the wisdom. Sometimes I'll have amazing conversation with a friend over dinner, and I'll be just so confident about what it is I want to say, and get home and think to myself.... Nope. Not yet. And maybe I'm going to get two paragraphs into this blog and quit, only for it to remain an unfinished piece until a decade from now. Only God knows. But here I sit. Fingers on keyboard, once again. Thinking about the thing I want the most to write ... View Post