Travel blog!

So there was this one time I was lost in Bangkok — completely alone with no phone, no money and no passport. It sounds like the beginning of a joke, right? But it really happened to me. Here’s the deal: My husband, Tony, and I were visiting my older sister and […]

So I just found out that March is Women’s History Month. (Really? How do I get to be almost 40 and not realize such things?) Also, I was just informed that March 8 is International Women’s Day. Huh. I’m pretty sure I never paid attention to such occasions because in […]

  “What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing” ~Aristotle~   I used to think that becoming an author was simple: Step 1: Write book Step 2: Publish book Step 3: Cash royalties check and retire to Aruba It turns out, the process is more complicated. Quite […]

When I travel, people ask me all the time: “How can you live in Wisconsin? Aren’t the winters brutal?” I usually shrug and answer: “Yes. But we have the Green Bay Packers.” Truth be told, winter IS really rough around here. I’ve lived in other states, and yes, other states […]

Some weekends leave you feeling totally rejuvenated. Some weekends leave you feeling totally exhausted. This one, for me, did both. The women on my mother’s side of the family have this amazing tradition of getting together for annual girls’ weekends. We gather in my hometown to play games, share stories […]

Just a quick thank you to my amazing cousin Clare Worthington for working with me today to get this head shot. We’re having a fantastic girls’ weekend in my hometown with lots of laughs and tons of wine. Didn’t she do a good job?? Huge thanks also to my beautiful […]

I’m proud to announce the completion of the rough draft of my first novel. See picture for the generous glass of shiraz that I poured for myself last night! The working title of the book is “Finding Seth.” It’s about a woman in her late 30s named Lola who struggles […]

“Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ, our Lord. Amen”     The other night at dinner, after my family said our traditional Catholic table prayer, my 10-year-old asked, “What’s a ‘bounty’?” Me, caught off guard: “It means, […]

I’m calling it the “Spyglass Syndrome.”   It’s a chronic condition in which the sufferer is so totally focused on the future — holidays, vacations and events yet to come — that he or she is completely oblivious to the wonders and the joys of the current day and the […]

  Today was a gorgeous late-winter day. In Northeastern Wisconsin, we don’t often get sunny, 50-degree days in February. Mostly this time of year? Gray, gray and more gray. With some sloppy, slushy precipitation thrown in for fun. Around this time of year, many Wisconsinites — including several who are […]