Earlier this year, I joined a Facebook group called Flying While Fat.  If you've never been very overweight, you've probably never had to worry about fitting on a plane...or being able to buckle the seatbelt.  Prior to my epiphany of a couple of years ago about seatbelt extenders on planes, I o...

At the school where I've worked the past three years, we celebrate graduation on the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend.  In the old days, when I worked here the first time, we celebrated on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend.  That was always a bummer.  Your holiday weekend completely disrupted b...

I've been quiet for the last couple of weeks because I am just trudging along.  The school year is winding down and that's a relief, but it also means endless days of just showing up.  My classes were comprised of nearly all seniors (who are officially done with their classes for the year) and now I...

For the last seven years, I've been a librarian.  Before that, I was a teacher.  For a while, I've thought of myself as a writer.  In less than a month, I'll be...none of those?  Just a writer?  I don't know.  When I left the public library, I felt like I was giving up my career.  Now I'm leaving my...

I've been keeping a gratitude journal.  It's just a list, really, that I make at the end of each day.  It keeps my mood buoyed while I'm making adjustments to my medication.  It also reminds me that I have a lot of beautiful things to appreciate in my life.

This year, I've lived in Frederic...

For a long time now, I've been a "slow learner."  I know that phrase has some negative connotations, but I mean it.  It takes me a long time to make changes for myself and to my routine.  I need lots of preparation, I like to think things through, and I tend to avoid for a while.  I've been in talk...

So, I obviously took a little break.  After my grandfather's funeral, I dealt with some medical appointments, some mourning, and some much-needed super lazy downtime.  As it happens, my medical stuff turned out to be nothing at all and all of my anxiety about it drained me of both feeling and energy...

Last week, I was stressed to the max about the yearbook.  Then, I had a weird health thing that made me very anxious all weekend (it is NOT cause for alarm at all).  In the midst of all of this, my grandfather was in the hospital.  He was 97 years old last June and, until about two weeks ago, he was...

Every year, it happens:  someone asks, with total confidence in my response, "How will you make it without us next year?".  They expect me to say, "Oh, God!  I'll be so miserable!  What will I ever do?!?".  My response, though, is never what they want to hear, "I'll be just fine....

In elementary school, I was weird and awkward.  I certainly wasn't the only weird and awkward kid in my class.  I grew up in an area with a very real poverty problem and many of my classmates were struggling with home lives I never could have imagined.  I wasn't like them.  My family had money.  We...