Author Archives: sara

About sara

i live in michigan with my teenage daughter, my partner, and our three cats. i am a paralegal, legal manager and corporate governance specialist, and when i'm not reading contracts or maintaining the dusty archives of our arcane corporate history like some weirdly specific librarian, i enjoy knitting, books, running slowly, making candles, and bird-watching. i started blogging way back when I was an expat living in australia and in recent years have tried to be more diligent about keeping this space up to date and as a creative outlet for the things in my life that inspire me and balance my 9-5.

five things friday

3 Replies

I get a lot of “standard bird” visitors to my feeders – sparrows, downy woodpeckers, chickadees, cardinals, finches, etc. – but this week I’ve been excited to note a “newbie”. I get white-breasted nuthatches but I’ve been seeing many red-breasted nuthatches this week too! Apparently, they are going to be a more common sighting in the Midwest due to poor cone crops on spruce and fir trees in the boreal forests of Canada.
I’ve been watching Sandy by the Lakeside’s vlog for awhile now and was thrilled to snap up one of her large project knitting bags during her last shop update. They sell out fast and I am so happy with it – super fast shipping and beautiful workmanship. I can’t wait to cast on some new socks to put in it.

I finally got library books after almost six months without. I’ve been solely relying on Kindle reads and old paperbacks and finally had a couple of “must-reads”. My library will return to a limited in-person service next week but in the meantime, the curbside pickup was very convenient.
I’ve had a hormone headache all week and since it was also the first week of remote learning school, the timing was not ideal. Miss L is very independent and very efficiently navigated all the new technology – I was only called on to offer tech support a couple of times. I feel very thankful for all of the hard work that our teachers and school staff have done to start the kids off with new platforms, build relationships, and manage stress levels. I also feel enormous gratitude for a kid who loves to do things on her own. The tech has had some issues and glitches this week, and we’re still trying to manage our wi-fi connections here – we currently have all 3 of us at home and trying to juggle bandwidth for work, school, and Tour de France streaming (ahem BRANDON ;)) But all in all, a solid start and now thankfully the kids get 4 days off over Labor Day to recharge.

I think I finally have a day planner that’s going to work for me. I started out the year with Hobonichi and they just didn’t work. Too small. Not enough space. I’ve learned that an electronic calendar paired with a simple notebook works best for my work organization and I got a big discount on a Commit30 planner for the remainder of 2020 and a new one for 2021. I love the construction, the layout, and the size of the days even in the compact version (although I did get a full-size for 2021). And yes, fun stickers and colored markers do motivate me.

Very happy now to have a holiday weekend to try to shake this headache and enjoy my birds, library books, and knitting. Wherever you are I hope you also have a peaceful and recuperative weekend! xoxo

another week / august end

2 Replies

So it’s been another week. A pattern of storms bounced us from high temps earlier this week to a Saturday morning that feels almost autumnal. Everything enjoyed the heavy rains, including Bunter the yard rabbit who sat out in the downpour almost all Wednesday morning.

Bunter is the little brown lump in the lower left.

There are a few bright red leaves on the admittedly stressed maples in the front yard. I’ve been reading up a storm and my home office was peaceful and productive this week except when I had Skype calls and then the jokesters I live with would try to entertain me.

Brandon keeps asking if I want to hang this up anywhere and I think he’s only half-kidding…

School starts on Monday and no one is happy about it. Teachers are stressed and I have enormous sympathy for them. Parents are stressed because the instructions, schedules, and learning platforms seem confusing, and in some cases have only just been released / received at the end of last week. Miss L is not best pleased although I’ve tried to get her excited through a concerted effort to clean and reorganize her desk in her room, creating a dedicated space for learning, and school shopping for supplies that she may not need right away. We had a joint session doing our day planners together with some fun stickers, marking off the holidays and days off we know about. We’ll all just have to do our best and give each other lots of grace.

I’ve been knitting a lot and am excited to say that I am about to embark on SLEEVES for the Pink Memories sweater!

Very poor quality picture of a crinkly pre-blocked mess of a WIP – but it will soon have SLEEVES!

And the Log Cabin blanket that is now a several-years-old WIP continues to meander along at its own pace, mostly for mindless television knitting as it’s just garter stitch, garter stitch, and more garter stitch. Someday I will decide it’s done and bind it off and start a new blanket but I have a lot of rows left in me for this one, I think.

