CAREFULLY CARELESS

The Book War Horse was my last read while teaching my younger kids about the horrors of World War 1. There is a scene where Joey, the narrating horse, runs aimlessly through No Man's Land stuck between gunfire, barbed wire, and endless disorienting smoke. I always tear up while reading it aloud. Yet No Man's Land was not just a symbol of the war's brutal stalemate and immense casualties, but also occasionally the site of spontaneous Christmas Truces like the one portrayed in

It happened gradually. I left my parents house for a dorm that I made has homey as possible. Then I made an apartment as cozy as I could with some friends. Soon I left my apartment and moved into my first home with my husband. I naturally became a homemaker even with a fulltime job. I love making a place a home. I brought all my babies into that first home, which I nested in for almost a decade. After that, we felt a call to leave that home, so we rented a house not far away

We are all waiting on something. If we aren't then we've arrived at a place so overtly comfortable that it sedates us into non-committal lethargy. Comfort grows like a fungus, mold or mushrooms thriving in damp, stagnant conditions, which can lead from mild dissatisfaction to deeper issues like depression or delinquency if left unchecked. To avoid such dissatisfaction, we put something on our mental or physical calendar, which will keep us waiting in anticipation... waiting

It's no secret that my youngest son HATES leftovers, but since I hate wasting food, we have leftover night at least once a week (to his great chagrin). Strangely though I don't consider throwing away Halloween candy a waste. Does anyone? If it ruins our guts or wastes our space, I'm liable to throw it away immediately. I justify calling one thing a "leftover" and another thing "waste" without feeling any disparity. When you realize how brief and fragile your life is, when you