After my mom's death in late July, it was time to clean out, then and now. — My mom died suddenly at the end of July this year. She was 85. The last few years have been tough. She had been hospitalized and not expected to live in the fall of 2021 — not COVID-related, thankfully — but in intensive care for eight days, followed by a…

We were in a suburb of Rochester, New York for the last week. Each morning the news reported at least one murder overnight. What is this craziness? We joke about how bad the news is “at home” in Northern Wisconsin. By bad, I mean it is poorly reported. We aren’t…

What are your favorite holiday movies? Have you started watching any yet? We’ve spent the last week in Western New York with my Dad. One night the movie ELF was on with Will Ferrell and James Caan. I asked my dad, who is 87 years old if he had ever…

A problem that might seem “new” is not. — They shake. They writhe. They constantly move their little limbs. And most of all, they scream incessantly. This is what a drug-addicted newborn acts like. A drug-addicted baby is inconsolable. I know. I once cared for them in the newborn nursery of Johns Hopkins Hospital. It’s an awful and heartbreaking…

What do you do when you can’t find something? Make it, of course! — We were first told about German gingerbread during our fall tour in Passau, Germany. A must to try — or so our tour guides said. But finding a place to buy it proved to be more difficult. We visited Passau on a Sunday when nothing was open, except a few…

Yesterday, we drove approximately 900 miles from Wisconsin to New York to visit my Dad. Although we didn’t encounter any road construction, we knew we were traveling into more populated areas of our country. On the I-90, the road we traveled, we saw a crash that backed up traffic outside…

This is a must-stop in Budapest with a tour guide, preferably a local tour guide from Hungary, to help explain some of the history signified by these monuments. — While not as stunning as the castle district on the Rhine, nor as opulent as any of the Hapsburg’s residences in neighboring Vienna, Heroes’ Square lends a historical nod to the great leaders of Hungary. Formed by three huge monuments, the Square is located at the end of Andrassy Avenue…

As a lover of plants, choosing just one plant as my holiday favorite is difficult. — When I think about holiday plants, poinsettias, Christmas cactus, paperwhites, amaryllis, and mistletoe all come to mind. Of those, I need help choosing a favorite. For over ten years, I taught elementary students in my garden club about each of the plants listed above. For that reason, I learned to…

A trip to Palm Springs was the first and last time I used a transportation app. — My sister invited me to spend a few days with her in Palm Springs, California in the Fall of 2018. I agreed to go, as I had never been to this area of California known to be so “ritzy.”