I hope you are well on this Saturday wherever you are – I have no plans except to at some point wander out into the yard and put up the birdfeeders that were raided last night and left on the ground empty, no doubt by our yard raccoon or a squirrel gang. Maybe a nap later.

Be well and enjoy. xo

calendar year

2 Replies

828d6570-628a-4f25-9d24-436158791940

My boss gave me a heads’ up that I should be prepared to work from home for the rest of the calendar year. Given the recent decisions by most school districts in our area to start the year with “remote” classes and the overall numbers and autumn forecasts for Covid-19, I was expecting this, but when it became “sort of” official I still had a moment of startled ‘whaaa?!’

I like working from home and if you’d asked me a year ago, I would have said that having a home office would be a major life improvement. And in many ways, that’s what I’ve found it to be. My life feels way more balanced – no commutes, and the gains in my physical health are undeniable. I’m taking better care of myself, I have more time to spend with my daughter and with my partner, and more time for my own needs.

Every time my company has pushed out the goalpost of “back to the office”, I’ve been relieved. But even though it’s not really a surprise, and it’s the right / sane choice, this is the first time I did not have that secret “yay / whew” feeling. Instead I felt very unprepared and conflicted. The end of the calendar year? That means I’ll be sitting in this home office when the leaves outside the window are drifting off the trees, and when darkness starts to fall in the afternoon. I’ll be sitting in my home office when kids in Halloween costumes come kicking down the street (if there is a trick or treat this year) and I’ll still be sitting in this home office for the first snowstorms. I won’t be worried about snowy commutes but if I take time off around Christmas, my computer will be right down the hall so will it really feel like time off?

In general, I do feel more anxious now than I did at the beginning of the pandemic. I don’t know if this is a delayed reaction, or whether my recent work stresses have had more of an impact than they usually would, or if I just worry more because it’s harder to compartmentalize with everything under one roof – work, love, education, family, pets, finances, chores, entertainment, escapism, etc. I worry about yet again trying to balance Miss L’s educational needs in a remote school scenario with my work responsibilities. I worry that I’m not as good of an employee as I was when I had to show up at an office every day. I worry about distractions and I worry about keeping all those plates spinning. And there’s an undeniable sense of isolation. Even as an introvert, going into the office exposed me to other working parents, juggling the same concerns I was. And there was a sense that I was keeping my head above water the same as everyone else. Skype meetings are not enough to replace that.

I also feel guilty for having conflicted feelings about this. If I had to go back next week, I’d have major problems. The good thing is that among all those worries, I don’t have to worry that I’m being called back to a workplace where I don’t feel safe, and that I can be here for Miss L. Those are very good things indeed, and as far as the rest, I’ll just have to figure it out as I go.

three things august

show us your books – july 2020 reads

7 Replies

As always, linking up with my hosts Steph and Jana for Show Us Your Books!

a1470416-7de2-4f59-a96b-ee49360c4ce8-collage

I’m going to get the big one out of the way first even if it wasn’t chronologically the first one I read.

The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel was essentially my July reading project. It tipped the scales at 882 pages and every page was well worth it. This book rounds out Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, which started with Wolf Hall. The whole trilogy is simply excellent and mind boggling in its ability to bring these people – Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour – to vivid life. No doubt my best read for 2020 as of yet and I would also recommend the PBS miniseries “Wolf Hall” which is actually a mashup of the first 2 books in the trilogy. It stars Mark Rylance as Cromwell, Damien Lewis as Henry, and Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn.

The Closers by Michael Connelly. An 882 page hardcover was just not going to happen for a “beach read” due to sheer size and lack of portability, so for my up-north outdoor reading I took along a battered Harry Bosch paperback and thoroughly enjoyed the change of gears from Cromwell. In this contribution to the Bosch franchise, Harry has returned to the Cold Case Unit after his short-lived retirement from the police force and tackles the unsolved case of a fifteen-year old girl abducted from her home and shot.

The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler tells two stories that join up at the end – the first, of a struggling librarian / researcher trying to keep his family home from sliding into the sea (literally) and a traveling carnival from the 1880’s. Aforementioned young librarian (aptly named ‘Simon’) comes to own a mysterious antique book about this circus inscribed with his grandmother’s name. Hopefully this book can help Simon unravel why women in his family are prone to drowning. I thought the premise was great but the execution missed the mark; it left me a little disappointed. Still, it passed the time just fine.

Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? And Other Questions You Should Have the Answer To When You Work in the White House by Alyssa Mastromonaco. Mastromonaco worked for Obama during his time as a Senator and also during his much-missed White House tenure. This book details her almost-magical entry into politics and in its chatty, breezy way tells you everything you need to know if you’re a privileged young female working in the White House. If I sound jealous I’m not really, although it would have been my dream during my senior year in college. I guess that’s why it’s a good thing you don’t get everything you want – I would NOT have been well suited for politics (I’m barely presentable for widgets). Anyway I enjoyed this book and it made me almost weep for missing Obama. My only criticisms are her fondness for the word “stoked” and that she is very prone to telling the reader all of the nicknames of the people she worked with and that got super name-droppy and cringy after awhile. (Sample: “The next day I assembled the SkedAdv team to deliver the news to them. Emmett, Dey, Jess, Big Liz, Astri, JoeJoe, Pho, Chaseh, Tedders, Nool, Teal, Q, Levitt, Donny, and Little Kate the intern.” I swear I almost stopped reading.)

Hope you all had some great summer reads and I look forward to catching up next month! xo

hey it’s august

1 Reply

I don’t really know what happened to the last few weeks but hey it’s August!

We had our summer trip up north and it was just what we needed. Our intent was to avoid tourist crowds, stay safe, and just visit my parents. So no shopping or eating out. Instead, we socially distanced on the beach, we hiked, hit up the A&W for cold & creamy root beer, and we spent time with my parents. We visited baby llamas and I bought yarn and thought wistfully about uninterrupted knitting time. And I worked. We came home, and I worked much more, and then Brandon had a death in his extended family, and we had his close family come to stay for a few days for the Arrangements. In the meantime I was working even more than much more and when I finally lifted up my head this morning here it is. August.

I’m really hoping for a few restful days in a row now. I haven’t been working my Weight Watchers plan as strenuously as I should, and I haven’t run or done any strength training in almost 3 weeks. If you’ve gotten the message that work has been very busy then you are correct! and I find lately that working from home is making it difficult for me to compartmentalize and keep things separated. The upside is that I don’t have a commute, and in the beginning of the work from home I felt that work / life balance was a lot easier with that extra time. Now, though, tasks and projects that I’d be able to turn off at 5 o’clock and not ruminate on until the next morning at the office now live just down the hall. It’s easy to stay online and keep working much longer than I would normally or fit in something else before bedtime or during the evening.

In other news, like many other school districts, ours is currently grappling with the “right way” to start up again in the fall. As a result everyone is coming to realize that there is no “right way”. One surrounding district after another is declaring fully remote start. We were initially told that our reopening would be aligned with the “phase” Michigan is in – “phases” being based on the number of Covid cases among other things – but although we are technically in a phase that would allow us a hybrid start (part virtual / part in-person with masks, reduced class sizes and staggered attendance days to allow for more distancing) it now seems almost certain that we’ll be fully remote again. I guess the good thing about this is that the decision has been made for me, which reduces the amount of internal debate and agonizing over a set of completely imperfect choices. From a health and safety perspective, this is the right choice, I think; but from a social, educational, and personal development perspective, I really feel for all the kids who are getting shortchanged by circumstances out of their control. Everyone’s doing the best they can and I don’t think there are right answers but it’s a bummer either way.

Reminder: Show Us Your Books next Tuesday!

life these days – covid update

1 Reply

c433be46-d488-4465-982a-3ba2527464f1

On March 16 Widget Central sent us all home; Michigan soon entered into a Stay Home Stay Safe order and I thought Covid isolation might last a few weeks – tops. It’s now mid-July and the world is still tilting strangely off its axis. It’s safe to say that the US is collectively not dealing well with having regular life impacted to such an extent and our reactions run the gamut of the five stages of grief, and seem to puddle, like stagnant water, in denial and anger.

Brandon points out that being disembodied is no excuse for ignoring safe mask protocols.

As for us, we’re wearing masks, practicing social distancing, shaking our damn heads at the insanity and complete chaos in the political sphere thanks to 45 and his bumbling administration, and laying low. I’m working from home still and finally had Brandon set me up a home office in our spare bedroom. I’d been working at our desk off the kitchen, but with no end in sight to work from home protocols, and the likelihood of school restarting in the fall totally up in the air, it was time to make things more permanent. I feel pleased with having a more private space to go and segregate myself from the workings of the household, which can be distracting for me and disruptive for Brandon and L. They’re home much more these days and don’t always need to be tiptoeing around my Skype calls.

