September 2, 2025 · 2 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

So far, my daughter’s New Zealand trip is off to a good start. She took a flight from Cincinnati to Los Angeles yesterday, with no problems. The dog had a final vet visit there and has been cleared for international travel. As a parting gift, we now have a refrigerator magnet with a photo taken many years ago.

Photo of dog sitting on concrete, with pool and willow hedge in background.

The photo left me feeling a bit melancholy. The willow hedge in the background got killed by climate change; and as for the dog, although she is healthy and energetic, she is older, and I don’t expect she will ever return to her puppyhood home. Traveling across borders with a pet is a complicated and time-consuming affair. New Zealand requires a quarantine of almost two weeks for an animal brought into the country.

Still, it’s good to have a memento. Those were happy times, and I believe there will be many more to come—even if they are different from what we might once have anticipated.

My daughter plans to become a world traveler; she’s moving to New Zealand next week. She is a neonatal intensive care nurse, so finding a job anywhere is not a problem for her, given the worldwide shortage of nurses. It should be quite an adventure, once she gets packed and ready. She gave up her rental house on Saturday, brought her stuff here, and piled much of it in our family room.


After several days of going through it all, giving some things to friends and donating others, she has her suitcases packed for the trip and a bit of extra stuff (mostly clothes) that will stay in her bedroom here. The family room is back to normal, except for the occasional dog bone or chew toy. Here’s a link to a post I wrote about her dog fully 11 years ago on this blog, as a little puppy. Wow, time flies.

July 27, 2025 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

Lantana is one of my favorite annual flowers, and I often plant it under the mailbox. This year I added some variety by planting hibiscus, which is one of my daughter’s favorites, and mandevilla. The lantana grew much more robustly and crowded out the others to a large extent. I noticed on Thursday that the hibiscus had one large yellow bloom, framed by lantana above and mandevilla below. I took a photo for my daughter.

Photo of annual flowers under the mailbox.

She was happy that I sent the photo to her and that the hibiscus had found a place to bloom. Even though it produced only one flower on that day, there was enough space for it.

July 15, 2025 · 1 comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

The home standby generator, which had been on order since April, was delivered two weeks ago and was connected Friday morning. It is just behind the backyard fence at the end of our driveway, where it is out of the way but not far from the house. There was a small grassy area between the fence and the driveway, now mostly dirt after the power and gas lines were run underground there. I’ll probably plant a few mums there in the fall while deciding how best to landscape that area in the spring.

Photo of newly installed Generac home standby generator.

The installers from Wells Electric were quick and efficient; they came out early in the morning and were finished by noon, although it took some time to dig the trench for the power and gas lines. The electric installation on the wall looks very neatly done.

Electrical installation for Generac home standby generator.

We had to move a large boxwood that was too close to the electric meter. It was mismarked as a dwarf plant when I bought it about 20 years ago. After a while, we realized it was instead a full-size boxwood. I should have dug it up years ago, when it first reached the height of the meter; but I didn’t get around to it, which made extra work for me (and for my husband and son; the job was too big to do by myself). The boxwood has now been relocated; this photo shows its height, as we have a six-foot fence. My husband set up a sprinkler on a timer, and we hope that such a large plant will survive being moved in the heat of summer.

Photo of boxwood planted next to fence.

Thunderstorms rolled through on Saturday, and it was nice not having to worry about power. It stayed on in our neighborhood, but there were high winds across Ohio. Our daughter’s house lost power, and she came to visit for the weekend. Because severe windstorms have become more common in the past few years, we have begun to strap down the chairs on the deck when strong thunderstorms are forecast.

Chairs strapped down on the deck.

The house now feels like a place that is well prepared for weather.

I sometimes feel that my blog has been woefully neglected. That is an exaggeration, of course; I’ve posted several entries per month for the past 13 years, including weekly Nurturing Thursday entries. Also, I have three ongoing multi-part stories, with reasonably clear ideas of what comes next in each of them.

Instead of composing my own stories, though, I’ve spent much more time reading fiction by other writers lately. I crave the distraction from a “real world” that seems increasingly unreal with every passing day. Sometimes, I feel almost as if I’ve gone back to childhood, when I would literally shut myself in a cupboard with a storybook after coming home from the confusion of elementary school.

“And that is a problem how?” My imaginary future self, Kass, appeared in the comfy oversized chair where I’d been about to sit. She sprawled insolently with her head tipped back across one armrest and her feet dangling over the other.

“Well, it’s a blog, right?” I frowned at the question. “So, I’m supposed to feel motivated to fill it with stories, insightful essays on modern times, cheerful photos of stuff around my house, or something.”

Kass made a rude noise. “Yeah, whatever. When will you learn to quit overloading yourself with silly social expectations? There’s no need to do anything with the blog except have fun with it—and invite me for visits, natch. As for photos, here’s one of your pink turtle friend, exploring your desk.”

Photo of a crocheted pink turtle on my desk.

I had to smile at her choice of images. The little pink turtle, one of my daughter’s crochet projects, had been decorating my desk for months, giving me a cheerful start to my workdays.

“Thanks, Kass. I’m feeling better now.”

