
Life from a slightly skewed perspective

How can we keep from singing?
This morning during my daily Zoom meditation with friends around the U.S., one friend was in tears over the events of the past 10 days....

Making new friends is not for the fainthearted
A friend is someone with whom you dare to be yourself. - Frank Crane Making new friends is a little bit frightening, a little bit fun....

Do something step one: Downsizing
Our minds were made up: we were moving. To be clear, the concept was much easier said than done. There was the little matter of clearing...

Do something
In early January, the members of my meditation group shared our one-word intentions for 2024. I struggled with a way to express the...

Spring 2023: Sewing baby quilts
Sewing for babies is way more fun than sewing for adults. Everything is smaller, takes less fabric, less time, less angst. So when our...

Learning the value of making global friends virtually
True story: I read the weddings in the New York Times. I don't read them to see what the bride or groom or their attendants wore....

Finding art in mysterious places
It's funny how you can find art in unexpected places. My husband and I grew up in old houses with magical, mysterious, slightly creepy...

The cat who...
I know I've said this, but contrary to what my cat-loving childhood friend says, I am not a cat person. That doesn't mean I don't like...

Genetics and how they apply to entertaining
My understanding of genetics is limited to the understanding that physical traits and characteristics get passed down from one generation...

Home alone: Old house project #42
After 42 years, my husband should know better than to leave me home alone for a week. After all, there was that time he and one of our...

Never-ending project: Reviving the herb garden
And we have a little herb garden, which survived the winter thanks to global warming. It makes me feel like a cool, old Italian...

And then there was the project that failed...miserably
At the time, it seemed like a fine idea. Order a space saving desk with a drop down shelf for a laptop and mount it on the wall. Except...

Solving the mystery of the 100-year-old family trunk in the attic
During the summer, our patio is home to a rather beat-up primitive steamer trunk with a rusty clasp that doesn't quite connect the top to...

What's on your reading list for this summer?
A recent New York Times preview of books to read this summer prompted a memory of Bluffton University (College) president, Dr. Lee...

Project of the week: Who knew dowel rods could be so magical?
In retrospect, I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised by the fun of creating magic with dowel rods. After all, we discovered how easy...

A cat is just a cat...except when it's not
I am not a cat person. It's not that I don't like cats. Cats are fine. They're especially fine when they're outside. They're also fine if...

Project of the week: Reusable unpaper towels
Remember Rosie, the diner waitress in the Bounty commercials? Her face was said to have "launched a billion rolls of paper towels."...

Project of the week: Designing slipcovers
Well...maybe not ALL the furniture.... maybe just some of it... During the early days of the pandemic when very little was known about...

Project of the week: Bringing new life to the old
Somewhere in the middle of the season Ohioans know as dark and gloomy, I decided to challenge myself to finish one project per week, or...




