The weather has been hot and fine and we’re heading up north soon to see my parents for the first time since February. I’ve tried to be very cautious about travel and the prospect of exposing them to anything, and I don’t want to be a typical downstate tourist running rampant up north and spreading germs. We’re not staying very long and the main goal is really to see and spend time with my family. We don’t plan on eating out anywhere, or shopping, or sightseeing. We did buy a little sun tent, though, and hope to get in a couple of beach days where we can social distance and still enjoy sun, sand, and water. And I’d love to do a couple of hikes on the Sleeping Bear trails, and go for some runs.

I hope you’re all well and safe wherever you are and taking whatever precautions you need to in order to keep yourself and your loved ones healthy. xoxo

show us your books – june 2020 reads

5 Replies

Another month joining up with our hosts Steph and Jana for SUYB!

f1f5a56c-f179-4509-9f57-d276947a93dc-collage

Looking back at June, I actually did a LOT of reading – it just didn’t really feel like it because a few of my reads just felt “meh”. I apologize in advance for my dour reception of several of these undoubtedly fine works.

Without further ado:

The Splendor Before the Dark (Nero, #2) was not as good as the first one in Margaret George’s Nero pair, “Confessions of Young Nero”. I love Margaret George and have her books about Cleopatra, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth I on my shelf and bought this one in hardcover. I’m happy to own it but I was disappointed that even the burning of Rome seemed a little dull. It’s also tough to get my head around a sympathetic portrayal of Nero, although that didn’t bother me in the first novel, so who knows.

A Really Big Lunch: Meditations on Food and Life from the Roving Gourmand is the rare book about food and wine that did not make me hungry. Jim Harrison is a Michigan writer who we ultimately had to share with Montana by way of Hollywood (“Legends of the Fall”) and he’s apparently quite the libertine when it comes to food and wine. There is a LOT of drinking in this book of essays and the fact that it’s expensive French wine didn’t ease my feeling that I was getting a hangover by osmosis, absorbed through my fingertips through the pages. Also a lot of big eating of very heavy meats (lotta pig here, folks) and game and several Mario Batali name-drops. He’s such an amazing, lyrical writer that I’ll just forgive him this one.

Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier – I loved “Rebecca” but this one was not what I expected. Although it is set in Cornwall and it was kind of exciting to see some of the town names that I’ve heard mentioned watching “Poldark”. Kind of a gloomy gothic number and while the heroine has her fair share of pluck, I honestly didn’t much care about anyone else.

(Wow – I’m already coming across as quite the disgruntled reader this month, aren’t I? Buckle up, the worst is yet to come.)

A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams was a Kindle Unlimited recommendation and I feel like it perfectly fit in with two other Kindle recs that are upcoming in that they were stridently mediocre. This one was perhaps the least palatable of the three, telling the story of a strange 1930’s love triangle between New York socialites that comes to a heady climax during a seaside summer in a posh oceanfront enclave. There is flippancy, red lipstick, cigarettes and martinis, unrequited love, anti-Semitism, someone named “Budgie” and misunderstandings rife throughout. Just when you can’t take any more of this, a hurricane sweeps through like a wonderful deus ex machina to wipe the slate clean and resolve all angst. Sigh. I guess if you like beach reads plus light historical romance this would be a good pick.

A Steep Price, by Robert Dugoni (Tracy Crosswhite #6) – thank God for Robert Dugoni and Tracy who saved my June reading from the crapper. This one wasn’t my favorite in the series but it’s still a solid page turner that features a bit more from Tracy’s colleagues and supporting players in the police department as she navigates the early stages of her pregnancy and investigates the intersection between a missing persons case and the body of a young Indian woman found in a well.

This Won’t End Well – Camille Pagan’s writing belongs, I’ll say right off the bat, to a genre that I’m not super into. Historical fiction and mysteries, psychological and supernatural thrillers and some YA & literary fiction are solidly in my wheelhouse but lighthearted chick lit with witty romance and navel gazing thrown in are not my cups of tea. That said, I blew through this in a couple of days and can’t say anything really bad about it except that it’s just not a genre that I enjoy much. But it is light, funny, and easy to like with a suitably cute and neurotic heroine in a bit of a life tailspin thanks to a recent firing, a case of sexual harassment in the workplace, a mysterious new neighbor, and her fiance’s completely unexpected and unexplained departure for Paris. You’ll probably like it better than I did but don’t blame me if you don’t.

