Update, 1/27/2026: When I wrote this post, January was lying low. It has now risen from the deep with monstrous noises. So, a cold snap, fair enough. And then my boiler (which I think of as a furnace, no clue how wrong I might be) started not heating very well then not at all so […]
Psychology
Thanking people well is a skill that gets better with practice. So let’s practice.
Last Monday, 7/14/2025, NPR ran an interview with a woman who lived through the flood on Texas’s Guadalupe River, a terrible story and I paraphrase: The flood blew down her back door and filled the house, water pressure wouldn’t let her open the door to her 95-year old mother’s bedroom, so she had to get […]
I first wrote this July 2, 2018, a time of high stress nationally and personally – personally because I had to make life-changing decisions that I didn’t have the information to make. And that was even before the pandemic. The pandemic is now putatively, intermittently over but the executive function problem is only marginally better. […]
*If you are home and not busy, would F. be able to get a Ziploc of ice? *Would one of you be able to do Monday morning carpool next week? *Any chance you’d have time to work Friday lunch? S. is home sick. *S. is staying home sick. Is there any chance you have time […]
Introduction I hate flossing. My mouth is small, my teeth crowded, the spaces between them difficult to reach. Twice a year, my dental hygienist entreats me to floss more frequently. Sometimes I assent, and mean it, and actually manage to make it work for a few months until I invariably get sick or injured or […]
I try not to use social media, but I can’t bring myself to quit entirely. Despite the evil it has wrought, Facebook remains a good way to keep tabs on friends I otherwise don’t see or connect with often, or at all. I decided a while ago that these sweet updates were worth the otherwise […]
This post first appeared in July 2016 and sadly, this is the kind of story we are still having to tell. I was with a group kayaking and camping on the coast of south-central Alaska — seven adults, five kids from four years old to twelve. One of the adults was a muscular late-20s man named Everett, […]
