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How to Paint a Bathroom
I don’t normally do numbered or bulleted lists, but here goes: 1. First select the paint color. (But of course this doesn’t take into account the fine art of negotiating with your significant other necessary to do that, or the hours, days or weeks that might be involved in said negotiation.) 2. Decide on the…
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Random Thoughts, Part 2
Parallel Universes and a Perfect World How many times have you heard someone say something and your unspoken (or maybe not unspoken) reply was, “Yeah, sure, in a perfect world.” I hear that little phrase, or some close variation on it, more and more. Is our world becoming more and more imperfect? Or are we…
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I Caught my Husband’s Cold
If Bernd gets sick, I almost always catch what he had. Because of his job (optician; the guy who sells you your glasses after your exam), he comes into contact with a lot of people. Not all of them are in the best health. He does his best to keep the viruses and bacteria at…
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Random Thoughts
Bait and Switch My husband, Bernd, once did a a search for affordable term life insurance. We both have whole life policies, but they have a declining balance and as we get older, they will pay out less and less when we die. There is a side fund attached to the policies that, if we…
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Income Taxes
I hate doing our income taxes. Yes, I could pay someone to do them, but I’m not sure it’s worth it. I used to buy an income tax program, but with our current method of accessing the Internet the connection is too slow to download them. Tried that last year. Wasted all kinds of time…
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How to Really Learn Something
“The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.” — Mortimer Adler When I was in high school, I took a number of science related courses. They were hard. The information I needed to take in was huge. The concepts were sometimes alien. But…
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Hare Brains
Yesterday, as I was on my way home from running errands and grocery shopping, I thought my heart was going to stop. There is this wacky couple mile long stretch of road between my last stop and Prescott Valley. So when I exit the parking lot of Costco, I get immediately over into the inside…
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Waiting for the Hot Water
Every morning before dispensing my supplements, I wash my hands. I’ve rubbed our cat’s belly, given the dog a good scratching all over to help her wake up. Maybe I’ve cleaned the litter box. Often, just as I am about to wash my hands, Bernd is ready for our good-bye kiss ritual and wants me…
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Practical Jokes and the Need to Laugh
Both my parents loved practical jokes. My mother told me that once she sewed shut the flies in all of my dad’s underwear. Apparently, he was not very amused, but she laughed and laughed. My parents played practical jokes on me and my sister when we were still very young and not really able to…
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15 Things I Like
There was a time when banana flavored popsicles were my absolute favorite treat to buy from the ice cream man. He had the worst hands, chapped and cracked and callused from putting them into a cold ice cream truck every day, but he handed out the most wonderful treats. And we were always happy to…
Maddie's Mom Writes 