The Price of Paradise by Susana Lopez Rubio was my final June Kindle rec and the one I enjoyed the most. Set in Cuba in the 1940’s, the main character is a young immigrant from Spain seeking his fortune in Havana. He works his way up at an exclusive department store and runs afoul of the local gangster when he falls in love with his wife. Again, not my favorite genre but this was better than the Pagan or the hurricane book.

I also did a lot of running during the month of June and most of my time on my feet was spent listening to Stephen King’s latest book of novellas, If It Bleeds, which I got on Audible. Stephen King is one of my favorite authors and when he’s good, he’s brilliant (The Stand, The Shining) and when he’s not so good he’s still better than most anything else out there. I enjoyed this listen more on the strength of King’s masterful ability to unwind a story with patience, to put you into the skin of the character, and invest you in something that seems so outlandish. The titular novella was my favorite, due mostly to Holly Gibney – she is a great female detective character (I will always picture her as portrayed by Cynthia Erivo in the wonderful HBO miniseries featuring her, “The Outsider”). All the narrators are wonderful but particularly Will Patton, who narrates many of King’s works (as well as James Lee Burke, another favorite writer).

weekend edition

1 Reply

5d4ad487-5882-473a-a801-ca679ecdfefb

Happy weekend, all!

June was a quiet month on the blog but very busy IRL.

4378ab3f-941b-482e-a1f4-6a7a00070d20

We celebrated my 47th birthday and Miss L finished her very strange 6th grade year. I now have a 7th grader – I can barely believe it. Although it seems that the kiddos may be able to go back to school in the fall, nothing is certain right now, and even if they do, it will surely look different than it does now.

8368114d-efb7-4ebc-bf6a-6954c1486d15

I’m still working from home and feeling blessed that my company is being very cautious about bringing everyone back. Miss L’s camps were cancelled this summer and it’s so nice not to have to worry about rearranging all of our schedules to accommodate for her summer care – although the weeks when she is home feel just as busy in the summertime as they did when she was doing virtual school. While I am an introvert, and happy to be at home for large swathes of time without social contact (in this way, self-isolation was no problem for me whatsoever), Miss L is extroverted and I think all kids need social stimulation, interests, and friendships. She and Brandon have bonded over their mutual enjoyment of old kung fu movies and skateboarding, so there are regular visits to the local skate park, but during the weeks we try to make sure she sees her friends from school and get out into the neighborhood. It’s been a balancing act to do this in a responsible, socially distanced way but I think most of her friends’ parents are simpatico on this, and Miss L has been happy to have more bandwidth with a few of her friends and some neighborhood friends at both her dad’s house and mine.

795a9674-2cdf-4bc4-a2ef-df027184baff

I have been doing Weight Watchers for about a month now and am thrilled to report that I’ve lost 8 lbs. I still have a bit to go before I get back to what I thought I was before the pandemic, and another 10+ to go before I am finally at my goal weight, but the program is working for me and I am feeling really good on it. In addition to seeing the scale move a little bit in the right direction every week, I’m drinking way more water than I used to, and my skin looks much better. I am strictly limiting refined sugar, processed foods, and alcohol, and I am less bloated, my clothes feel better. I’m taking supplements and sleeping like a baby, and have more energy all around – I haven’t felt a mid-afternoon crash into sluggishness since I started the plan. The plan I’ve picked meshes well with the way we eat anyway, and feels more like a reminder / education about making good choices with food and movement. So here’s to the next month on it and hopefully more loss.

I went a little crazy signing us up for virtual running events but Brandon and I are having a lot of fun getting our miles in and tracking our progress. The big one, you’ll remember, is the Mitten Run – 160 virtual miles from Oscoda to Empire (across the upper half of the lower peninsula, for you non-Michiganders) and I also signed us up for the Michigan Harvest Challenge, which is a different harvest-themed run per month through October. We’re also doing the virtual Fishtown 5k, which is a fundraiser for historic Leland, and the virtual Crim 10-miler in August. Whew! It’s a lot of running and so far we haven’t made it out of Farmington for our runs, but the Harvest Challenge offers suggested Strava routes up north for the various events so maybe one month we’ll get crazy and drive up north to do one.

ea0ba246-f492-47c6-8e68-0b42a91d145d

I hope you are all well and safe and healthy. xoxo

136c7bb0-a2eb-46c5-9eab-58326399f3ea

on recent events

3 Replies

I’ve been quiet on the atrocities in the US lately, at least on this blog (I’m not so quiet on my personal FB / IG). My silence here is not in any way due to any lack of outrage, rage, discontent, and heartbreak over Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, and their senseless murders. It’s more that I simply haven’t known what to say that can be a meaningful addition to the conversation, and I chose to stay quiet and listen to other voices.

