It’s 7 a.m. on June 1. The house is quiet. The sun is rising over the trees, shining its golden spotlights on the green grass still heavy with dew. I have a decision to make. Should I sit at my desk, working on the project with a looming deadline while the house is still quiet, before the kids get up and start bustling around? Or should I lace up my shoes and go for a run, before the sun hits its peak and warms up the atmosphere to the point...

I have a memory from my childhood that plays in my head like I’m watching a sitcom on TV. My dad, my brother and I are in the kitchen of our house in Decatur, cleaning up after lunch. Dad was washing, I was drying, and Locke was putting things up. All of a sudden, in the midst of our normal, everyday banter, Locke said, “We’re as funny as the Cosbys.” I know, I know. That observation did not age well. But keep in mind, it was 1987. Our Thursday...

Have you ever experienced one of those times when something that’s really small, not a big deal at all in the overall scheme of life, just sets you off? That happened to me, around the middle of July, when I faced the realization head-on that I wasn’t going to get any tomatoes from my garden. We’d marched through one disappointment after the other like troopers: school closures, canceled vacation, a soccer season cut short (and by short I mean...

During the school year, I try to fit a couple of workouts into my weekly schedule. Now, I’m not an exercise fanatic, by any means. I’m not hitting the gym pumping iron. It’s more like running a couple of miles with the geriatric dog, or doing a workout video (at my own pace) in the living room. My favorite is Jillian Michael’s yoga, a weird sort of cardio/yoga workout routine. A couple of years ago I expanded on that, adding Tony Horton’s P90X3...

East Wilkes Girls Soccer season — cancelled Spring Cal Ripkin baseball season — cancelled Scout meetings — cancelled Envirothon — cancelled Youth Group — cancelled June vacation — cancelled — postponed to June 2021 What’s not cancelled?Spring. I don’t think of my family as one that’s “over scheduled.” But our March/April/May calendar was definitely a busy one. It was full of things we were looking...

Last week I cleaned up my office. The uninitiated might walk into that room today and still say it looks like a mess. But if you had seen it two days ago, you’d know I made a dent in the piles of work/books/papers that stack up and accumulate over time. One of the biggest jobs in cleaning my office is working on my bookshelf. When I got married, I had one bookshelf. It got full, and Bill bought two more. Now those are full, and over time, books...