Last year at this time, I was buying slate-blue house paint, along with brushes, and rollers. I learned how to caulk between siding gaps. Then I set up on the front porch of my mother-in-law’s house and did the first cutting in. Six weeks later, I finished painting the entire house (minus the top portions,…
We are a lovely shade of purple here today. That’s the real-time air quality report color for Kalispell, Montana: very unhealthy –just a scosh under bright red, which is hazardous. Lungs are burning. Asthma inhalers are being used more often. We can look right at the sun in broad daylight, which is kind of funny…
At the end of a long day, they gathered all of us kids around a huge fireplace at Quaker Ridge Camp in Colorado. It was the middle of summer, but this was a camp high in elevation that looked out over Pike’s Peak, so we came to the gathering place with our sweatshirts and wrapped…
Word association: September. Go. Dramatic (traumatic?) re-entry into routine. Soccer games. Programs at church starting back up again. Winterizing (a Montana thing.) Loud sighing. Increased desire for coffee. Are we tired, people? At school, I have a metal ring hanging on my bulletin board, with bright cardstock pages attached to it. In case of a…
We were looking at one week with my brother-in-law, and I knew going in that it was going to test me in all of my weakest areas. So I’ll confess that the week before I reenacted Chernobyl for my husband. “This is going to be one big fail,” I cried. Because there would be a…
“I’ve got to run and get paint supplies,” I said to my son. “Do you want me to go with you?” he replied. A heroic offer, since he had just relaxed on the couch to watch a sitcom. He turned off the TV before I had even answered, and we hopped into the car. On…
I’m warring against the year-end temptation to moan and groan about school. You would forgive me if I were to tell you I’m tired, wouldn’t you? But I refuse to allow myself to quit too soon emotionally, and it’s because I remember something wonderful happens around May of every year. In the last month of school,…
My three-ring notebook contained 14 songs, and I carried it with me last Friday and Saturday, to accompany vocalists for the high school district music festival. Then at church on Saturday night, I had to laugh at myself. Fourteen times that weekend, I had heard adjudicators preach good breathing techniques to my students, so when…
Well, has your December calendar worn you out yet? If you’re coming into Christmas tired of soul, here’s a word of encouragement that I wrote a few years ago. It just needed some dusting off, and I think the message still fits. Merry Christmas to you, dear friend. Merry Christmas. I like a thick ream…
Our friend quit his cabinet-making job and took employment on the east side of the mountains. He works with three Nicaraguans who come north to work a ranch for half the year, and together they brave the winters of eastern Montana. Cold on the east side. Watch the weather forecast for Cut Bank, where it’s…
It was my very first summer to mow the lawn, about a decade ago. When I was growing up that was a boy job, so I had never even been asked to mow. But the grass was kicking up Matt’s allergies and asthma so bad that I suggested I give it a go. Come to…
I told my friend I was going to a football game the other night. She’s Miss Sports, so she joked that maybe I was turning over a new leaf of athleticism. “No,” I said. “Because I seriously considered asking Matt if he would mind if I took my Kindle to the game.” I read books,…
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