On the Fifth Day of Thanksgiving…
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...
On the Fourth Day of Thanksgiving…
I'm grateful for a husband who does stuff like this when he finds chalk outside that a kid left behind.
On the Third Day of Thanksgiving…
I'm grateful for the place my family has in my life.
On the Second Day of Thankgiving..
I am grateful for my hard-won friends. It hasn't been easy to build such a strong network. Making friends gets harder as one gets older, plus many of us have had to figure out how to be a good friend through trial and error. I think my parents were part of a...
Twelve Days of Thanksgiving
On the first day of Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for my physical body. Yes, the contents have shifted a bit and I've had to let go of the dream of one day, one day, finally whipping myself into swimsuit shape, but here's the best part about my body: I go through most...
O. My. God.
Because we weren't conflating food with emotional fulfillment enough.
Middle-Aged
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.
Getting Out the Front Door
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...
Halloween Wins
Images of Halloween invoke death, decay and the unknown. They're the taboo subjects that spooked us as over-imaginative children and that we'll fear again as we get close to our own physical collapse. But the reason Halloween is my second favorite celebration is that...
Spooky Photo
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.
Halloween Is for Scairdy Cats
I'm drawn to horror stories, horror movies and all things dark. When I was seven years old and first learned to read, I started with the ghost story books at the library. I kept going until I had read every ghost story book for my age group in the place. In my teens I...
Remedying a Bad Week with Cake
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...