Six blessings of my dog's senior status

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Six blessings of my dog's senior status

Our dog is getting old. Depending on the chart used, Mickey — the pit-pointer we rescued at six weeks old — has reached senior status, hovering anywhere around 80 years old to 93 or so.

Mickey’s advanced age is obvious in myriad ways. The bold brown coloring on his face has gone gray, he has trouble on stairs, he sleeps much of the time, he rarely gets excited about even his once most favorite things … including squirrels needing his exuberant escorting out of the yard and …

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School papers and similarly sentimental stuff

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School papers and similarly sentimental stuff

During my daughters’ school years, I kept all the papers and projects they brought home from school. Everything. Spelling tests, stories, handwriting practice (they did that back then), certificates earned for field day and perfect attendance, report cards for each quarter of each year.

I kept it all. Times three. All in cardboard boxes in a storage space beneath the house we lived in for the duration of the girls’ school years. Lots of …

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Summer break ends: What changed while I was away

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Summer break ends: What changed while I was away

Grandma’s Briefs is back! Yep, the summer break I announced at the start of June is officially over.

While I was away from the site, a few changes took place. Some big, some small. Here’s a (relatively) quick update:

For starters, one blog change is that Grandma’s Briefs hit the 10-year mark in July! Hard to believe but true, as you can see from my very first post, published a decade ago.

Another blog change is that you’ll see a few new faces in the Meet the Family section of the sidebar, those being of Andrea’s new …

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A new home!

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A new home!

A new home!

I don’t want to say too much, for fear of jinxing things, but we found a new home!

A home that’s half the size of the one we currently live in. Which is perfect.

PLUS… the GRAND Social link party for grandparents.

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Doing it!

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Doing it!

Doing it!

Jim and I are doing it. Finally. We have finally accepted the fact the home we love and have lived in for nearly 12 years is too big for us, has too many stairs, too large of a yard, too much space for two. Especially two with trouble walking about.

Which means we are doing it: We are moving to a smaller place… somewhere (TBD) in the same city. Yes, we are downsizing. Though I prefer to think of it as my most recent Silver Sneakers newsletter called it, rightsizing. Our current home is 3,600 square feet. The homes we’re considering…

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Stag party at Grandma's

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Stag party at Grandma's

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.

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