Adventures in joyful living
I became my godmother Angie’s principal helper in the last years of her life. Among the minor emergencies that required my attention, maintaining the caramel stock was always high-priority. A caramel or two (or five, maybe?) was her nightly indulgence till the day she passed. I never really had a particular thing for caramels until […]
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Falling in love with a place isn’t that much different than falling in love with a person. As the old movie theme song goes, the experience can be even lovelier the second time around. First visits have their knock-your-socks-off magic, for sure. But just as the song describes, when you have “both feet on the […]
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I fall prey to a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle now and then, most often in the dead of winter but occasionally off-season as well. It’s a little thrill when you’ve finished, even if your dog always manages to steal and [possibly] consume a few pieces, so that in the end, like many things in life, it’s […]
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Our beloved Vermont is hurting right now, and our hearts hurt in turn. Hubby and I have spent many glorious hours ambling through Vermont, most often with my beau-frère and belle-soeur*, who lived in the village of Newbury for some time. We came close to settling there ourselves, back in 2010, but the universe had […]
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Hello, everyone. Happy Friday, happy spring, happy Cinco de Mayo, happy Coronation weekend. Just letting you know that Bernadette of Bernadette’s New Classic Recipe graciously invited me to pen a post appropriate for Mother’s Day, which in the US is the second Sunday in May. I’ve written about my mother many times, but this one […]
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Note to my much appreciated readers: This is the third post in my grand hotel series; the first were Wentworth-by-the-Sea and The Omni Mt. Washington. My idea of a near perfect North American odyssey would be a season—it doesn’t matter which—spent wandering from one of the continent’s grand old historic hotels to another, drinking in […]
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There have been four sunrises, thus far, in 2023, each a bit different than the last. I began the process of disassembling Christmas yesterday. The tree is still intact, but the various other Christmas-y “notes” about the house are gradually being put away. I’ve learned not to tackle everything in a single day lest my […]
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Sometimes you just need to get out of Dodge. For those of you who live on other shores, or haven’t grown up hearing it, that oh-so-American expression means Dodge City is a mess, and it’s time to move on. My research into its origins revealed that it did NOT originate in a black-and-white western—Gunsmoke is […]
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Those falling leaves…
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I understand from my fellow-blogger Rosemarie that today, November 6, is already well designated in honor of nachos (hurray) and bison (hurray again). For me, however, it’s going to be Do-Nothing-Much-But-Finish-My-Book Day. When I get down to the last hundred pages or so of a book I’m really enjoying, all I want to do is […]
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Today’s sky is full-tilt October blue, with brilliant sunlight and a crazy wind following on the heels of that storm that hit the West Coast. But it’s not what I’d ever call cold. October has been full of these breathtaking skies, the perfect ambiance for long, contemplative walks. Or livelier ones, with Enzo, who likes […]
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Summer is flying by, as it always seems to. Here in the US Mid-Atlantic, in the last few weeks we’ve had many hot, steamy days and extended periods of heavy rain, a weather pattern that seems more typical of South Florida. The upside is that everything in the garden is lush and colorful, especially the […]
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Hashtag Retired 