For about the last 20 years, I’ve never had what I would call a New Year’s resolution. Instead, much like Ben Franklin, I look at areas in my life I want to improve on, and goals I want to work toward. I guess that’s kind of my small town way of saying “New Year’s resolutions.”…
Month: December 2013
Standing on the sidelines
This time of year, it’s hard to turn around without bumping into a college football bowl game. That’s fine by me. I love football. As I’ve told some friends, if they ever start broadcasting Russian peewee football, I’ll probably watch part of it. So it was a lot of fun a few weeks ago when I was…
Letting go
There are have been many times over the years when people have told me how difficult it must have been to watch my wife suffer from terminal cancer. Certainly, it was a year of constant struggle, of trying to deal with a disease for which there is no cure, or even a reason why. But…
The quiet of Christmas eve
It’s quiet now. The shopping is long done. Well, in my case, “long” means a few hours, but it’s done nevertheless. The presents are wrapped. My son and I spent time making Christmas cookies for ourselves, and a few to leave as a snack for Santa. Everything is ready for Christmas. Everything except one thing…
Adopting new traditions in the face of grief
It was only a week or so before Christmas day 2004, and I hadn’t bought a gift. Or gotten a tree, much less decorated it. Or put up one Christmas decoration. There wasn’t one thing in my house that would have indicated it was the holiday season, unless you could have found a calendar. But…
Son’s morbid curiosity about “Old Days” may be more than he’s ready for
If you follow my blog from time to time, you know that my son has a curious mind. Sometimes these questions are a bit on the unusual side. Recently, he had a question that kind of took me back. And made me feel my age. “Dad,” he asked, “back in the old days, was YouTube…
Kids’ nefarious plan appears to be working
There’s a growing sense of something evil in the bowels of my house (and I won’t even scare you with what’s in my own bowels). An evil so great that it’s starting to touch the very fiber of my soul. Sadly, it’s my own kids who have hatched such an audacious plan. What are they…
Holding together the jello 