Advent: a penitential period beginning four Sundays before Christmas. The definition comes from my trusty Merriam-Webster pocket dictionary (12th printing May, 1976). In lower case, it means arrival.   As in “Advent Calendar”?   Exactly, Lily (she’s my inner...

Just when you think things are rolling along nicely- -you've stocked extra groceries in the freezer in case Snowmageddon makes an early appearance, laid in plenty of dog and cat food and cat sand against the same, stowed sufficient toilet paper to make it to and...

Tomorrow it will be eleven months since Bruce died. That’s both a long time and a short time, if you know what I mean. There are so many things I miss about him, and one of the biggest things is not having him here to tell him about the fun new things I’m doing. At...

Remember last week when I promised Lily, my inner fourteen-year-old, that we’d go to the 1:50 PM screening of “Last Christmas” this Tuesday? I am pleased to report that (drum roll, please!) we did it! We went to the movie!   To a normal person (such as yourself)...

Last week I selected a metaphorical piece of stone, a chunk of blood-red marble veined with gold and black and white, sharpened my writer’s chisels, visualized the crude shape of the story to come. The story of this year of my life, fictionalized. The first draft of a...

What do you do in the week leading up to your 60th birthday? This year it’s a bit strange, as it is not only the first year without Bruce, but also the time of year when, just last year, we were starting to understand how sick he was. I feel like being mostly on my...