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Growing up, I was definitely not a fan of the Star Wars movies. They just didn't resonate with me the way Harry Potter or Barbie: Swan Lake did :) I always found Luke to be a whiny baby, and Leia was this princess-turned ambassador-turned fighter, but her main role really still seemed to be a love interest. She felt too perfect, and while Harrison Ford was way good-looking, he was kind of mean. The prequels were okay, but that's because Ewan McGregor pretty much carried those movies. I mean, if we're honest, John Williams made all the Star Wars movies what they are. Anyway, recently, I have come to sing a different tune. I love the newest trilogy. I think Rey is just amazing. She learned from a young age to take care of herself, and she's strong, and confident, while also humble as she learns to be a Jedi. She believes in people, and she's kind and caring. She struggles as she tries to learn who she is, and she works to bring Kylo Ren back to the light because she ...

A phrase that have I learned from Glo over the past few years is "crossover".  When there was a Supergirl/Flash "crossover" episode, it meant that Flash would be on Supergirl, and Supergirl would be on Flash...and we would all ugly cry as Grant Gustin sang "Running Home to You" (ugh, to IRIS of all people....) Well this is my crossover post.  I have two blogs at the moment--this one, and our book club blog.  This is definitely a post that could go on the book club blog, but I'm not sure I'll ever put that blog into print, so here it is. A couple of months ago, Rebecca chose "The Scarlet Letter" as our book of the moment.  While reading it, I enjoyed the description of what Hester Prynne did to her scarlet A, a symbol of embarrassment.  She embellished it into something beautiful and jealousy-inducing for all to see.  Nathaniel Hawthorne spoke of the needlepoint work.  I immediately thought of us having a needlepoint activity to go along w...

Every super hero needs an arch enemy to make them a super hero, right?  I mean, if there was no Gotham City, Batman wouldn't need to exist. John's nemesis?  Among other things, poison ivy.  He has had a struggle with it our entire marriage, and the battle between the two has existed even before we met.  There are stories of Hugh burning logs with poison ivy on them at Scout camp, and John needing to be hospitalized (?) because the inflammation went down his wind pipe.  He ran into it other times during his childhood, and I think there's an instance of him feeling like he was going insane, sitting in his hot, not air-conditioned bedroom during the summer, with a fan blowing on him to ease the discomfort. Our first run in with it as a married couple was at our home in Dayton.  Our neighborhood situated the homes on very small lots that backed up to each other.  So at the back of our backyard, we had the backside of the detached garage from the home on th...

I've been driving for 34 years, and I've never been in a car accident.  Yes, someone in a grocery store parking lot in 1990 cut across parking spaces and dinged the front of our Firebird, and yes, someone backed into our car in Germany when they didn't look behind them, but a full-on, scary, I-could've-died accident? No.  In fact, I've always worried what it would be like, and now I know. Rebecca and I were headed to Blocks via Chick-Fil-A so that she could pick up some cute succulents as gifts to take home with her.  Anytime we go into Detroit now, we take M-14 east to 275 South to 94 west.  275 South is known as Southfield Freeway around here, and unbeknownst to me (who doesn't drive it daily like John does), the speed limit drops from 70 (which means 79 to Michiganders) to 55 pretty quickly.  So we were cruising along.  Traffic was heavy like always, but everyone was going 80.  I was in the middle lane of three.  Suddenly, the truck in front ...