walk it out

Now that vacation is over, it's back to real life.

The car shopping has started, and I am overwhelmed. I am not a car person, and some of this car-speak is a foreign language to me. Todd keeps asking, “What do you think about this car?” or “What about this one?”

I DON’T KNOW!

Then, Monday morning, we had a new front door installed.

It was the wrong color.

Todd went round and round with the higher-ups, explaining that it was not the color the salesperson had represented to us. In the end, it worked out. We’re getting a new door in the correct color at no charge.

But in the meantime, the question, “Are you sure you don’t like this door?” kept coming up.

I DON’T LIKE IT!

After dinner, I was a ball of stress. Todd was cutting the grass, and I needed to get away from the house.

Time for a walk.

A couple of houses down from mine, I could already feel myself relaxing. The rhythm of one foot in front of the other. A four-count breath in time with my steps. I was physically walking away from the stress.

And then I began to notice.

The buzz of the cicadas.

The sounds of children playing on their next-to-last day before the new school year begins.

Cars accelerating as they made their way up the hill on David Road.

The cloud formations.

The occasional breeze.

Summer flowers beginning to lose their vibrancy from the heat and with the approach of autumn.

Car shopping and the color of the door disappeared from my mind.

And when I got home, those big thoughts that had taken over my brain didn’t come rushing back.

That one hour walk around the neighborhood was all the therapy I needed.

monday's mulling: does this happen to you?

Last week we vacationed with our son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren and stayed in an Airbnb. Andrew, Jen, and the kids traveled from Cleveland, we traveled from Dayton, and met in Ocean City, Maryland.

Traveling with little ones fills a car quickly. For our stay in the Airbnb, we had to supply the sheets and bath towels and I told the kids not to worry about those items. We packed those along with a variety of supplies from home: laundry detergent, dish soap, dishwasher detergent, plastic storage bags, aluminum foil, paper towels, dinner napkins, and a big cooler for beach days. Bringing those things meant fewer items to buy once we arrived and went grocery shopping. Our car was full, but not packed to the gills like Andrew and Jen’s!

We arrived home Saturday afternoon around 3:00 p.m. Todd promptly began unloading the car and I promptly began unpacking. Apparently, the post-road-trip adrenaline was running strong because I launched right into six loads of laundry: sheets, towels, and dirty clothes. 

While doing laundry, I started a grocery list. The week before vacation I made sure to use up the perishables. All those open shelves and drawers showed every speck of food residue that had spilled. It was the perfect time to clean the fridge.

Back to the laundry. All those clean, folded sheets and towels led to a little assessment of the linen closet. And this “assessment,” led to emptying the entire thing. 

By Sunday morning, the reorganization was underway. I found quite a collection of old towels, which moved to a basket in the laundry room to become our new cleaning-rag supply. I also found things to donate and rearranged the remaining “stuff.”

And now... there’s space in the linen closet!

Vacation is over. The laundry is done. The linen closet has been conquered. The refrigerator sparkles. And now, I’m finally sitting down to finish the grocery list.

the importance of proofreading

A missing letter can turn a perfectly good sentence into a very memorable advertisement.

Proofread. Then proofread again. Because sometimes the smallest typo is the thing everyone notices.

 

the friday feed: orange crush (the adult version 🧡)

As a child, I loved Orange Crush, the carbonated soft drink with its sweet, tangy, bold citrus flavor.

This past week while vacationing in Maryland, we went out to dinner a couple of evenings. On both nights, I noticed an Orange Crush on the adult drink menu. After a day of pool and beach time with the grandkids, an adult version of that familiar orange flavor sounded refreshing.

This Orange Crush is definitely more adult than the one I remembered as a child. It’s a popular Maryland beach cocktail made with orange vodka, triple sec, freshly squeezed orange juice, and Sprite, served over crushed ice. It was a very refreshing drink after a day in the sun.

This drink was invented in 1995 at Harborside Bar & Grill in Ocean City and was officially designated Maryland’s state cocktail in June 2025.

From the soda I enjoyed as a kid to the cocktail I discovered on a Maryland beach vacation as a grandma, the Orange Crush turned out to be a refreshing little taste of nostalgia.

 

wednesday's words and wanderings and wonderings

From Ohio to West Virginia...

to Pennsylvania...

To Maryland...

Across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge...

Final destination - Ocean City, Maryland, for a family beach vacation. 

This is Owen and Hallie’s first beach vacation, and watching them experience the ocean and beach for the first time has been such a joy. This brought back memories of visiting my grandparents who lived in New Jersey and going to the Jersey shore was one of the highlights of our visits.

To see Owen’s excitement and wonder as he watched the waves continuously roll in and rush back out was just priceless. The Atlantic waves are big and powerful, but that didn’t faze my brave 4-year old one bit. Since he has taken swimming lessons, Owen confidently told Dad and Grandpa that he knew how to swim and they didn’t need to hold his hands. Whatever you say, kiddo! The beach was an endless sandbox, and Owen had a blast as Andrew showed him how to build sandcastles, only for Owen to gleefully jump on them moments later.

Little Hallie loved the sand, too. At 17-months old and so curious about everything, she decided that a handful or two needed to be taste-tested, just to be sure.

This beach vacation has given Owen and Hallie their first introduction to salty air, crashing waves, sandy toes, and all the joys that come with a day at the shore. Andrew and Jen think the next beach adventure may take them a little farther south, where the waves are a bit gentler and the sand is a bit softer. But for now, these first beach memories, complete with sandcastles, wave-watching, and a little sand tasting, will be treasured for years to come.

50 years later

Today would have been my mom’s 95th birthday. She died in 2020, not from COVID, but from complications of Alzheimer’s.

Back in the day, I loved embroidery. Mom had a corner in her kitchen filled with potted plants and a big asparagus fern hanging from a very heavy coat tree. When I found this little embroidery kit, I thought, “This would be a great birthday gift for Mom!”

I also enjoyed macramé, so instead of stitching the wires that held the planter, I used a spiral square knot to give it an individualized, pretty effect.

Now look at the date. 50 years ago, this was a birthday present for my mom.

She hung it on the wall beside her telephone, and today it hangs on a wall beside my cookbooks.

Funny how an ordinary little craft project can become a time capsule. Fifty years later, it still holds a piece of Mom’s kitchen, her plants, and for me, the daughter who made it to celebrate her 45th birthday.

monday's mulling: spam

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam…

I don’t know about you but every day my phone gets hit with spam messages, mainly from political parties. The messages don’t have my name right. I’m Linda S., Russell, lots of incorrect names asking for money to help further their political campaigns. 

Hit the delete and report spam button.

Every so often “Apple” sends an alert that an unauthorized charge was put on my account. A few years back my daughter responded to a text like this and then had to go through a messy process of canceling her credit card, changing account information and passwords.

This one gave me a chuckle and I really wanted to respond with some smart aleck answer like, “Thanks for the heads up but my dog’s been dead for six years.” I'm not going to engage with a spammer.

(The Spam display photo was taken in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport. Minnesota is the home of Hormel Foods, the parent company that makes SPAM.)