Blog BHAY, #13 in my 14-part series on “Good to Go, Hard to Leave”: Joy Comes in the Morning, My Penultimate Post in this Series.

After a long, miserable night I went off to my first day at my new job, and I’m so glad I did! I received a gracious welcome from Betty, a lovely member of the hiring committee, who in a rainstorm brought me a cloth bag with my favorite Pro football team’s logo. In it were

Blog 11 in the series of 14, “Good to Go, Hard to Leave” as part my BHAY

The cats are suspicious, they’ve been both more interested in me and clingy than usual and also more skittish, shying away if I move too fast. I have recruited a friend to help me wrangle them into the car. People who don’t know my cats have many suggestions on how to get them moved. But

The Big Hairy Audacious Beauty of Plan B: Blog #11: Lessons on Carols, “Silent Night”

Very few things go as planned. Trying to force things to go as planned or expected can cost us relationships, our joy, waste our time, and rob us of the opportunity to experience the beauty of Plan B. As so often happens, I was reminded about this just last night. The video I was trying

BHAY Blog #4: Be the Shamash

Hanukkah began tonight at sunset. According to the Oxford Dictionary, Ha·nuk·kah/ˈhänəkə/noun1.a lesser Jewish festival, lasting eight days from the 25th day of Kislev (in December) and commemorating the rededication of the Temple in 165 bc by the Maccabees after its desecration by the Syrians. It is marked by the successive kindling of eight lights. Hanukkah

BHAY Blog #3: Kondo? Can Do, sort of.

So far my Big Hairy Audacious Year has involved my Big toe, two Hairy cats, and tomorrow will include some Audaciously hopeful recycling. I repurposed two ideas from Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up After following the FlyLady’s routines for several months late in 2018, I spent New Year’s Day binge-watching Marie

BHAY Blog 2: Better Living Through Cats and Chemicals

I have two cats. I’m very allergic to cats. Because of the contradiction implied in those first two statements, my life involves taking lots of drugs. They are allergy medicines, as prescribed my wonderful allergist, Dr. Joseph Rudolph. He casually drops hints that my life might be better without the cats, but I smile sweetly

Blog #22: Giving Big, Hairy, Audacious Thanks

Tell the muscles in your face to create a smile.  Send the message to your nerves to move your lips, and as a side effect, as you fake that tooth-showing grin, your mood changes.  It doesn’t happen if you grimace instead of smile, but make yourself physically smile and there’s an emotional connection. Research shows

Blog #16: Finding What You Want by Knowing What You Don’t Need Anymore

There is a theological principal called Via Negativa. Thomas Aquinas said you could describe God by describing what God is not. Artists can make powerful images by focusing on negative space: helping us to see between the lines as it were, revealing beauty we do not usually notice. Try coloring outside the lines in coloring

Blog #15: My BHAM: Am I Setting Myself Up for Failure or Success?

Inertia – Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertia Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to any change in its velocity. This includes changes to the object’s speed, or direction of motion. An aspect of this property is the tendency of objects to keep moving in a straight lie at a constant speed, when no forces act upon

Blog #10. I’m-Sharing-a-Blog-by-Maren-Tirabassi-that-Expresses- Something-So-Well-that-There-Is-No-Need- to-Duplicate-Her Efforts-and-the-Prayer-She- Wrote-Is-Beautiful

Written by the Rev. Maren Tirabassi: (This photograph shows what my friend Nancy Donovan has created for a feral cat who has been coming to her porch for food and a safe place to sleep for a couple years. This cat cannot bear being indoors with the other cats or near a human. Nancy writes,