I’m a questioner. I knew this without putting a label to it, but Gretchen Rubin, in her book The Four Tendencies, labeled it for me and offered me confirmation. Questioners are happy to do anything for anyone, but first we must be assured it makes sense. We have to know we’re making the effort for…
A few days before Christmas, my phone buzzed with a text message. “Ho, ho, ho,” it read. “Santa made a special delivery. Check your front porch. Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas!” I opened the front door and looked down at a sizable red-and-white gift bag with tissue paper billowing from its top. It contained a…
We arrived early for our boat trip to search for white-tailed eagles. Rain fell steadily (it always did on that trip), so we popped into a small gift shop uphill from the docks. I bought a wispy green fairy tree hanging ornament, noting that fairies are part of the culture on the Isle of Skye….
When it comes to holiday decor, you could say I’m an aspiring minimalist. I used to have many small decorations and door hangings for each holiday, but then I realized they weren’t bringing me much joy. Half the time I forgot to unpack them from their storage-tub homes in the basement before the holiday passed….
My daughter should have won an award for the most exuberant customer of the year. She just turned two and part of her birthday gift was a trip to an aquarium in the Smokies. She was ecstatic. Every tank was met with shrieks of joy and exclamations of, “WOW, big fish!” Her eyes were shining and she…
You may have seen the film The Greatest Showman. With its phenomenal music, raucous dancing, and Hugh Jackman, what’s not to like, right? (Okay, perhaps the fact that it’s not at all true to P. T. Barnum’s life can give us pause. But as a stand-alone, mostly fictional film, it’s pretty rad.) At one point…