Sophie's Story

        In the book "Exile's Valor" by Mercedes Lackey, there is a scene where two weaponry students come to class loudly arguing with each other. One student is Kadhael, born into a noble family. The other is Osberic, who was in training to become a Herald. The fight gets more heated by the moment. Other students start to choose sides.   Alberich, the weaponsmaster, ends the argument immediately by boxing both young men in the ear sending them to the floor. He then tells them that they are going to fight each other outside and will continue to fight until Alberich decides the fight is over. Kadhael sneers at Alberich and refuses to follow Alberich's orders. Since the weaponsmaster has a special status which permits him to dismiss disobedient students from his class, Alberich dismisses Kadhael who refuses to leave. Alberich picks up Kadhael and walks him out of the salle.    Alberich then decides that he will spar with Osberic using staffs. Everyone goes outside and f

     C's birthday was yesterday. It was one of those special milestone birthdays. I won't mention which one.  A birthday like this should be celebrated with a party or some big event. When I turned 40, we hosted a cookout at our house. When I turned 50,we hosted a lunch at a fancy restaurant. Thanks to Covid and a birthday in the winter we had none of these things for C. I could and did post a happy birthday message on Facebook. I tagged him so his friends would see it.    We decided to have a special dinner at home for him. Normally I would take him out for a steak dinner but the restaurant that makes the best steak is closed. Thank you Covid. We decided that one thing we would do was buy what we needed for dinner and then go home to cook it.   What would we do for the rest of the day?    The first thing we did was go out to lunch. There is a good soup and sandwich place in St. Paul. They also make amazing cakes and cheesecakes. One thing we needed to do was get a cake. We dec

   Early this morning I sent a text to my stepdaughter, Carrie. I asked her to make sure that she watched the inauguration today. This is historic, I wrote to her. I never thought that I'd see this in my lifetime. She told me that she would.    I don't think I've ever watched an inauguration before. I'm guessing that was because I was probably working. I was definitely going to watch this one though. No way I was going to miss out on watching the first woman be sworn in as Vice President of the United States.     I honestly didn't think I would ever see this. I remember Geraldine Ferraro from 1984. I was hoping that she and her running mate Walter Mondale, who was from Minnesota, would win. I liked Ferraro because she was of Italian descent like me. They didn't win.    There was a gap of 24 years between Ferraro and the next woman to be a vice presidential candidate on main party ticket. This time it was Sarah Palin. I couldn't never understand why McCain pi

     C and I have a favourite path that we like to walk on. We like it for many reasons. It's not far from our house. It runs through some forests. There are also two places where the path can be accessed. If we want a long walk we can park at the head of the trail and walk a total of six miles or we can park at the midpoint and walk three miles.    Lately we've been taking the shorter walk as we tend to get there later in the afternoon and want to get home before dark. We like walking the path to see the changes in the trees and the little streams that run through the area. There is also something else that changes frequently. There are decorations on the trail.   This past spring when we started walking on the trail someone or several someones put decorated rocks on the path. The rocks had pictures and encouraging sayings on them. I took a picture of one that had a picture of  bees on it and said "Bee Strong". The rocks were places at various intervals on the trails

     18 Years ago I was suffering from cabin fever. I got into my car and drove to Stillwater to look around. It was warm so I wore jeans, my favourite sweatshirt and a wool sweater. I didn't want any customers to recognize me so I wore my glasses.    At one of the stores, I saw an ad for a local coffee shop that was built into the caves at the edge of downtown. It looked interesting so I decided to have something to drink. The was a tall, handsome dark haired man behind the counter. I ordered my drink and engaged in a bit of small talk. Once I got my drink, I settled down with a book that I had brought with me. It was a good drink. I liked the coffee shop.    A few days later, a friend and I went to see the flower show at a conservatory in St. Paul. We weren't ready to go home after looking at the show, so I told her about this interesting coffeeshop in Stillwater. We decided to stop for a drink.    We got our drinks and went into the back room. The guy who served me my drink

     Today I did something I've never done before. I deleted a column. I've been working all day so I didn't hear the news about the violent riots in Washington today. Supporters of the President who believe that the election was rigged and stolen chose to do this.    As of this writing, one person has died and the President's twitter account has been locked after he praised rioters.    I am sickened, angry, frightened and sad.     Is this what we are now?     I hope not.......