March 08, 2019

Flashback: 10 signs of aging gracefully

March 08, 2019/ Lisa Carpenter

Dear readers: This piece on the secret to aging gracefully originally appeared on Grandma’s Briefs on March 24, 2013. Six years later, the signs still resonate with me. I hope they do with you, too. Thank you for reading my rerun.

When it comes to aging gracefully, forget the face creams, hair colors and exercises — the physical manifestations others see as we rack up the years. Instead, I prefer to focus on a different kind of trait that others see, one I think trumps the physical when considering how gracefully others are aging and how gracefully I'm aging myself.

That trait? It's attitude. For, as age is just…

March 06, 2019

Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month: My MS and me

March 06, 2019/ Lisa Carpenter

March is Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month. Though I have MS, I don’t write much about it because, frankly, it’s long been just part of who I am, not what defines me. There are far more informative bloggers when it comes to all things MS—my dear friend Cathy of An Empowered Spirit foremost in my mind—so I typically stick with grandma-focused sorts of stuff.

Yet, with MS becoming a bigger (sometimes overwhelmingly so) focus of my life in the time since last year’s MS Awareness Month, I figured I’d spend at least one post sharing the relatively recent changes to my MS and me. Perhaps doing so will put…

February 27, 2019

Stag party at Grandma's

February 27, 2019/ Lisa Carpenter

Most evenings, just before dusk, our deer neighbors make a pre-dinner visit just across the street from our house. Deer as in doe a deer, female deer, that nibble and nosh on the grainy goodies our human next-door neighbor—right or wrong—puts out for the local wild ones.

Sometimes it’s two or three does, sometimes more, sometimes their little ones, too. Occasionally a buck butts his way into the fray, but it’s typically all gals as the guys seem to favor a supper spot farther up the street.

One snowy afternoon last week, though, it was the big boys who stopped by.

February 14, 2019

Throwback Thursday: Watching the clock

February 14, 2019/ Lisa Carpenter

Dear readers: This #TBT feature originally appeared on Grandma's Briefs February 4, 2014,—back when Brayden was known here as Bubby, Camden was called Mac, and Declan was not yet born (nor was Benjamin). Thank you for reading my rerun.

I admit it: I'm a compulsive clock-watcher.

As a freelance writer working from home, I don't watch the clock in the sense that I eye the hour hand as it makes its egregiously slow move from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. so I can exit my cubicle and enter my real world. No, though I've served my time in such positions, my current compulsive clock watching is of a less regular — albeit still compulsive — sort.

February 07, 2019

Throwback Thursday: 5 things I'll never write about

February 07, 2019/ Lisa Carpenter

Dear readers: This #TBT feature originally appeared on Grandma's Briefs February 9, 2010. I’m proud to say that nine years later, I’ve still never written about—at least not at length—the things I swore I never would. Thank you for reading my rerun.

I read a lot of blogs. I didn't used to, but since becoming a blogger, I'm interested in what other folks are blogging about, where they get their ideas, how they express the little—and big—things in life in a way that intrigues readers day after day. My RSS reader feeds me a steady diet of food for thought.

Lately, some of that food has been pretty foreign to me. Not foreign in the sense that I'm reading posts in Chinese…