Month: August 2026

Puffy Friday

Hi friends!!! Happy Best Day of the week. I read something lately that went something along the lines of “the best day of the week, is really the night before.” Isn’t that the truth? We humans love giddy anticipation. Is Christmas Eve (and was it, even in childhood) more exciting than Christmas Day? Maybe this is why Fridays are so great. They are filled with the anticipation of a fun and fulfilling weekend.

For old time’s sake, I am going to share a Favorite Things Friday item at the end of my post, but first, I want to add some questions I read from an article by a psychologist named Constantin Patrascu, to the thought museum we have here at Adulting – Second Half. Patrascu is not a believer in the term “midlife crisis.” He thinks that instead, around these middle years of our lives, we are more likely to come to a state of reckoning/reconciling (versus an actual crisis) about where we are, currently, in our lives. He says that in order to not act out unconsciously and possibly recklessly (i.e. crisis state), we should, instead, consciously focus on these hard questions:

What have you been avoiding?

What have you outgrown?

What are you finally ready to grieve or finally ready to say out loud?

Does the life you have still reflect the person you’ve become?

Now that’s a little heavy for a Friday post, I know, so on the lighter side (literally), here’s my new favorite:

Rise & Puff Gourmet Tortillas – These tortillas are only made from four ingredients: flour, water, avocado oil and salt. But what makes these tortillas stand out from the rest, is the fact that when you cook them, they rise and puff and bubble up. They are so fun to heat up! (makes me nostalgic for Jiffy Pop Popcorn) Rise & Puff tortillas are delicious! My local Sprouts grocery store has a hard time keeping them in stock. Rise and puff this weekend, readers! (I’ll leave that up to your own personal interpretation.) Happy Friday!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

The Bins

My future daughter-in-law has lately asked me more than once, to dive into my big plastic bin, to find specific types of pictures for all different events of their wedding celebration. I hope that I’m not the only one who never got into a creative scrapbooking phase, and who still has a big, full, messy plastic bin, jam-packed with pictures. “The Bin of Intentions” – The bin that has been on the vague side of my to-do list for probably decades has been opened and entered more times this year, than probably when I first hastily dumped all of the pictures in it, when we moved from North Carolina to Florida in 2011. (the bin also has a twin sister, jam-packed with our four kids’ (whose present day ages span 30-22) school art projects and crafts. The bin sisters both live surreptitiously, side by side, on a shelf in the garage.) We do have a couple of neat, organized, well-done photo albums, which we peruse through, here and there, and all of our modern day pictures are easily found on our phones, or projected up on our Aura frames, but the bin pics are from that in-between stage of life, when all of the real change seems to happen. The bin pictures are from a time when we were so busy raising four kids, and occasionally capturing these moments on camera, and then carelessly letting the developed pictures precariously pile up until I finally went to Walmart and bought giant plastic bins to dump all of the pictures in. These are the same bins that the movers rightfully groaned about, saying that they were too full and heavy.

“Full and heavy.” The movers were correct. And I’m not talking about physical weight. There is an emotional weight inside of those bins that I don’t like to approach. I don’t like the feelings of nostalgia and melancholy. And the bins are enormous Pandora’s boxes, loaded with high, high doses of nostalgia and melancholy. The bins are filled with evidence of so many different stages of life, that each stage almost seems to amount to a life unto its own. The bins are so full, of so much, it’s a wonder that they don’t just burst, like an overfilled balloon.

I was talking to my future daughter-in-law’s mother at the wedding shower about the childhood pictures, which we were both tasked to bring. When my future daughter-in-law, who is an only child, was a teenager, her father died, while her parents were in the middle of divorcing. My future daughter-in-law’s mother said to me, that it was surreal for her to pull out the old childhood pictures. “I had forgotten that at one time, we were so very happy. We, at one time, were such a happy family,” she said to me winsomely.

