Do my degrees mean I’m educated for life? Does the fact I earned diplomas fifty years ago put me in the group reporters refer to as educated women? When I wrote bios of near a hundred women, those who went from high school to work or marriage often lamented about their decision or lack of opportunity to get an education.
Edith Andersen
Welcome to my blog of ruminations and essays.
This habit of treating sleep as a second-class idea remained with me for half-a-century, or until a few months ago. So secure in my sleep opinion—less is better— that I preached it to others, my husband in particular. Even after retiring and time not an issue, I dragged myself through the day spreading yawning contagion, insisting it wasn’t for lack of sleep. Oh, no! It was too much sleep.
Stories about women’s contributions in history should include those self-serving females who stopped at nothing to climb the power ladder. Poppaea, my fifth blog post on women in history, is one of them.
Yesterday morning, I ran into a friend— let’s call her Jo— who told me she’s been working on her golf game all summer. “I can’t wait for us to play,” she said. Her sincerity and eagerness was no mirror image to my internal response. What gives?
The ringtone, Twinkle, goes off on my phone. I recognize it as my youngest. Glancing at my phone screen, it’s Wednesday, and it’s 11:09 am. It means she’s walked the two kids, Andrea (eight) and Kai (six), to school. Four words into the conversation, and I usually have a pretty good idea of how her day started. This time it took only one.
What goes up must come down— Newton’s law of gravity. But gravity is not responsible for the mental hem and haw, from contentment to discontent, back and forth, again and again. We worry about the future, feel guilty about the past, and are too often consumed with dark thoughts. Some people seem blessed with an easy-going demeanor able to accept their circumstances without resisting. But even those lucky few experience nights of tossing and turning. What is it in the human mind that disrupts the tranquility of our soul?
Tim thinks that high heels look good on some women. If you read the sentence closely, you’ll recognize that Tim is a man who thinks before he speaks to his wife. First, he points out the high heels look good on women. This is how he avoids his wife saying, “well, you should wear them.” […]
