When I clean the toilet, I close my eyes. I go into a deep state of denial about what I'm doing and imagine that I'm scrubbing an already sparkling clean toilet. I work hard on every inch to guarantee that when I do open my eyes, all I'll see is a gleaming surface.I...
It was still coming down at 1 p.m.Yes, that's our car I'm standing next to.
BLIZZARD! This is why I moved to the Midwest in 1993. Oh, yeah. I experienced my first blizzard in Ithaca, New York in 1993. It was great. My second was here in Chicago in 1999, but by coincidence I was very ill and spent the whole time in bed. This is my first...
Dear East Coast, Please stop hogging all the snow. Sincerely, Midwest
Back when I decided to get serious about music, I hired someone to build a website that told people my music. I carefully wrote the copy and gave him the photographs and lyrics to publish. It was 2001 so I didn't really know what I was doing. As early websites often...
I am grateful to feel grateful at all. This has been a very hard year even though Bob and I weren't even dealing with a financial crisis or losing a home or anything like that. But obviously major surgery causes its own kind of stress. My depression depleted my...
Disclaimer: since I became properly obese, I re-read these old posts and see my body dysmorphia and self-hatred and obsession with food and weight. It's sad. I'm grateful that I've finally started to lose the twelve pounds I put on over my awful, wretched summer of...
I'm grateful for being an American. I never felt this way until I left the country for the first time in my life and finally used a passport at the age of 44. I went to Peru and Bolivia. There I saw what my life could have been if my grandparents hadn't hauled...
I'm grateful for anti-depressants!
I'm grateful for my new cell phone. This is why I have a new cell phone: In 2006, my husband's company began paying for his cell phone. In 2008, they got him a BlackBerry. I was so envious, I insisted that we get me a BlackBerry, too. We could afford it, since we...
Bob and I had drinks at The Wit Hotel in downtown Chicago last night. He took this photo which shows me the schoolteacher I could have been.
Some people spend their adulthoods moving from one career accomplishment to another. Some pour themselves into raising families and/or building a long-lasting marriage. Some improve their communities, help build companies, nurture their extended family or tend...
I finally captured evidence on film that Chicago is indeed going to hell. I took this tonight from the Belmont el train platform. It looks like the red in the clouds is reflected from the lights, but it wasn't. That reddish tint was just there.
So I had a rough summer, a not-much-better trip to South America and came back feeling more depressed than ever. I ate a lot. By the end of September, I had begun to pull out of it. I got back to my healthy eating habits. I started to lose the weight I put on in the...