They say that pictures say a thousand words, but I don’t necessarily agree with this statement. Pictures never tell the whole story. Pictures are typically taken at times of celebration and reunion and joy. People pose for pictures. People smile for pictures, automatically, no matter what. Pictures are wonderful reminders of good times shared, and they are also snapshots of time, never to be retrieved again. I love to be reminded of the joyful moments, but my heart aches when I come across all that has been changed and lost – the loved ones who have passed on, the relationships that are now irretrievably broken, the places that even if you go back to them, will never be the same way as they once were, the reminder that you have been so many variations of your own self, as life has continually moved on, moment after moment, day after day . . . . I suppose that nostalgia and melancholy are made up of an intense feelings mix-up/mishmash of joy, pride, awe, disbelief and also a stomach-pitting grief. The bins promote feelings at an intensity that I can only take in really, really small doses.

Therefore, just for now, after a day of sorting, remembering, smiling, crying, feeling intense awe and gratitude for just how much of everything is packed into living the life and lives, of just one family, the bins remain closed. The feelings remain contained. The bins can hold them, until I am ready to feel them again.

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” – Marcel Proust


“How sad and bad and mad it was — / But then, how it was sweet!” – Robert Browning

“Nostalgia makes hallowed ground from mundane places.” – Caroline George

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday’s Musings

+ My husband and I have dubbed Mondays to be “Miss You Monday” because after a weekend of having fun, palling around together, doing whatever we please in the moment, Mondays sometimes feel a little quiet and lonely and too serious, to both of us. We miss each other, especially on Mondays. Of course once my husband fully retires and we are always palling around together, maybe we will both become a little winsome for some more time apart. Mondays in retirement may be dubbed “Miss You, Monday”. Who knows? But for now, it’s still “Miss You Monday”, honey.

+ I read that there is a resurgence of interest in “Grandma Hobbies” such as quilting, baking, knitting, etc. in even the youngest of generations. The article suggested that this current fad is due to examples shared on social media, and then ironically, from a desire to escape all things tech/screens/social media and get back to the very humanistic ability to use our hands to create. Apparently, the more technology grows, the more our desire to explore our humanity amplifies. The pendulum always swings.

+ Over the weekend, I was reading a book by Jaime Zuckerman about “finding your calm.” In the book she suggests doing an exercise which entails listing all of your relationships into these four categories: Family, Work, Friends, Romantic. She then says to take each name, and put them in circles, all surrounding a circle in the center, with your own name in it. Connect a line to your circle from each circle. Zuckerman calls this the Relationship Roadmap. Now, on each of your lines, rate each relationship as (+) Positive, (=) Neutral, or (-) Toxic. This gives you a real visual of your relationships. Is there a way to let go of, or at least put bigger boundaries around your toxic relationships? How could your neutral relationships be improved? Jerry Wise, a pastor and therapist, says to ask yourself, “If this person stays exactly as they are right now, what would my relationship with that person look like?“ (Wise claims that most of the times that people come to him for couples therapy, they are looking for tricks to change the other person, and that is just not possible. You can only change yourself.) When I did this Relationship Roadmap exercise, I was pleased to see that I didn’t have any toxic relationships on my road map. For most of my life, this wasn’t always the case. Jerry Wise says to use this mantra, “I do not need toxic people in my life. I DO need inner peace.” The older I get, the more I understand the value of inner peace. It’s okay to keep your circle small.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

The Never-Ending Story

My friends and I often laugh ruefully about the fact that no one ever warns you about the fact that motherhood (and fatherhood) is a lifetime gig, with no off-ramp. You go into it kind of like “oh, I really want to raise a baby, I really want to raise a family” with a whole lot of mysterious help from your hormones and instincts, and really, little else to go on . . . . Starting a family is mostly a deep, natural yearning of sorts, for so many of us. You realize that embarking on raising a family, is more serious and complicated than adopting a puppy, but no one person, nor any book, nor anything else, ever fully prepares you for the monumental feelings, and responsibility and vulnerability which you will inevitably feel for the rest of the entirety of your whole life.

Last night, as we were headed to bed, our youngest son texts that he was headed to do his first open mic at a comedy club. This is the first I had heard of actual, concrete plans for him to do this. He also mentioned that he was a little concerned because everyone else there had notebooks full of material. Our youngest son is truly really funny, and yet also, he is probably our most sensitive, emotional child, and he also has epileptic seizures that are most often triggered by stress. While simultaneously sending excited, supportive texts to him, my own stress levels started skyrocketing with this information, and as I was attempting calming breathing exercises, a few minutes later, our daughter (who now lives in a whole different time zone from us) called to tell us that she had been rear-ended and was on the side of the highway with the other driver, who was refusing to share her insurance information.

