I don’t know where my mom got this recipe or if she just made it up, but it’s my favorite meatloaf recipe (from our family cookbook, “Cum, Vella Essa!“). I sometimes follow it exactly and some times I veer off course a bit, but it is a never-fail. At least, I’ve never been able to […]

My grandma’s sister died.  She was 2 years younger than my grandma.  I read her obituary online today.  How do people decide what to put in an obituary?  How do they figure out the bullet points of someone’s life and summarize it in a paragraph?  Though always tastefully written, it holds no true definition of who that person […]

We are friends and we love each other, shopping, and coffee.  It’s always a pleasureful mixture of laughter, exhaustion, coffee intake, and subsequent caffeine-highs.  It’s always a good time no matter how you look at it. A little over a year ago, I didn’t know these people.  I can’t imagine how my life would be […]

The holidays are over. There are no more short work weeks and long weekends. It’s January. This is when the reality of cold, bleak, monochromatic Iowa winter sets in. Along with it always come a certain level of depression and sadness. It’s dark in the morning; it’s dark at night. The only time I see […]

I never watched The Price Is Right when I was a child.  We didn’t have a television.  I still to this day haven’t watched it.  I don’t really know the concept or how it works, yet somehow Kevin and I have managed to turn our grocery trips in The Price Is Right contests at the […]

Sometimes I wonder who comes up with the words inside Hallmark greeting cards.  Are they fresh-from-college-marketing-class, scrubbed-up young kids?  Are they wisened, experienced people waiting to retire?  Are they just clocking their hours and writing witty phrases?  Do they write things because they want to say it to someone they know?  Do they write from […]