Deck blessings! Plus, GRAND Social No. 210 link party for grandparents

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Deck blessings!

May is always a challenging month in Colorado, weather wise, as temps rise and fall in grand rollercoaster fashion. It can be in the 70s one day, blizzard like the next, sunny and clear the day after. Once June arrives, though, the chance of snow has pretty much disappeared and summer-like spring days are more the norm.

Last Friday was such a day. I decided to soak up the sun while kicking back on my deck for an afternoon nap. Three minutes into it, though, I gave in to the natural blessings surrounding me and opted to grab photos instead of shut eye. Here are a few shots of what I caught, never moving more than a few feet from my Adirondack chair.

backyard birds...

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Here and now: April 14, 2016

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What's happening in my world, here and now:

clock and book 

On my mind...

My taxes. Not because I need to do them, but because I just finished them. Filed them yesterday morning. My brain is still mulling over numbers, deductions, credits, and crap I really don't like to think about. Jim is the numbers person in our relationship; I'm more the words person. But because...

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2016 Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop: 13 things I loved plus a few me-loved-nots

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Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop 2016 recap

I've long dreamed of attending the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop presented by the University of Dayton every two years. The revered place writers of various formats — books, blogs, screenplays and more — gather to glean insider tips and load up on laughter and love from folks in their field. Attendance is capped at 200 each year, and I've never made the cut at registration... nor, to be honest, had the money for travel and hotel if I had.

This year, though, I clicked the Register button in time to obtain a coveted Golden Ticket for the event that sold out in six hours, and I eeked out the funds to make attendance at my dream conference a reality.

Unlike many dreams that eventually come true yet pale in comparison to one's expectations, the Erma...

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Grandma salutes Shinedown

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shinedown in Colorado Springs

One of my earliest articles published — in a newspaper, not on a blog — was in the early '90s and was titled Mosh-pit Mom. My husband and I used to go to a lot of concerts back then, most of them the rockin' kind with moshpits on the floor, all of them during the years I was a mom with three fairly young daughters.

It's been a few decades since I've had to protect myself from flailing feet on a concert floor, quite a few years since I've marveled at the moxie of the moshers from afar. Due to lack of funds as well as lack of touring bands we were willing to shell out our pennies to see, my husband and I have...

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5 products and pastimes that BABY boomers

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My husband recently turned old. Well, older. Old enough that since the birthday celebration, we've marveled in disbelief more than once that we've reached the age we have.

"I'm still working on figuring out what I want to be when I grow up," I told him. To which he high-fived in agreement.

baby boomers 

My husband and I have raised a family, kept our wits about us our nest emptied, become grandparents, managed relatively successful careers (so far), successfully stayed together for more than 35 years (so far). We have a mortgage — and PLUS loans we'll pay on til death closes our account.

Grownup responsibilities. Yet on the inside, my husband and I fail to feel like grownups, fail to...

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Here and now: March 3, 2016

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It's been a while since I've shared what's happening right here, right now in my world. Here goes:

here and now

On my mind...

My dad. The week I found out Lyla had brain cancer, I also found out my dad was diagnosed with a relatively rare form of cancer that's, kind of, a precursor to leukemia, something called...

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Rest in peace, Lyla girl

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In 2009, our youngest daughter, Andrea, adopted a frightened little stray from The Denver Dumb Friends League. The little girl — about two years old, they guessed — had roamed the city streets on her own most of her life, it seemed.

Andie took in the black lab/shepherd mix, fittingly named her Lyla — which means "black as night" in Persian — and gave her a happy home and lots of love.

black lab/shepherd mix

Then Andrea gave her to us, months later, when it was clear Lyla needed a yard to run in and Andie's apartment didn't provide that.

Lyla had issues, to say the least. Psychological ones, likely...

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Perfection... no effort required

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“About the only thing that comes to us without effort is old age.” 
― Gloria Pitzer

Most days I agree wholeheartedly with cookbook author Gloria Pitzer's quote above. I put in a fair amount of effort — and thoughts on how to most effectively put forth said effort — toward being a halfway decent wife, mother, friend, human being.

The same is true regarding my attempts to achieve something at least halfway close to pleasing when fiddling about with photography. I take a jazillion photos, choose one that's perhaps meh, then...

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My grandsons aren't normal

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"My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage."

~ Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic

I love that quote. I do believe, though, it applies not only to "darling" girls, but darling boys, too.

Particularly when those darling boys are my darling grandsons.

My abnormal grandsons.

See, my grandsons aren't normal. It doesn't take long scrolling through my photos of Bubby, Mac, and Jak to find evidence of their abnormalness.

weird kids wait in line for IT'S TOUGH TO BE A BUG 

...

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