Sophie's Story

     Finally, after eight years C has a place for his stuff. When we first got married we shared the five drawer dresser that I had. It worked, C did not have much in the way of clothing at that time. As the years went by he got more things to wear. It was becoming clear that we needed more space.   We tried using some cloth shelving that could be hung in his closet. This worked sort of. He had a place for his shirts and some other items of clothing. The down side was that it ate up about half of his closet space.   We kept talking about getting a second dresser for him, but we never really did anything about it. This year we decided we needed to buy something. Our original thought was to try to find something small maybe three drawers. Our bedroom isn't that big.   We looked at a few furniture stores. I thought one guy was going to laugh at us when we told him what we were looking for. He suggested antique stores or Craig's list. I was a woman on a mission. We were going

   It had not been a good day. I came to work at 8 am hoping to get a good head start on the days work. Normally I don't like coming on early for a 12 hour shift. The day is already long enough. However, we were going to be short one person.   The day was busy, but we were able to keep up. I got a call from the tech coming in in the afternoon. She was sick and wanted to stay home. The problem was if she stayed home then I would be alone during the busiest part of the day. I asked her if she could come in for three hours. She agreed.   At about fifteen after five things got bad in a hurry. A line of people formed at the pickup window. The phone started to ring non stop. The tech working with me did not know how to check people out or how to answer the phone. Even if she did, I wouldn't want her working with customers when she wasn't feeling well.   I tried to take care of everyone the best that I could. Just when I thought the rush had ended a new wave of people came in

  Yesterday was a really good day for me. I'd been looking forward to it for several weeks. I was going to get to spend the day with my friend, Dana.   This is something we do every once in awhile when we both can get a day off on the same day. The day usually involves lunch, a trip to a yarn shop and some time spend working on crafts at Dana's house while drinking tea and talking.   We had found out about an authentic German bakery in Minneapolis a week or so ago. We decided that we would start our day by going there to buy broetchen and anything else that looked good. Then next stop would be a yarn shop followed by lunch and craft time.   The bakery was really nice. I wish it was closer. We each bought broetchen and a loaf of bread. I bought a pretzel for C as well.   Then we went to the yarn shop. the plan was that I was going to follow her so we would both arrive there at the same time.  I knew about where the shop was so I turned onto the highway. Dana and I were sep

   I wasn't sure what to write about today. It would need to be something with a Valentine's Day theme as the holiday is tomorrow. I thought maybe I'd already written enough columns about love. I asked Scamp or Colby if either of them would want to take over for me this weekend. I was turned down flat. Scamp wanted to supervise C while he was cleaning out the refrigerator. Colby didn't feel inspired to write. I guess that means I'm on my own for this one.   When I have a block I sometimes turn to the Internet or Facebook for potential inspiration. I found what I needed in a post from my stepdaughter Elin. She posted one of her wedding pictures. Since the marriage ended in divorce, she photo shopped the face of  a popular actor where the face of the groom was. It was a pretty funny picture I must admit. It made me remember some of my other Facebook friends who like to post pictures of handsome men sometimes sans shirt on their Facebook pages.   That is somethin

  It is award season. This is the time of the when the celebrities gather to eat expensive food, drink expensive wines, wear over the top clothing and pat each other on the back. (Obviously I'm not a fan.) I honestly don't care about any of the award shows unless my stepdaughter Carrie is nominated for something.   I wish there was an award show for real people who do really cool things. If there was such a show I would nominate KSBJ FM, a contemporary Christian radio station near Houston Texas.   I heard about this station from my stepdaughter, Elin. They have a campaign called "Love That Sticks". What they are doing is encouraging their listeners to show their love of God to others by writing encouraging messages and Bible verses on sticky notes and leaving them in various places around town. They want to hear from people who have left or found notes. Listeners can take pictures of notes found or left and post them to various social media sites with the hash tag

  Several months ago I saw an article on Yahoo about modest wedding dresses.  They showed numerous pictures of wedding gowns with sleeves of various lengths and comments on each gown. All of the brides looked beautiful and happy, tasteful and elegant. I thought that sometime I might write an column about modesty.   I kept the thought in the back of my mind and never acted on it until I saw a picture on Facebook that one of my stepdaughters liked. It said, "When you interrupt a girl's school day to force her to change clothes or send her home because her shorts are too short or her bra straps are visible, you are telling her that making sure boys have a "distraction free" learning environment is more important  than her education. Instead of shaming girls for their bodies, teach boys that girls are not sexual objects."   I wanted to comment on this to say that requiring girls to dress a bit more modestly for school is not about shaming them. It is about learn