As we are currently having an eventful family year, that includes two of our children’s weddings and a college graduation, my husband and I naively dubbed this month to be “Absolutely All About Us August“. We figured that we would keep plans light this month, to take a beat and completely hit the reset button, until the second wedding festivities come upon us next month (did I mention that this second wedding is in an entirely different country?). How does the saying go – “when you make plans, God laughs”?!?

All ended well. Our daughter and the other driver were not hurt, there was little to no damage to the cars, and they managed to eventually exchange information with a little help from 911. Our son liked the open mic experience so well, he plans to do it again tonight. Our nerves shot, it took my husband and I a little while to fall to sleep last night, and when I woke up, I remembered that I had dreamt that I was let go by a mass shooter. I guess that this was my brain’s dramatic way to say, “you dodged a bullet, lady.” I did. And (as always) I thanked God continually for keeping my (adult) children protected from others (and from themselves). And mostly (as always), I thanked God for my children, to love for the rest of my life.

“Love is staying up all night with a sick child — or a healthy adult.” — David Frost

“You will always be your child’s favorite toy.” — Vicki Lansk

“I will pray over and for you as long as there is breath in my body… I will be your biggest fan forever and always.” – Unknown

“There really are places in the heart you don’t even know exist until you love a child.” — Anne Lamott

“Before I got married I had six theories about raising children; now, I have six children and no theories.” — John Wilmot 

“What it’s like to be a parent: It’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever do but in exchange it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love.” — Nicholas Sparks

“Parenting without a sense of humor is like being an accountant who sucks at math.” — Amber Dusick

“You must first teach a child he is loved. Only then is he ready to learn everything else.” — Amanda Morgan

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday’s Maxims

+ “Behind every great recipe there is a grandmother. We call ours “Cuddy”!” – from a package of Chunk Nibbles

This is the first time I have heard “Cuddy” for a grandmother’s name and I just love it. I do believe that the best recipes I have ever gotten are from my grandmothers and my great-grandmother. Not too long ago, I brought out some old recipes for a neighborhood gathering and I was told that they were total “crack” and couldn’t be left alone until they were all gone. So much is store bought these days, that baking from scratch tastes extra good, doesn’t it? Nostalgia must be the secret ingredient. My mother-in-law taught my daughter how to bake (I am not at all a kitchen wizard) and I still have fond memories of watching them spend an afternoon in our kitchen together. Baking is bonding.

+ “Adopt the pace of nature: Her secret is patience.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why do we go out in nature in order to relax? Because there is no “hurried” energy in nature. Nature is in acceptance of what is. Nature sits in faith that everything will unfold as it should, in its own time.

+ “The entire world you see is an afterthought.” – Alan Cohen

What are you seeing in the world? Are you wearing the right glasses? What you experience through your senses is then translated through your mind, using labels, beliefs, lessons, media, past experiences, emotion, other people’s influences, etc. We could both be looking at the exact same world and be translating it in entirely different ways. You could look at the identical object/scene you are observing today, and see it in an entirely different way tomorrow. Make sure that your translator is up to snuff.

+ “You fear losing what was never yours. Nothing belongs to you but the journey.” – Shams-e Tabrizi

We don’t even get to leave here with our bodies. Our true treasure is the adventures of our every day lives. Learning to let go of attachments is one of the hardest lessons in life, isn’t it?

+ “There is no fail. You either win or learn.” – Gary Keller

Our daughter has just recently started her new job and as always, she is being extra hard on herself for not being perfect at it, from the starting gate. If we learn from the lessons of our mistakes, there is never a loss. I know these words fall short on her now, but in hindsight, there is no doubt she will see the truth of it. What we learn “the hard way” is what sticks with us the most.

Happy Monday! Happy New Month! Happy New Week!

“Every dawn is a new beginning.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.