Author: Lvanderveensmith
-
3:00 AM Thoughts Bombarding Me
Last night I was awake until well after 3:00 AM. It’s the second night in the last week that I’ve had like this. Some nights I can tell it’s going to be like that and I take melatonin to help out. Other nights, like these two, I don’t see it coming. Then by the time…
-
Odd Ball – Normal is Just a Setting on the Dryer
Odd is a word we often use and we use it in various ways. odd one out, odd ball, odd numbers odd squad odd lot odd duck odd jobs odd socks odd fellow and the very famous Odd Couple Dictionaries offer several definitions that adequately explain those usages above and the word all by…
-
You Are Worth It – Do It For Those Who Love You
I have a cautionary tale for you. It comes with an alert at the end so stick with it. It starts with a terrible week and a half and ends with this writing. I went to Florida for a few days last week to visit Dad. Bernadette, his partner, wasn’t feeling well. She told me…
-
An Appreciation of Doing Nothing
Anyone who knows me or who takes a quick look through the topics of this blog will know one thing for certain about me. I hate February. I’ve written enough about that and won’t subject anyone to that topic right now. February is the low point of the year for me because it is the…
-
Two Kinds – Is There a Third?
Yesterday I wrote a post called “Two Kinds” and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. It was, I hope obviously, a bit tongue in cheek. There are never only two in anything! The world is just not black and white — there are hundreds of shades of grey! (not just 50) And, I wouldn’t…
-
Two Kinds
Many ways have been offered up for figuring out human beings. Are you type A or type B? (And everyone understands the question). There are studies and tests to determine what Enneagram you are, what personality type you have in the Myers-Briggs profiles, which of the Big Five Personality Traits you have (a new one to…
-
Check All Boxes That Apply
In November I had the opportunity to get to know a wonderful young man better. I first met him at my niece’s wedding when he was dating my other niece, the bride’s sister. In November I got to spend some time with him during the few days we spent in Mexico for his wedding to…
-
Tis the Season of Gifting: A Guide to the Do’s and Don’t’s
I enjoy giving gifts. No, it’s more than that. I love giving them. Throughout the year, but at no time more than Christmas, I get a thrill when I am going through a store or wandering a craft show and see something that will be perfect for a loved one, a friend, or an acquaintance.…
-
My Special Little Tree
In December of 1999, I was getting ready to move into my new home. We moved the week of Christmas. Needless to say I wasn’t about to decorate a house for the holidays when I was in the middle of packing it up! In fact all of my holiday decorations were in a storage unit…
-
“Haul Out the Holly, Put Up the Tree Before My Spirit Falls Again”
This is the time of the year when so many good wishes and lovely thoughts abound. Happy Thanksgiving! Count your blessings! Enjoy the time with family and friends just being thankful for each other. Happy Chanukah! The festival of lights! Seven nights of celebrating freedom and participating in joyous traditions. Merry Christmas! Feliz Navidad! Joyeux…
-
Are You Really Only as Old as You Feel?
We often find that things aren’t as they seem. Things in the mirror are closer than they seem. Your eyes can deceive you. In my case, it isn’t my eyes or a mirror deceiving me. It’s my own mind. There is a big dichotomy that has developed in the last few years between my mind’s…
-
Home That Nourishes
I was reading a Facebook post that enumerated things someone liked or blessings they could count. I liked the list, and it got me to thinking about how we can really be influenced by our surroundings for the good or the bad. Of course we are probably most aware of how some things in our…
-
A Simpler, Gentler Time?
