It was 6:00 and dinner had not yet been prepared, the kids were running around the house hungry and tired, a sound of running water alerted everyone that there was a flood in the bathroom, the timing of a salesman standing at the front door with a pitch that was going to “save somebody something” was impeccable, and now one of the children sustained an injury from running around in all the chaos. In desperation and under much pressure, the mom yelled at the kids to stop what

I viewed an interesting show on television a while ago that involved individuals buying old, rundown homes, tearing them down almost completely to the studs, and then rebuilding them. While the process of tearing down and rebuilding is certainly an interesting one, what caught my attention was the attitude of one of the main presenters. Each episode would usually begin by showing two presenters entering a home they had purchased. The inside of the home would be shown, and the

What are some of your favorite childhood memories? What made them your favorite? I have come to realize that many of my favorite memories as a child are connected to food. I think the good memories came from the gathering of people, the events being celebrated, and the happy memories that tied it all together. One of these memories happened every week. My mom would get out the wheat grinder and start to grind wheat to begin the process of making bread. As a child I marveled

Lindsey stared at the screen in front of her. Another rejection email, another month with no job leads. She bit her lip in despair, trying to hold back her tears. She didn’t have money for her house payment, or any other bills, for that matter. The economy was seriously struggling and had been for some time now. She knew that she wasn’t the only person in her position, but being out of work for five months now was taking its toll on her. She thought back to when she was first

It had been a week since my son had gone to school. He had been ill, so I went to his school, talked with his teacher, and picked up his homework. I took it home and looked it over with him, talking him through what was needed. He responded that he would be able to do it and didn’t need help. A few days later my son was feeling better, and he proudly announced all his homework was done and that we now had time to do something fun. We were both excited at this announcement, bo

Human vision, while amazing, only picks up a small subset of the complete light spectrum. I have often wondered what we might be missing out on seeing or understanding with how much of the spectrum we do not process. Of course, we have machines that can process various portions of the light spectrum, but are they capturing everything? Science theorizes too about ‘dark matter’ that we cannot see but that exists. Are there more things to see than light alone would reveal to us?

Have you ever heard the adage, “It takes more muscles to frown than to smile”? I’ve learned recently that claim depends a lot on definitions and perspectives, but let’s just take it at face value for now (pun intended). The adage is generally used to try to encourage people to smile, as – according to the adage – it’s so much easier than frowning. Doing things merely because of their simpleness or ease never gained much traction with me as being a desired activity, so perhaps