March 19, 2021

Rockin' PawDad's party

March 19, 2021/ Lisa Carpenter

The recent weekend in which my family was all together—a relatively uncommon occurrence even in the best of times—featured not only Robert’s baptism, as I previously shared, but a milestone birthday celebration, too. That milestone being Jim’s sixtieth birthday.

The birthday festivities, organized primarily by Megan, revolved around a rockin’ theme as …

September 19, 2019

Six blessings of my dog's senior status

September 19, 2019/ Lisa Carpenter

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 …

August 29, 2019

School papers and similarly sentimental stuff

August 29, 2019/ Lisa Carpenter

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 …

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…

January 31, 2019

Throwback Thursday: Age of reason(ing)

January 31, 2019/ Lisa Carpenter

I've always found it kind of odd when older women say they're one age, then it's found out they're actually older. I've read of this happening with celebrities and non-celebrities, where they've insisted for years that they're this old, then the truth came out upon the woman's death that they're that old, shocking adoring fans or family.