But quiet can only last for so long. Without liberal outrage and protests, Ahmaud Arbery’s white supremacist murderers would still be walking the streets, no justice done; the chaos in Georgia’s police & judicial systems would have allowed those murderers and racists to escape punishment for their crimes. Without liberal outrage and protests, George Floyd’s police murderers would not have been charged.

Our country is horribly divided right now and I can’t believe that anyone could view what has happened and say that it is acceptable, but I do believe that our current president is in no way helping the situation. And has, in many ways, brought it to a head. He has no talent at bringing this country together and since he cannot even manage a cohesive and stable administration, there’s no hope that he can manage a healing narrative for this country. His ungrammatical and poorly spelled “tweets” boil with narcissistic, childlike rage; they are completely inappropriate in most situations, and the fact that he chose to call protestors exercising their right to peaceful assembly “thugs” (while showing no concerns over white supremacists marching in Charlottesville or MAGA protestors storming our own state capital carrying rifles, handguns, and automatic weapons – saying instead that our governor should “go out and talk to them – make a deal”) shows his complete lack of consistency and hypocrisy. I’m not sure what happened to the days when we held the highest elected official in this country to a high standard of behavior; his use of his voice is repugnant. His violent dispersal of protestors for an ill-advised photo op at a church disgusted religious and military leaders and his recent scheduling of a MAGA rally on Juneteenth in Tulsa shows his utter lack of respect for the lessons of history. (I say “lack of respect” rather than “lack of education” because I’m going so far as to give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s actually aware of the significance of that date and location, which may be giving him too much credit – but if he wasn’t, he should have been.)

Stuff You Should Know – Tulsa “Race Riots”

And more recently, his administration’s walking-back of protections for transgendered people – in the middle of Pride Month and on the anniversary of the massacre at the nightclub Pulse in Orlando – reinforce his commitment to divisiveness and intolerance.

So although my rage sometimes gets the best of me, and my disappointment in where we’re at as a country sometimes chokes me, I have to get over the feeling that speaking up does no good. For me, arguing with people on the Internet doesn’t, and neither does trying to change anyone’s mind; my own mind won’t be changed, and I don’t believe that I can change anyone else’s. But speaking up DOES GOOD. Voices saying, “this is not acceptable” does good. I am fortunate enough to be a single working woman with a child and I am blessed that voices like Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s defended and protected my right to equal pay for equal work. (Contrast that to the current president’s words about women – dogs, pigs, fat, ugly – ad nauseum.) I am blessed that I can own a house and pay for medical insurance for myself and my daughter and still have enough left over to donate – and I do donate – and I urge you to, as well – not a year goes by where I do not put my money where my mouth is and make donations to amplify voices such as Planned Parenthood, protecting access to safe reproductive services for women, and more recently to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and individual Go Fund Me’s for Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd’s families, as well as charities in metro Detroit providing access to food stability for local populations.

Call me a liberal? Fine. I’m proud to be one. I’m proud to be on what I consider to be the right side of history. If your biggest concern is whether someone is going to tell you to wear a mask in a store or come take your gun away, we don’t share similar values and what you call me is a matter of supreme indifference to me. And I’m your worst nightmare- a liberal woman with a voice, a checkbook and a VOTE.

And I can only hope that in 2020, we are able to remove the current president from office, where he’s done nothing so much as breed hatred, intolerance, divisiveness, walk back protections for minorities, and stifle opposing voices.

It’s a question of values.

The Biggest Marches and Protests in US History

Six Ten

of this be sure: you do not find a happy life, you make it.

Author Archives: sara

About sara

five things friday

another week / august end

calendar year

three things august

show us your books – july 2020 reads

hey it’s august

life these days – covid update

show us your books – june 2020 reads

weekend edition

on recent events