Sophie's Story

It was time. I've been waiting since mid September. It is now warm enough and light enough for me to do something I've been itching to do. Run. Outside. In the fresh air. I run at about 5:30 in the morning. It's really the only time I have consistently open to do this. The problem is that it is not safe to run in the dark where I live. This means I have to stop in the fall and start up again in the spring. Once I can see down the street clearly, it's time to get back out there. The first run of the year is a little nerve racking. I try to stay in condition as best I can during the winter, but I always lose a little bit. On one hand, I'm longing to get out there and stretch my legs. On the other hand, I'm afraid of how much I've lost over the winter. This morning I got up and after a short argument with C over whether it was still dark outside, (He thinks if the streetlights are on, it must be dark.) I laced on my running shoes and headed out. I always start ...

We heard an excellent speech at Toastmasters yesterday. That's not unusual. There are many very good speakers in our club. Yesterday's speech was on a topic so good, that I would like to share it. The title was 'Closing the Knowing/Doing Gap.' The speaker talked about how we listen to all kinds of tips on how to do things. Things like losing weight,earning more, being more organized and many other things. The problem isn't that these tips don't work. The problem is that the tips aren't tried. This is the Knowing/Doing gap, what the speaker called, "middle age spread for the mind." She made the point that doing these things involves change. Most people find it easier not to take the steps they made need to take to get what they want. This is true. We have all kinds of excuses, but the most common one is I don't have the time. We don't have the time to take that class, work out, read those books or reorganize those cupboards. We're just t...

When Catherine Middleton steps out of her Rolls Royce to go into Westminster Abbey people will be watching. There will be about 2,000 people in the church, thousands of people outside and millions of people tuned in on TV sets,computers screens,notebooks,Ipads and Ipods the world over. There is one person I know will not be watching. Me. Yes, that's right. Despite the fact that I have the day off, I will not be glued to the TV watching the wedding of the decade. I remember being one of those young girls watching Diana Spencer walk down the aisle of St. Paul's Cathedral. I remember how she bungled the groom's name. (Easy to do when you have four of them.) It was the big fairy tale, the beautiful bride who married the handsome prince. (Well..he has nice eyes...) Happily ever after. Or not. I also watched the wedding of Sarah Ferguson to Prince Charles' younger brother Andrew. It was smaller and much less extravagant and I ate up every detail. I even watched whatever parts...

I like hats. I own around 30 hats and about ten ball caps. Show me something that you can wear on your head (lampshades don't count) and I am all over it. I have wide brimmed sun hats, cloches, a derby and two ribbon hats. I have dress hats and casual hats. One of my prized hats is a hat that I bought at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. It's a lovely creation of dark purple with flowers, feathers and a black net bow in the back. I tried it on and the saleslady said, "Most women who try on that hat look like the hat is wearing them. You are wearing that hat." Sold. Someday I will find the right dress to wear with it. Then I'll remove the black veil from the back and wear it. The majority of my hats are summer hats. Many of them are wide brimmed and made mostly of straw with different kinds of bands. I like wearing them to keep the sun off my face. I also have two crochet hats one is navy blue, the other is pink. I like them because they look good and on windy da...

On the radio yesterday a disc jockey posed a question. What would you rather do, skydive,swim with sharks or give a 30 minute speech in front of 5,000 people? The point of this, of course, was to find out what most people are afraid of. I'm not sure which of these got the most votes in the end, by the time I turned off the radio, skydiving was way ahead. There is one thing that didn't make the list that I consider to be more frightening than skydiving, shark swimming or public speaking (which isn't that scary.) Two words that are guaranteed to make me really,really nervous. Church Potluck. Yes, that's right. I'm afraid of church potlucks. It's not that I don't like to cook. I do, very much so. I think I can safely say that people who have dined at my house have had no complaints about the hospitality they have received. I enjoy having small dinner parties. I am quite at home in my kitchen. Church potluck is a whole different matter. The first question is, wh...

It is spring and that means road construction season. My usual route to Toastmasters was going to be closed for a bit. I would need to find another way. C wrote down the alternate route on a piece of paper for me. He has been living in the Cities for over 30 years and I knew he would know the easiest route to take. I put the directions in my purse so I wouldn't forget them. I decided to leave a little early in case I got lost. That way I would have a bit of extra time. I quickly reviewed the directions. I was supposed to go west on one of the highways around the city. That didn't make sense to me. My meeting is in Wisconsin which is east. I decided not to worry about it. C knows what town my meeting is in and he has never had trouble finding his way around. I got on the first highway and drove. It wasn't going to be bad at all. Still I was a little nervous. C told me that things would look familiar as he and I had driven this route before to go to Woodbury. I found the exit...

I was sifting through the emails at work when I found a memorial notice from the scheduler. I see these once in a great while when someone in the pharmacy division or a close relative of someone in the pharmacy division dies. I opened it up to see who it was and if it was someone I knew. I read the name and was taken aback. I double check to make sure I had read what I had really read. Sure enough, it was the right name, Douglas Sander. I know him, not real well but I know him. He was the pharmacist who came to help out in January when my boss went on vacation. You know him too, I wrote about him in January. I felt myself tearing up a bit. He wasn't that old and he looked perfectly healthy. The last time I saw him he was doing well and seemed happy. Now he's gone, what could have happened? I looked online and found his obituary. There were many surprises there. He developed kidney disease at age 10 and had undergone not one, but four kidney transplants. I also learned that besi...

The signs of spring are here. The snow is melting. Robins have been spotted in many yards. The sweet sounds of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir can be heard in the Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah where the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are gathering for the semi annual General Convention. Not all LDS are able to go to Salt Lake City for this event. Many gather in chapels and around TV sets,radios and computer screens to listen to the talks which are broadcast through all these media. C and I were two of the many that were watching. I like General Conference a lot. The speakers are drawn from church leadership at the highest level and are all very good public speakers. That alone makes it well worth watching. There was a bit of humour at the Sunday morning session. Elder David Bednar stood at the lectern and remarked that the hymn following his talk was titled, "Have I Done Any Good?" Then he said in a wry tone of voice, "I get the hint....

Margaret, the harp,was ready to come home. We had dropped her off at Hobgoblin Music in Blaine as it was a shorter drive and hoped to pick her up there. Unfortunately the repair shop is at the main store in Red Wing. Rather than wait for someone to drive her back up to Blaine we decided to go down and get her. Red Wing is a small city located on the near the Mississippi River a bit south of the Twin Cities. It is home to Red Wing Shoes and Red Wing Stoneware, two products familiar to many people who live in this state. We drove there yesterday. It was a gray early spring day. There were still spots of snow on the ground. We drove though Hastings, another town on the river. We drove past fields of stubble waiting to be plowed and planted with this year's seed. We drive though rolling hills as we neared Red Wing. Even though it was gray and the trees were bare and not a spot of green was to be seen anywhere C and I both though it was a lovely drive and would get more beautiful during...