Month: June 2011
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Financial outlook
Same bank letter – different responses. The letter came in the late 1970s as interest rates began accelerating to the double digit highs of the 1980s. After happily making housing loans with 4, 5 and 6 percent interest rates for 20 to 30 years, bankers wanted out of those low paying loans. They wanted their…
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Salad bar for the ear
Pain! woke me in the middle of the night. An earache in the middle of the night and no mommy around for relief. I grabbed the little used bottle of acetaminophen with shaking hands and opened it like a druggie needing a hit. As a grandmother I’m supposed to know what to do for most…
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Versatile couch
The family couch serves many purposes – extra seating, spare bed, conversation corner, landing spot for jumping kids, hospital corner for the sick and raw resources for a fort – and physical therapy. Our first couch came with the fixer-upper house we bought. Its dusty rose cloth covering matched the overstuffed chair from the 1940s.…
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Phases of life
“Just about the time I realized you were just going through a phase, you entered another one,” my mother once mused about raising her five children. I saw that anew last week when we gathered to welcome our 16th grandchild, Daisy Marie, on May 31. Her uneventful arrival left the doctor saying that my daughter…
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Randy’s military training: paratrooper
As an eight year-old, we took Randy to the top of the John Hancock Building in Chicago to view the city. The moment the elevator doors opened to the wall of windows overlooking the city, he sat himself right down by the elevator door and refused to move a step closer to the window. My…