I like to think I have each of my grown children figured out and properly categorized: The wise, contemplative oldest. The never-knew-a-stranger sales guy in the middle. The sensitive, empathic youngest.
I thought this game was a comfortable one-way street till Mr. Wise One sent a care package to entertain me after bunion surgery.
Everybody’s good at something.
My personal best is jamming a dozen errands into an eight-hour day.
It doesn’t take much. When I was 12, a new decal from the five and dime set me off. I charged into a cleaning, fix-it spree that turned my bedroom upside down and inside out with closet-cleaning and painting.
And now, with spring upon us, I feel the same dangerous itch.
I’m the first to admit that I’ve been a purist when it comes to young grandkids and their electronic devices.
When the 3-year-old paid more attention to the Shimmer and Shine game on his iPad than the flaming onion volcano at a Japanese steakhouse, I worried.
I hate to admit it, but I’m one of those people with a ready-fire answer to the question “What could possibly go wrong?”
Weather unseasonably warm? There’s a storm on the way.
Car won’t start? Must be the transmission.
Landline ringing? Probably a robot.
As someone who writes a lot about stress relief, I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve missed a silent stress reliever that’s been coloring the interior lives of Americans everywhere.
It’s subtle, silent, nearly odorless, and goes by the name “Repose Gray.”
Happy January!
With a clean slate ahead, the strategist in me can barely contain herself.
What if I read a book a week? What if I did something every day that I’d never done before? What if I dumped a grocery bag a day of “stuff” I don’t really need?
I have long been able to pole vault from a peaceful present moment into the stressful prospect of future catastrophes.
It is a talent. An odd sort of blessing, which I’ve long justified. After all, without catastrophizing, how could I experience enormous relief if catastrophe does not come?
I don’t pretend to know everything about widowhood, but after more experience than I’d like, I thought I had figured out one thing: All widows redecorate.
“It’s universal,” I announced to a widowed friend the other day at lunch. “It’s a way of taking control.”
In September 2014, I wrote in this space that life was not only a balancing act but sometimes a roller coaster ride. At the time, I reported that my husband Bill Hurley and I had fast-forwarded our wedding plans so that he could have a malignant tumor removed from his esophagus.