One of the perks of this column-writing business is I get to talk regularly, usually via email, with people who have some of the most interesting perspectives on the situations about which I write. It can be a bit like having a slow, yet well-considered conversation, as the back and forth ca…

This is perhaps the first moment in my life when I feel a bit rich.

A few months ago, for no apparent reason, Wi-Fi ceased to work in our bathroom, putting an end to my longtime morning routine — listening to Steve and Jenny on V100.

Once in a while, I’ll be thoroughly engrossed in a movie or television show and then a character will say something that flips a diverter switch in my brain. The sentiment will kick me out of the show altogether, and my brain will go wandering off, down trails of its own. Before I know it, s…

There’s this thing I can’t seem to help myself from doing when I’m on vacation. Something I’ve actually done since I was a child, on summer break. It’s that I allow myself to notice the end, recognize how much closer it is than the start.

Like so many others, I stumbled into the new year without formal resolutions, but with something more akin to simple resolve. A determination without the formality of publicly proclaimed parameters.

Many years back, I belonged to an online group of women who were all having trouble conceiving or carrying to term. A smallish group of us took our friendship off the public forum into an email chain between only us so we could discuss our problems (and victories) in a more private setting.

“I’ll never make it to 30,” said the young man, who was 19 at the time.

I started the day hearing a friend talk about her mother, who doesn’t celebrate Christmas in the traditional way.

Jeez. The one time I managed to be all forceful and bossy. I’m not sure I’ll ever live it down.

I’ll go ahead and admit it. When I felt that first suggestion of a sniffle, I didn’t grieve it the way I normally would.

They’ve become part of the holiday landscape. As common as jingle bells and ugly sweaters. Tinsel and Santa hats. Hallmark movies and candy canes.

If you happen to have found this column clipped from the paper and left on your desk or slipped into your coat pocket — then ... um. We need to talk.

There’s something about the life of a shopping cart that must cause it to long for escape.

I’ve never known what it’s like to be married to someone in the military. The closest I came were the times I went out with a former Marine.

I posted a request on Facebook, asking friends to share stories for Halloween.

“The thing I’m finding with Americans,” said a co-worker who hails from Montenegro, “is that so many of them live to work, instead of working to live.”

I’ve always been prone to pink eye. I was so susceptible that if someone on the opposite end of my building had a child in the same school as a kid who had pink eye, I would catch it. I’ve just always been bent that direction.

I built a house once, a long time ago. For years I would pass it each time I went to visit my parents, and then it burned down.

I recently wrote about those “when our eyes met” moments many of us have had with the animals who become members of the family. That instant you know they’re about to be yours.

Much as I love “The Wizard of Oz,” there was something about those ruby slippers that always stuck in my craw.

My daughter and I were mid-conversation about animals recently when she suddenly laughed.

I’ve always preferred to be alone when I write, so I will carry my laptop down by our creek or out on the porch. Sometimes in bed. But I was feeling uncharacteristically non-hermit-like, so I plopped down with my computer in the corner chair in Don’s home office.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one could easily prompt that many from me. With a good many being expletives.