Browse through social media and you are bound to come across many posts bemoaning the state of the world and wishing we could go back in time to a simpler era. The posts vary greatly showing that the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s were all much better times. They have pictures of people walking…
-
L’Shanah Tovah, Happy New Start
After celebrating the end of a year on December 31, it’s easy to see what the new year is supposed to bring — a good luck menu for dinner which varies depending on where you live and, of course, resolutions. Every magazine screams from the cover ways to lose weight, get in shape, save more…
-
The Strength in Vulnerability
When I started my blog I said that it would be “ramblings and musings — on reading, education, mindfulness, mental health, kindness and whatever other things are tumbling through my mind.” Wow. Focus much? Kinda shows you what a pinball game it is tracking my thoughts! However, I really believed it would be mostly about…
-
Sometime You Want To Go Where…
I grew up in the church. I don’t remember a time that I wasn’t in church. Even if my parents weren’t coming that day, they would drop us off for Sunday school. Every time we moved, one of the first orders of business was the search for a new church to attend. An essential part…
-
Snap Out of It – I Wish I Could
I’m going to post this quickly before I change my mind. I haven’t written in a long time. I haven’t really done anything productive or creative in a long time. There’s an emptiness right now where the creative muse usually sits. There is an ennui that has settled on me that keeps me sitting in…
-
Don’t know much about history, don’t know much…
I’ve written posts about how you don’t know what you don’t know. We all have blind spots, spots where our knowledge is incomplete, incorrect, or not there at all. I’ve also written about how I am reluctant to read books that have been so highly praised and reviewed that I’m just sure they will fall…
-
Friends Come and Friends Go, But a True Friend…
“Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family.” The quote comes from Proverbs chapter 18, verse 24 in The Message translation of the Bible. It has been the experience of my life and I imagine yours too. Everyone knows that friendship is a good thing, a big part of a…
-
How Many Does It Take?
I like learning things. I go out and research things to find facts and details. I just did a little research using the area Americans tend to value above all else – sports. Based on the information I got from WorldAtlas.com, here are the top six largest stadiums in the United States. First in size…
-
The Beauty & Power of Words
Some equate being a good reader with being a fast reader. I am a good reader – I comprehend and retain (to use educational terminology). I am not, however, a fast reader. I used to wish that I could read faster, but I don’t any longer. As a student, reading slowly is not exactly a…
-
I Didn’t Invite this Guest
It’s a feeling that starts as an emptiness in the pit of the stomach. Beginning as a niggling feeling that things are not right, it foretells something ominous approaching, or to steal a phrase, that something wicked this way comes. The hollow spot grows and, as it grows, the emptiness spreads from there to my…
-
Wait, What Responsibility Do I Have in Their Lies?
I am currently reading Caring for Words in a Culture of LIes by Marilyn McEnyre (W. B. Erdmans Publishing Co, 2009). I am about a third of the way through it and I am absolutely floored by it! I know I’ll be writing more about it both here and elsewhere later because it has challenged…
-
Old Fashioned Traditions
As we face the Christmas season here in the midst of a pandemic, we do so having learned through Thanksgiving about human nature and the willingness to alter traditions for the greater good. And what we learned is that people are bullheaded and beyond resistant to change no matter how dire the need to do…
-
It Might Have Been
“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.;” John Greenleaf Whittier I remember reading this quote years ago. I tried to take heed to these words because they rang true to me. Now as I’m working my way around the sun for the sixty-something time, they are…
-
Words From Our Sisters
Going through high school and college at the end of the 1960’s and the first half of the 1970’s, I had been told over and over how highly ranked my high school was and had complete confidence in my college English department to give their majors a firm foundation in literature. And they did –…
-
They Show Us Who We Are, Who We Could Be
I am a lover of biographies, memoirs, and autobiographies. I like to get to know interesting people in depth, see how they tick, learn what led them to the achievements in their lives. I’ve always enjoyed a well-written biography of historical figures. Not those ones we read in elementary school that were nothing more than…
-
A Need For Boundaries
There was a time when I had some people in my life who seemed intent on making me feel less than. In particular, they questioned my intelligence. A couple merely told me that I didn’t understand things or belittled every opinion I had. “People don’t like that.” The other was more aggressive in his campaign. …
-
“Hello, Dottie”
What makes reading such a wonderful experience? What makes people want to pick up a book or a Kindle and spend hours of their time turning pages and absorbing the words written there? Well, one of the joys of reading is getting so involved in the times and places and lives of the characters…
-
Nobody Wins and I Don’t Want to Play Anymore
I had an interesting question posed to me last week. I’ve been pondering it and agonizing over it for days. Frankly, it has put me into a real funk and led me to a fatalistic answer. The question? If the kids (my grandchildren) go back to school in person, what will you do about…
A Word Aptly Spoken 