As we walked through the house that would eventually be ours, I made a list of changes I wanted. I would change the electric cooktop to gas because the cavewoman in me likes to see the fire when I burn my food. I would add a gas line to the wood-burning fireplace to keep the home-fires burning with less effort, and I would convert the dryer hook up in the laundry room to accommodate my gas dryer, so I wouldn’t have to buy an electric one. Easy-peasy lemon squeezy, the list

In the year since I stopped writing my weekly column, since I stepped off the hamster wheel whose revolution went like this — come up with an idea, talk to an expert, find a high-rez image, write something ideally interesting, add helpful tips, then do it again, for twenty plus years — I haven’t just frittered away my time doing word puzzles and working on my yoga poses, you’ll be happy to know, though there’s been some of that. Nope, over the past year, I went back to sch

The date had been etched on the calendar for a year, DC’s last day of work, the day he would retire after 40 years of practicing law. He talked about this nonstop, sometimes with exhilaration (Oh, the places we’ll go!), sometimes with ambivalence (Who will handle my cases?), sometimes with anxiety (only seven more paychecks). I, his patient and tolerant wife, ignored all his mental machinations and focused instead on, what else? Marking the milestone with a party at our pla

On move-in day , a runway of quilted blankets formed a path between the moving truck and our new front door. Five insanely strong men made a steady trek from truck to door like a trail of army ants, each one carrying an item three times his weight and size. Meanwhile, my arms flail like a Dutch windmill’s sending the movers in various directions. “Where does this go, Ma’am?” one asks while holding a Bombay chest as though it were a cereal box. “Uh, living room,” I say and f