Always the grandest of Love Thursdays, Thanksgiving is the American holiday I miss the most. Although we have a local version of most of the others ... 4th of July being a notable exception ... there is still always an "American version" that I miss while others celebrate in the fashion they're accustomed to. Thanksgiving, though, goes right over the heads of the Seychellois and Brits that I live my life with and around these days, and by missing the point completely I think they really are missing out.

This will be my 14th consecutive non-Thanksgiving, and like most when they finally roll around this one has me wondering why the heck Mark and the kids and I didn't pack up about a... more

Three out of four of my children have birthdays on the 10th of a month. This month, the 10th was on Saturday and the birthday was Sam's.

Yes, my baby boy is now a five-year old kid, and although in one direction that sounds young, it seems darned grown up in a whole bunch of ways, and a baby he most certainly is not.

Home at just 13 weeks, I still miss every one of those days, and although he was certainly well treated, cuddled, fed and loved, almost every one was spent in an orphanage. That is reality, and nothing ever can or should change his path ...... more

We are just back from our weekend break on Bird Island, and although the whole weekend long I had thought my Monday Older Parent Blog would be all about how parenting at my age differs from how I did this when I was much younger, an entirely different slant presented itself during the course of the trip.

First, a little history:

This was our second visit to Bird; our first was in 2003 when Sam was ten-months-old and Cj wasn't even a glimmer ... although I have to think that she was already writ... more

Six years ago today, I was dozing on the couch in my daughter's house in North Carolina, cuddling my month-old granddaughter and giving her mom some needed sleep-in time.

Although I had planned to be in the States for the birth, an emergency C-section brought Addie three weeks earlier than expected. It was over the phone that I learned I was a grandmother and my first sight of this amazing child was via an email, but a couple of days of travel time brought me eye-to-eye with this new human being that my daughter ... so recently a baby herself ... had made. (Okay, her... more

I am about to share something with you all that is so sad ... pathetic, actually .... and has me puzzling away at any possible significance. I'm wondering if I should be worried, angry and devastated or unconcerned and totally okay.

You see, in the course of posting an earlier blog, I happened to check the calendar to check what the heck month this might be ... September? How did THAT happen? ... and I suddenly came face to face with the fact that yesterday was the 13th anniversary of my marriage to Mark.

Hmmmm.

What? No flowers? No card, candy, gift?... more

I have one of those small world things possibly going on now that has me amused at possibilities, so I'd like to share.

One of the regular readers here on the blogs, a geezer dad of teens adopted from foster care named John, has clued me into the fact that he's on a fishing trip in Oregon at the moment. Since fishing trips now come with WiFi, apparently, he's in blog contact even as he relaxes in the crisp mountain air ... I can almost smell the piney-woodsy tang from here ... and letting me know the fish are few and far between.... more

Not all that long ago, I watched a CNN reporter approach people on streets in some American city, stick a camera and microphone in their face, and ask blankly, "What do you think of women's suffrage?"

The responses were, to say the least, disturbing.

Almost every interviewee responded with a single-minded attack on women "suffering", apparently completely oblivious to the meaning of suffrage.

Because I can, and because I should, today's post is written in celebration of women's suffrage,... more

I'm leaving tomorrow morning for a week away, but thought I'd leave you all with some photos and tales from a wedding we went to yesterday.

For a little run-down that conveys a sense of my part of the world quite well, I'll give a short description of the players ...

Groom: from South Africa, works with my husband at the world's largest tuna processing plant.

Bride: from Philippines, was working there too, until recently. ... more