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#Schummer14: Day 27-28 recap ~ the end of Summer of Schnyder
Our last two days of the Summer of Schnyder (#schummer14) road trip were spent driving through familiar territory – from Cincinnati, Ohio, we went across Indiana, Illinois (which we passed through at the beginning of the trip, although farther north) and then into my home state of Missouri and finally Kansas. We arrived in my hometown of Columbia, Mo., on Sunday afternoon in time to have dinner with my step-dad, my nephew and his wife and my sister-in-law at G&D, a small, family-owned steakhouse that opened a year before I was born. I remember having meals here every Friday night with my parents and aunt & uncle in the late…
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A whopper of a proposal: how Lee asked me to marry him
I knew a proposal was coming, I just didn’t know exactly when or how. Lee and I had started dating in 1995, moved in together in 1996 and had shopped for rings in the last few months of 1997. In January 1998, the opportunity to buy a house {the same one we live in today} popped up suddenly and we made the decision to go for it even though we weren’t yet married. Hmmm, maybe we will open the door to our new house for the first time and I’ll see rose petals spread all over the floor surrounding the ring. Or maybe he’ll drop to one knee during one…
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On the anniversary of my mom’s death
Recently, I started reading Cheryl Strayed’s book Tiny Beautiful Things, which is a collection of questions and answers on love and life from the advice column called Dear Sugar. The very first question and answer in the book made me cry. Hard. It still gets to me when I think of it. The actual question is irrelevant here, what is important is Dear Sugar’s answer in which she talks about the last word her mother ever said to her and her pain over not being present when her mother died from cancer. The last word my mother ever said to me was “love” … The last thing that happened between…
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I found a time capsule in my basement
I opened a time capsule today. It wasn’t an intended one, but it sure took me back in time about 12 years. The capsule was in the form of a cheap, white plastic bag that was buried inside a cardboard box that once crated a microwave. I was looking for a camera lens box that had important warranty information on the lens. I opened the large microwave box, sitting atop a wardrobe that my grandparents once owned, thinking maybe it contained a bunch of smaller boxes. Instead, I found a hodge-podge of decorative tins and other reusable containers, and the plastic bag. For some unknown reason, I’d stashed the cards…
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Remembering that I forget my birthdays
Birthdays make me stop and really think about how I’m spending my time. That’s why I quit my job just a few weeks after turning 30 … and quit another job a few months after turning 40. Both times I didn’t have another job lined up yet. The milestone birthdays seem to move me beyond thinking and into taking action. They put me in the whole life-is-too-short-to-not-be-doing-something-you-really-enjoy mindset. Today I’m just turning 42, so there won’t be any monumental announcements. Plus, I couldn’t just up and quit on my current boss {I can’t quit myself!}. Overall, though, my memories of birthdays are lacking and this bothers me. I recall very…