With plants, if you water too much or too little, the results are similar- the plant will get stressed, and if nothing changes, will die. People who over-water their plants tend to not trust that the plant will make it without their constant tending. They just keep pouring water on, and the roots can’t breathe, […]
My six-year-old nephew told me a story. He was in school, and he bumped into a girl who got very upset with him. This made him feel mortified, so he started to cry. His teacher told him something that seems to have changed his entire perspective on life. As he described her words, he threw […]
A couple weeks ago, I walked down my street and was surprised to see a neighbor’s house being torn down. I was struck by just how quickly a house goes down, since it takes so long to build one. I was also caught off guard by just how much material that could have been recycled […]
When I used to bike tour, I discovered an interesting thing. If I was pedalling up a mountain, I would project into the future how miserable I was feeling. Suddenly, it wasn’t just the mountain that was hard, EVERYTHING else would be just as hard, in my mind. Finding a place to camp? Miserable. Going […]
It seems to be a pretty well known fact: if a child is suddenly quiet in another room, chances are that said child is up to no good. Some people learn this the hard way, thinking, “Ah, at last, Susie is self-entertaining, and I can relax!” Then they discover that the “self-entertaining” resulted in quiet […]
We have a highly exuberant dog whose maniacal barking got out of control. Nothing we tried was helping, so we bought one of those citronella collars that squirts her on the chin when she barks. When she had it on for the first time, she did not make the connection that it was her barking […]
What is it like to be a fish, swimming around in the day-to-day, looking for some food, when all of a sudden, there’s a big, delectable worm floating right there in your face? Maybe it seems like the food is chasing you around. An irresistible feast is dangling right there before your eyes. So, you […]
Sometimes, we pay much attention to the things in life that are going badly, or that we don’t yet have yet, or that we no longer have. When our focus is purely on those things, it is easy to overlook that which is going well, the things that are working, and the things we have […]
Here they come! The winter holidays can be stressful, and also can bring up many emotions. Some of these emotions can be good ones, some not so good. If you are lonely, or have financial stress, or recently went through a loss, the holidays can be downright frustrating. I’ve made a little list of some […]
This will likely be the first of many musings on compost, because I think compost is really cool. You can put so many things into the compost, and like magic, these things turn into fertile soil. Some of the things I put in the compost hold good memories, like the pumpkins I carve with friends […]