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I am pretty much stone cold deaf unless I’m wearing my hearing aids. In the mornings, before I put them in, Tom and I have some pretty funny conversations. Tom says “I’m going to the store. Is there anything you want on my list?” Me “My wrist? No, it’s really all right”. Tom “Did you say you want me to get Coors Lite? I thought you liked Corona.” Tom asks “Did you want coffee? I can make you some.” Me “Oh yes. You need to pick up Tums.”             “Sorry?” my husband says. T

Dough-nut Under-estimate the Power of a Chocolate-covered Cruller            My husband does the grocery shopping in our small twosome family. I get to make a list of things I want or need. The rule is, they have to be things he can find without asking the store clerks too many questions, because he’s one of those “fast shoppers”. Stuffed dates or Holland Rusks are out of the question. On top of that, he usually starts out the conversation before I have had my morning coffee

HEY TEACH!             All of us are teachers, whether we know it or not. Whether we want to be or not. Whether we like it or not. We teach our kids, our dogs, our friends, we teach ourselves. You teach your kids how to brush their teeth, make their bed with tucked corners, do their laundry without everything turning pink and how to make French Toast. You teach the dog to sit, stay, come, lie down, roll over and play dead when you mention the name of your most-disliked politi

Just When Your Loose Ends are All Tied Up, Something Unravels Do you ever feel that you are stuck in the “three steps forward, two steps back” life pattern? Well, here I am, writing this a few days before my birthday. My 84 th  birthday. Good Grief! How did I get to be 84? Wasn’t I just 42? Let’s see-42-That was 1982-the year we put the “gazebo-shaped kitchen/family room” addition on the old Victorian house and spent the Summer pulling nails out of the beautiful quarter-sawn

“DO RIGHT OR DON’T” Why do we get all in a bundle about doing something “the right way”? As if there is only one way to do something and have it be acceptable? Anyone who uses a computer knows that is not true. There are all kinds of ways to do an end run around your stubborn Dell or Mac or whatever you have. We all know about unplugging, counting to ten, re-plugging and re-booting. But there is also the “making your hard drive regurgitate all those cookies it‘s been consumin

HANG UP THE ROLLER SKATES            Oh noooo! Not A & Dubs! The last drive-in in Duluth has announced that they won’t re-open for the 2024 Summer Season! How can that be?            Drive-Ins. Those of us who were teenagers in the 1950s went to them and worked in them. The first one I remember was really more of a roadside stand out in the country in Vestal Center, N. Y.. As far as I knew, they only sold mugs of Birch Beer, that clear second cousin to root beer. Birch beer h

YOU KNOW YOU’RE OLD WHEN:               You and your spouse are considering purchasing matching walkers, only he gets red and you get blue. And just to show that you are not dinosaurs, you are also getting the attachable cell phone holders. Soup is not the course between the appetizer and the entrée, it IS the entrée, mostly because it is easy to slurp, chew and swallow. I now look at left-overs with an eye to “I wonder if soup from that that would be good”. And pudding seems

City Critters             It’s Summer in Duluth. The season we all wait for, yearn for, go through the hard Winters for. Time to run, bicycle, swim, play tennis, go fishing, canoeing, camping, gardening, fire up the roller blades, have dinner on the patio, char your burgers on the Weber. Art Fairs, fireworks, picnics, garden tours. Paint your house, get up on one ski at the lake, snooze in your hammock. Aaaahhhh.             I know it’s Summer because, yesterday, the neighbor

YES, I’M PRETTY SURE I’M REALLY ME There’s a big event coming up in your life and you’d really like to shop locally for something to wear, but you’re 84 and don’t drive any more because of health issues. So you get on your computer and type in “embroidered jacket” or whatever you’re looking for. Up pop pages and pages of embroidered jackets, some attractive, some no-doubt-about-it ugly. But, you’re in luck! One of the jackets that appeals to you is on your favorite online sho

I’VE BEEN PUZZLED             I am absolutely addicted to puzzles of all kinds, jigsaw on the table, jigsaw online, mind puzzles and many different solitaires, especially Free Cell, which is a type of Patience game and yes, it does require patience. I have solved the expert category of Free Style, but not often and there was a small celebratory “whoop” afterwards. “Free Cell  is sometimes used as a test case for artificial intelligence and machine learning, as it involves pla

I Didn’t Catch That             I am pretty much stone cold deaf unless I’m wearing my hearing aids. In the mornings, before I put them in, Tom and I have some pretty funny conversations. Tom says “I’m going to the store. Is there anything you want on my list?” Me “My wrist? No, it’s really all right”. Tom “Did you say you want me to get Coors Lite? I thought you liked Corona.” Tom asks “Did you want coffee? I can make you some.” Me “Oh yes. You need to pick up Tums.”        

My Tin Can Garden                     Our house is built on the first or second shelf of gabbro/granite in eastern Duluth. If you go out the back door, where my garden is, you go straight uphill from there. And it has maybe four inches of soil before you hit rock. Clunk. Those four inches of dirt are, of course, infested with buckthorn roots. No digging going to be going on here. So, I hit on the idea of having containers. Sounds lovely, right? I know you’re thinking hand-thr

Yes, he was! As far back as I can remember, he always drove a Ford--oh, except for the two-tone blue 1952 Mercury with the dual exhausts--that he bought from a teen-age kid who had customized it. Thinking back, that was probably my Dad's mid-life crisis. He sure enjoyed that car, driving it around and making it rumble. He's the reason I didn't learn to drive until I was 19, because he would use any excuse to drive his sexy car--he drove me wherever I needed to be, he drove my