“Good deal.” She grinned widely. “I’ll vacate your chair now, so that you can relax with a good book, feeling productive for having a new blog post. Always happy to help.”

March 13, 2025 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags:

Just as the time changed to daylight savings this week, the weather turned much warmer around here. My daughter sent me a text message with a photo attached, telling me that she and her dog had been enjoying a nap in the sunshine in her backyard.

Photo of a small dog napping in the sunshine.

I haven’t yet put the lounge chairs and other outdoor furniture in their usual arrangement on the deck; but, after seeing that message, I’m looking forward to a little time quietly resting in the sun, too. Nothing wrong with having the comfortable life of a lazy dog, every once in a while.

February 13, 2025 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags:

My birthday was last week, and one of my gifts was a “Squishmallow” giant pillow with a tag identifying it as “Lorna the Llama.” My daughter and her girlfriend Vata picked it out for me. I decided that Lorna was very well suited to reading my Kindle on the couch, which has smaller armrests than the previous couch and definitely could benefit from having a big pillow to lean up against.

Photo of my couch with a Lorna the Llama squishy pillow.

Lorna also adds some cheerful silliness to what had become a rather dull part of the house since the unfortunate demise of my digital art display in 2023. I’m still planning to replace the art display sometime, but I haven’t yet identified a new product to take its place on the dining room wall, opposite the corner of the living room where Lorna has taken up residence. For now, Lorna reminds me that life should be fun and there is always space for improvement.

My husband recently had a birthday, and I gave him a card wishing him “many more adventures” as we were leaving for the Head of the Charles regatta. We were given a great parking space for the boat trailer when we arrived in Boston. It was right next to a dock, and the weather was sunny and comfortable. We rigged our double and went for a practice row.

Photo of a small boat trailer in Boston next to the Charles River.

Then we visited the Hydrow office, which was lots of fun. We’ve been using our Hydrow rowing machine regularly since we bought it almost five years ago in a Black Friday sale; it’s connected to an online library of workout videos featuring athlete instructors rowing on rivers across the world. Also, there are “journey” rows without an instructor where you can just watch the scenery go by, and other options that include yoga, Pilates, and stretching and mobility exercises. Hydrow always has something new and interesting to find.

The company invited us to take part in a panel discussion with other customers and with some of the athletes, and they also filmed my husband, who is very active in the Hydrow users’ Facebook groups, for a commercial. That was all very cool! On race day, the weather stayed good, and the river was calm. The Head of the Charles is the largest rowing regatta in the world, with many high-level competitors, so my husband and I were just in it for fun. That was all right; just being there is exciting.

Last week, after returning home, we did a 5K Halloween running race, and now we’re off again for another rowing regatta in Chattanooga. So much traveling and racing takes a lot of energy, and I’ll be ready to wind down and take it easier when the winter comes; but it’s good to have future adventures to imagine.

Shortly after my daughter’s marriage in 2018, I developed a weird “phantom ring” issue where I sometimes felt that the ring finger of my right hand either had a ring on it, when it didn’t really have one, or was missing a ring that should have been there. I normally wear three left-hand rings—wedding and engagement, with a 20-year anniversary ring in the middle.

Photo of wedding, anniversary, and engagement rings.

Where the phantom ring might have come from was totally baffling. There was never a time when I regularly wore a ring on the right-hand ring finger. I have one for it, with a small rose-quartz stone, which my husband bought for me long ago; but I’ve only worn that ring occasionally, and whether I wore it more or less often didn’t seem to make any difference with the phantom ring issue.

This year, it occurred to me that if I had a 40-year anniversary ring, it probably would go on my right hand because four rings would be a bit much for my left hand. I visualized the new ring as having the same design as the 20-year ring, with a row of small stones, but they would be rubies because that is the traditional gemstone for the 40th anniversary.

After that, I never felt that my right hand was missing a ring. I presume that’s because the phantom ring has now been “found,” in that it belongs to my future self, who is keeping it safe. Perhaps the message from my subconscious mind is that I need to take care that my marriage doesn’t get misplaced!

My living room has been much improved this week with a new couch. I had been wanting to replace the old one for many years, as I mentioned in this 2016 post, but I never could get my husband interested in going to a furniture store to look at potential replacements. When our daughter put a pretty green armchair in a corner of our family room earlier this year, after she moved and couldn’t find space for the chair, it got me thinking about other possibilities.

Photo of chair with end table.

The idea that I couldn’t get a new couch without first dragging my husband to a store was long since out of date, I realized, in this age of online shopping. So, I visited the website where our daughter had bought the chair, picked out a couch that was available in the same color, asked my husband what he thought, and he was fine with ordering it. Easy peasy!

Photo of the new couch under my living room windows.

The old couch wasn’t in good enough condition to donate to a thrift store because of a broken spring, so it had to go to the county dump, alas. To give it a suitable farewell on this blog, with gratitude for its many years of faithful service, I took a photo of it among some rubble, awaiting its final resting place in the landfill.

Photo of my old couch at the dump.

My husband’s boat trailer got some use as a utility trailer to transport it. Kind of sad, as with letting anything go that has been around for many years; but we’ll definitely enjoy the new and improved living room.