Mastication… What Did You Think I Said?

There are certain things about my mother that are real hot buttons for me — things about her or that she does that just really get under my skin.  I have spent years trying to come to grips with them, or to learn to let them go, or to even try to see the endearing [...]

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I’d Rather Tell You

M popped out to the pub for a pint on Sunday night.  “Sarah…” is what he said when he got home, “Sarah…  I don’t know what she did tonight, but she looked really good, really amazing!”  This is one of the barmaids, and I know he secretly quite fancies her.  “She must have done her [...]

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I Need Your Opinion!: Hardwood Floors

WordPress have introduced their new polling utility at just the right time, because I need your opinions!
The carpeting the in the bedrooms of our new house is perfectly livable, but not all that great.  It doesn’t look like it was professionally laid, with rough edges and really obvious seams.  But it’s laid over some really [...]

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Forgiveness

I am supposed to be spending this week finalising any work we want done on the house before we move in (carpets cleaned, floors finished) and getting all the move-organisation done (movers, address-changing, utility installation), but I have been so sick that everything has ground to a halt.  My throat is killing me, I can’t [...]

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Burst of Glory

Do you know, I had completely forgotten just how stunningly beautiful the autumn is over here!  No matter what is going on (or going wrong) in my day, our lives, the world…  nothing stops the seasons from changing, nothing stops the leaves from turning.  The glory is there to see if we only open our [...]

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Virtual Friends

And just when I was losing my faith, I received a gift from a virtual stranger.

Which makes me wonder, in a virtual world, how do we draw the line between stranger, acquaintance, and friend?  When we spend years interacting with people we’ve never met and probably never will meet — as we all do in [...]

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Mixed Feelings

Just before M got into bed last night, he descended into that horrid pit of second-guessing in which we’ve found ourselves mired for so much this year.  “So, yes,” he began, as if our previous conversation had paused for only a moment, “we’ve bought this house and it’s…  it is a great house for us.  [...]

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Shopping List: Bread, Milk, Tea… HOUSE

About an hour ago, M stood in front of me and just kind of blinked.  He looked at me and then, when no words came to him, looked over my shoulder at the middle distance as if trying to remember something he’d forgotten, then turned quickly back to me and opened his mouth, paused, and [...]

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I Love the Smell of Peanuts in the Morning

When I say I don’t get the resistance to a ban on peanuts in schools with allergic students, this is the reason: Food allergy sickens teen. Here we have a student who is known to the school to have a severe nut allergy and her teacher chooses to use peanuts as the item the [...]

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And Your Time Starts… Now.

Halfway though church today, M turned and whispered, “Will they be having Mass at home now?”  For a moment, I was confused — surely he hadn’t forgotten there is a time difference? — but then I realised he was right: we were at the latest morning service and, five hours ahead of us, they would [...]

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