In other news: On Botox, Thailand, and ALS

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In other news: On Botox, Thailand, and ALS

In the first post I published here after returning from summer break, I shared a recap of some of the bigger changes that took place while I was away from the blog.

I didn’t tell you everything, though. A couple happenings just didn’t seem to fit in the bits I previously passed along. Those being the following…

BOTOX

I got Botox shots in June! In my …

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Summer break ends: What changed while I was away

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Summer break ends: What changed while I was away

Grandma’s Briefs is back! Yep, the summer break I announced at the start of June is officially over.

While I was away from the site, a few changes took place. Some big, some small. Here’s a (relatively) quick update:

For starters, one blog change is that Grandma’s Briefs hit the 10-year mark in July! Hard to believe but true, as you can see from my very first post, published a decade ago.

Another blog change is that you’ll see a few new faces in the Meet the Family section of the sidebar, those being of Andrea’s new …

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Doing it!

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Doing it!

Doing it!

Jim and I are doing it. Finally. We have finally accepted the fact the home we love and have lived in for nearly 12 years is too big for us, has too many stairs, too large of a yard, too much space for two. Especially two with trouble walking about.

Which means we are doing it: We are moving to a smaller place… somewhere (TBD) in the same city. Yes, we are downsizing. Though I prefer to think of it as my most recent Silver Sneakers newsletter called it, rightsizing. Our current home is 3,600 square feet. The homes we’re considering…

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Flashback: Sink, swim, or hold on!

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Flashback: Sink, swim, or hold on!

Dear readers: This flashback feature originally appeared on Grandma’s Briefs March 4, 2010. Update: I’m still holding on “with a steel-plated grip because I have no other option.” How about you? Thank you for reading my rerun.

Back in the '80s, before the real estate market crash that marked the end of that decade, I worked for a mortgage company. Business was good, and we were rewarded well by the company's owner.

One of the bigger rewards we once received was a day offwork ... and on the owner's boat. On a day we should be processing loans, the entire office (it was a small office) would get to don bathing suits and hang out at the reservoir, on a boat, sipping beer in the sunshine.

I didn't want to go. I really did not want to go.

I didn't want to go because despite having been born in Minnesota…

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Flashback: 10 signs of aging gracefully

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Flashback: 10 signs of aging gracefully

Dear readers: This piece on the secret to aging gracefully originally appeared on Grandma’s Briefs on March 24, 2013. Six years later, the signs still resonate with me. I hope they do with you, too. Thank you for reading my rerun.

When it comes to aging gracefully, forget the face creams, hair colors and exercises — the physical manifestations others see as we rack up the years. Instead, I prefer to focus on a different kind of trait that others see, one I think trumps the physical when considering how gracefully others are aging and how gracefully I'm aging myself.

That trait? It's attitude. For, as age is just…

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Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month: My MS and me

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Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month: My MS and me

March is Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month. Though I have MS, I don’t write much about it because, frankly, it’s long been just part of who I am, not what defines me. There are far more informative bloggers when it comes to all things MS—my dear friend Cathy of An Empowered Spirit foremost in my mind—so I typically stick with grandma-focused sorts of stuff.

Yet, with MS becoming a bigger (sometimes overwhelmingly so) focus of my life in the time since last year’s MS Awareness Month, I figured I’d spend at least one post sharing the relatively recent changes to my MS and me. Perhaps doing so will put…

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Stag party at Grandma's

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Stag party at Grandma's

Most evenings, just before dusk, our deer neighbors make a pre-dinner visit just across the street from our house. Deer as in doe a deer, female deer, that nibble and nosh on the grainy goodies our human next-door neighbor—right or wrong—puts out for the local wild ones.

Sometimes it’s two or three does, sometimes more, sometimes their little ones, too. Occasionally a buck butts his way into the fray, but it’s typically all gals as the guys seem to favor a supper spot farther up the street.

One snowy afternoon last week, though, it was the big boys who stopped by.

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Throwback Thursday: Watching the clock

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Throwback Thursday: Watching the clock

Dear readers: This #TBT feature originally appeared on Grandma's Briefs February 4, 2014,—back when Brayden was known here as Bubby, Camden was called Mac, and Declan was not yet born (nor was Benjamin). Thank you for reading my rerun.

I admit it: I'm a compulsive clock-watcher.

As a freelance writer working from home, I don't watch the clock in the sense that I eye the hour hand as it makes its egregiously slow move from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. so I can exit my cubicle and enter my real world. No, though I've served my time in such positions, my current compulsive clock watching is of a less regular — albeit still compulsive — sort.

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Throwback Thursday: 5 things I'll never write about

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Throwback Thursday: 5 things I'll never write about

Dear readers: This #TBT feature originally appeared on Grandma's Briefs February 9, 2010. I’m proud to say that nine years later, I’ve still never written about—at least not at length—the things I swore I never would. Thank you for reading my rerun.

I read a lot of blogs. I didn't used to, but since becoming a blogger, I'm interested in what other folks are blogging about, where they get their ideas, how they express the little—and big—things in life in a way that intrigues readers day after day. My RSS reader feeds me a steady diet of food for thought.

Lately, some of that food has been pretty foreign to me. Not foreign in the sense that I'm reading posts in Chinese…

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