Category: aging
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Ripped and Well-Worn for $128
I like clothes shopping. My oldest daughter and I firmly believe that a couple hours amid pretty things is a great way to decompress and lift our mood. This is especially true when the skies are 10-days of gray, accompanied by weeks of below freezing temperatures. The last time my…
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Mom, I Wish I Knew You Young
When I was out of town, my son and his fiancée stopped at the house to pick up old family videos. I’m sure they thought it would be fun to see my son as a toddler, running the coastline in a swim diaper while on vacation. Before I could even…
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10 At the End – January Gratitude
This is a list of 10 things I’m thankful to have enjoyed or accomplished in month one of 2025. The list below is less exciting than what I expected to share at the outset of this month. I was sidelined a bit with my back leading to more reading, less…
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Christmas Shopping With a Paper Check?!
I can’t recall why my husband and I were discussing shopping via the Sears and JCPenney Christmas catalogs back in the “1990’s”, but we were – in front of our 27-year young daughter. If you are under 45 years old, you may not know what these thick Christmas books looked…
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I Had the Time of My Life Fighting Dragons with You
Seated on the floor surrounded by moving bins, Taylor Swift’s music played in the background (randomly on my daughter’s Spotify) while I rummaged through my three kids’ middle school papers. My twins had just started sixth grade when we moved here and my youngest began fourth. Change is rarely easy…
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The Reminiscing
Most people merely laugh and cry while pouring over 1000’s of photos when packing up to move. This deep thinker took it to another level, wondering if Socrates would have included the usefulness of photographs and videos in his idiom that the “unexamined life is not worth living”. Do reminiscing…
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Moving: The Stuff
We grow up and make a home of our own. Some of us buy houses, condos or apartments. Whatever the structure, we collect some STUFF. And, I’m not a collector. So, how did I end up with so much? Photos capturing all we have done as a family make me…
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Moving: The Highlight Reel
We finally moved last week. My experience confirms the myriad of lists claiming moving is one of the top five life stressors. I’m also grateful to God that it was only moving stress and nothing more serious. We made it out alive😉, relatively in-tact physically, and are giving ourselves the…
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You’re Middle-Age When…Morning Routine
During the morning routine at the kitchen island, you realize that the decades of kid-related conversation between you and your spouse has been replaced by aging-body questions. The conversation goes something like this… Me: “How is your shoulder this morning?” Husband aggressively grabs shoulder, massaging it, then moves his arm…
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You’re Middle-Age When…Heating Pads and High Heels
High heels and wine glasses previously lingering from Friday nights long ago, have been replaced by heating pads and orthopedic footwear… This was my Saturday morning view on the way to the kitchen-from my Friday night of packing boxes (we are selling this big empty nest–another post someday)… I still…
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Mid-Life Snoring?!
While raising my three children, the mere whisper of “Mama” at 2am bolted me straight up and out of REM sleep. If one of them rumbled a quiet cough, I was awake. My eyes shot open at the sound of someone streaming water from the fridge at 4am. Like most…
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When I Returned, The Workplace Had Changed
Cultural differences A few years ago, I was working in Human Resources with father and daughter co-owners of a small healthcare company. Having moved to the U.S. with an unlimited cash stream from their home country, they wrongly assumed that money really can buy anything. Payroll was viewed as a…
Tales from a Mid-Lifer 