Sophie's Story

  Today is my 45th birthday. I pride myself on not getting hung up on the numbers of years I'm celebrating. It seems ungrateful. There are people out there who would loved to have had more years, but for various reasons did not get them. I made a decision long ago that I'm not going to get upset about getting older.    I seem to be having a little trouble with that this year. One of my biggest pet peeves is women who desperately hang on to their youth by dressing and acting in a very age inappropriate fashion. I never wanted to do that. I want to be like Katherine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Lauren Bacall,Judi Dench or Winnie Corn.  I don't have a choice about getting older, but I want to do so in a  graceful and classy fashion.    Lately I've been looking over my wardrobe and wondering if I should get rid of a few things. There are a few items that I bought ten or more years ago that I'm not sure I should wear anymore. One of them is a flowered skirt. I love the b

   Last spring I decided it was time to knit something other than dishcloths. I was ready for a real project. It had to be something simple, I'm still a novice. It had to be something useful, but not a dishcloth and not a bag. I had already knitted a bag. I don't count it as a project because all I had to do was knit a large rectangle and sew it together.   I looked at my knitting book. There were a couple of hats and some scarves. I looked closely at the scarves. Scarves are always useful. I found several possibilities. I narrowed it down to two. One was a wavy scarf. It starts off narrow and then gets wider and then narrow again. I figured this would be a good project because it would teach me how to increase and decrease stitches. The other project was a quick scarf knitting with bulky yarn. You knit a square and sew it together. It's kind of like the neck of a turtleneck without the shirt part. It is a quick project and the results would be nice and warm. I could wea

   Sophie Genevieve Story and C. Livingston Crane have chosen the first day of their new life together as Saturday, the twenty-first of August two thousand and four.          It was a new day, a day of happy beginnings. The sun was shining. It was not too hot. It was, in fact, the perfect day to get married.     I was wearing the most expensive piece of clothing I had ever bought. I had more make-up on than I had worn in years. My nail were painted, my hair was done. I didn't look anything like me.    It had been fourteen months and fifteen days since I answered yes to a proposal that went on for five minutes. A lot had happened in that time. I was trying to figure out how I'd be a good wife, stepmother and grandmother. I was trying to get accustomed to the fact that I would not be alone anymore, that I would be sharing my life with someone.   Unlike most women, I never planned on getting married. Marriage was for beautiful women who were g

   Christians are sometimes mocked because of our beliefs. Some people say that we believe in an outdated myth. Some people say that the rules we live by do not take into account changing times.   I was reading over some of the commandments that the members of the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter Day Saints follow ( or at least try to follow) a few years back. One things that I noticed is that many of those commandments were actually practical. Many of those rules made sense from a pure common sense standpoint. It made me start to think about some of the things that Christian religions do. (I'm not implying that other faiths do not have similar views. I'm not familiar enough with any of them to say such things. I'm sticking to what I know.)   I'm going to use the Ten Commandments as an example. There's been a lot of controversy over them. Many people think that the laws of this country were based on the Ten Commandments because the founders of this country inten

   Normally I approach intern season with joy and excitement. Teaching is one of the things I like to do. Intern season presents me a chance to do more of it.   This year was different. I was not excited. I was not looking forward to it. Some of it had to do with the current staffing situation at my store. Last year two of our techs left for other positions. While I understood why each of them left I was sad. We had working relationship among us. We made a great team.   One of the techs we hired worked for another store. She had left to take a job and found that she missed working in a store. We were glad to have her. She was experienced and she fit right in.   We hired the second tech at the beginning of the year. That's not a good time for a new person to start. It's a busy time in a pharmacy. She didn't really have anyone to train her and had to figure out a lot on her own. She had also been out of the workforce for a few years while her daughter was young and she

   Officer Scott Patrick of the Mendota Heights police department was shot and killed during a traffic stop last week. I didn't know him, but I feel sort of a kinship with him. We are about the same age and have been working our respective jobs for about the same amount of time. We are both in public service positions. He watched after other people's safety. I look after their health.   Our paths never crossed as far as I know. They could have. Last winter, when an armed man was robbing pharmacies near my store, he could very well have been one of the police officers that drove around when security in the area was increased. He could have been standing watch over one of my colleagues and their staff.    I've been reading articles and looking at pictures. People have left flowers, candles, notes and American flags at the place where he was shot. People have come to pay respect with bowed heads. Front door and porch lights are being left on in his honor. My friend, Mandy,

   While on our weekend road trip to Chicago, I bought a pair of running shoes. The shoes I bought were not the pair I had my eye on. They were a pair that the salesperson brought out for me to try. He thought they were a better running shoe.    I tried them on. They were very comfortable and actually fit my feet which are shaped more like a duck's foot than a human foot. (wide at the toes narrow at  the heel). When I walked around the store in them I liked them very much. I tried on the pair that I had originally seen. They felt tight and confining. I bought the other pair.   I couldn't wait to try them out. Once C and I got to Chicago, we changed our clothes and went to the Botanic Garden. I changed into my new shoes. It took some time to get used to them. The arch support wasn't where my arch was. This was because the shoes had a foam pad that would conform to my foot. The shoes just needed to "learn" where my arch was.   Once the whole arch issue was reso