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  • Bargain

    I walked into my local Christmas Tree Shops store to pick up a small wooden table for my bathroom. According to my internet research, it would have cost about $80 anywhere else, but here it was $35. This is the magic of Christmas Tree Shops. It’s the only place I go when I need picture…

  • Bulb

      I love podcasts. It seems I can’t clean a counter, prep a meal, or take a walk without one lately. I love learning and taking in information in this intimate, friendly, funny format. I have dozens of podcasts on my phone at a given time, their subjects ranging from improv comedy to storytelling to…

  • Introvert

    Today I made small talk with the girl at the coffee shop and laughed with a bank teller. I welcomed a new Dad to music class with a smile and I looked him right in the eye, too. None of these small actions seems like a big deal, but if you knew me at age…

  • Story

    At mass this morning, we had a guest celebrant. Fr. Kevin had been ordained a priest this past spring, and before that, he studied in Rome, and before that, he entered the seminary, and before that, he was a youth minister, and before that, he was a Spanish teacher, and before that, he was a…

  • Look

    When my mother was very sick with ovarian cancer, and maybe wondering about her legacy or her impact or what our lives would be like without her, I told her about the rooms in my house. I told my Mom that if I stood in the center of any one of those rooms and turned…

  • Becoming

    One day when my kids were very small, I was talking to my mother about a new habit of mine. Even though I took several daily walks with the kids during those busy years, I had begun getting up really early and walking by myself before my husband left for work. I used the time…

  • Living

      Yesterday, I was driving home and found my street the color of clay, flooded with a couple of inches of water, and police officers on the scene. It seemed there had been a water-main break, and it compromised both the road and the water source for the surrounding houses. In the hours that followed,…

  • 914 (part two)

      There are six or eight little white utility vans that zip around the university campus where I live, and I often see them while running, walking the dog or sitting on my porch. The vans are identical except for the drivers, whom I never notice, and their three digit license plate numbers, which I…

  • 914 (part one)

    I was done with signs. Done with trusting the intuition I felt God had given me from being in constant communication and relationship with him. Done with scanning my life, both exterior and interior, for leadings, messages, and hope. I felt cast off from my former status of much-loved-dear-daughter and it hurt. The saddest part…

  • Page

    When I was a child, my faith life was whatever my parents taught me. There was a loving God, and rules, and if you did the right thing, and helped your neighbor, all would be well. If my early-adult life was a house, I would have painted one room ‘religion’, another ‘family’, another ‘work’, another…