In this season of Jingle Bells and O Holy Night, what song is stuck in my head? Don't Cross the Street. If you recognize it, you are probably a New Yorker of a certain age. It was an anti jaywalking campaign sponsored in the 60's by the City's traffic safety department. The version in the…

My creativity quotient is near zero. You bloggers know what I mean? AKA writer's block. I function well under stress, hence my long satisfying career in social services. Family life is good, work life is steady. What suffers is my creativity and that's a huge hunk of life for me.  Riding the waves of crisis,…

There's a vanity in my bedroom, a sink in my living room, and loud fans everywhere:   In an unrelated event we have no water and they are digging up our yard: I am not looking for any more sympathy, but if you happen to meet Calgon today, send him to my house to take…

I've always thought couples need exceptional communication and coping skills to engage in activities such as playing bridge and wallpapering. We don't do either. I've recently discovered that warping a loom ranks right up there. I'm happy to report that we're not only thriving through serious illness recovery, but loom warping times three, which has…

Considering our family's recent life events, at the urging of my daughter, I've decided to indulge in some comfort. Food and creativity in that order. There are children in my life, now not so little, who early on dubbed certain foods with kiddy pronunciations, preceded by something to the effect of "I'm not eating…." "I'm…

I knew I recognized this feeling. It may sound bizarre, but coming home from the hospital with Chuck felt like bring a new baby home. Entering a new world, the promise of a bright future, with someone seemingly so fragile. The fear. Wanting to put a little mirror under his nose to see that he's…

The wedding ones, I'm referring to. We're on the good side of for better or worse. Figure we're right in the middle of for richer or poorer. However, we're not doing too well in the sickness or in health department. Just so long as we don't go to the next step. It's not impinging on…

The collective wisdom of middle aged experience: Last week at work, we hosted two 14-year-olds for Take Your Kid To Work Day. Part of their experience included attending a staff meeting where I asked the staff to consider, given their life experience, what advice they would have given their 14-year-old self. This is some of…

Yes, we have winners, not just one, but two. I decided to go ahead and pick two winners, one by the original rules and one by the rules that ruled out spam. #6000 was officially Toni in Florida, who prefers sock or mid weight yarn and the random draw, limiting entries to one per day…

So this is what I'll do: of my very nearly 6000 comments, 162 are five years worth of spam, and I didn't think it fair to count that in the total. So what I'll do, is when I get to #6000 I'll put all of the contest comments into a hat and draw it randomly.…