Category Archives: Acceptance

The Fog

The city we live in gets notoriously heavy early morning fog. This is always true in the Spring and the Fall. I don’t know if it is the presence of the Rhine/Rhone Canal that is just a hop skip and a jump from our front door, or if it is our proximity to the RhineContinue reading “The Fog”

Joy and the Oddballs

So, we need to recap here for a sec, since I have been a little bit all over the place over the last few days. I’ve been on a warpath lately: I want to start living an exciting life of expectancy and miracles again, the kind my husband and I used to live before weContinue reading “Joy and the Oddballs”

That lady who smiles all the time

In France, our masking mandates were all lifted as of Monday. I can almost 100% guarantee that around the dinner table on Monday night, everyone was having the exact same conversation, and that it went like this: “Someone said hello to me, and I had no idea who it was,” Person 1 says. “Then IContinue reading “That lady who smiles all the time”

Demolition

There is a building on the road to the scalawag’s school that has been being demolished for the last six months. This has provided endless fascination to us. It’s not a ka-boom type demolition. This is a–maybe 15 story–building, made of concrete with all its rebar and glorious asbestos, being torn down bit by bit.Continue reading “Demolition”

Joy is, in part, an act of the will

As if the Philosopher Princess didn’t have anything else to be thinking about right now, she has decided to start ruminating about JOY. I need to process these thoughts right now, because there is nothing like being told that you need to “serve your family with joy” to get the overthinker in me worrying thatContinue reading “Joy is, in part, an act of the will”

Virtual Flow

It happens so rarely, doesn’t it? Flow, that is. That mystical, mythical, mysterious state of mind, state of the heart, state of the universe when everything just works. The concept of Flow was elaborated by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. (All the fairy dust in the world wouldn’t have helped me spell that correctly. Thank youContinue reading “Virtual Flow”

The Ideal Life Round-Up: A Clean House

Hear ye, hear ye, we have arrived at the last Ideal Life theme of our cycle, and it is, by no means the most agreeable. To avoid dragging myself through the muck, I’ll let you, if you’re interested, take a look at my original article about this lovely theme of a Clean House. In myContinue reading “The Ideal Life Round-Up: A Clean House”

The Ideal Life Round-Up: Schedule and Family Life

Oyé. Here we ago. Here is yet another one of those topics that makes me want to pull my hair out by the handful. This ought to be interesting. In my Ideal Life I am a person who: goes with the flow manages what she can and trusts others to do their part doesn’t arriveContinue reading “The Ideal Life Round-Up: Schedule and Family Life”

The Ideal Life Roundup: Sexuality

Back when I first undertook to write about this subject, it made me squirm. But there is something good about doing things that make us squirm: quite often the thought of doing something is worse than the actually doing of the thing, in this case, writing about such a private topic. Whether I like itContinue reading “The Ideal Life Roundup: Sexuality”