Six Tips for Surviving the Holiday Season When a Loved One Has Dementia Normally, Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday, a time our family gathered together at my Kansas City home. But that November, my stomach clenched at the thought of our traditional Thursday evening meal. My mother had Alzheimer’s and the holiday would be different. I felt alone but of course I wasn’t: there were 15 million family/friend caregivers helping the five million Americans who have dementia. I’d been through my initial storm of denial and grief. I felt I’d been coping we ...continued...

👀 WRITE LIFE STORIES and SELL MORE BOOKS Five years ago after attending one of my book signings and a Lewis & Clark monologue presentation an administrator at Johnson Country Library, Overland Park, Kansas suggested I create a workshop that would assist those who wanted to write their life story. Since the launch of that program I have made over (50) presentations to a variety of organizations. One that added a new dimension to my effort occurred when I encountered a class of (80) 3rd grade students at an elementary school in Kansas City, Kansas. At the end of the c ...continued...

Our cooking today is so much different from days gone by. When my granddaughter was three, she stood in front on my oven door where a whole chicken baked in a glass pan. With wide eyes she said, "Is that a chicken?" You see, her mother only bought chicken parts. She'd never seen a whole chicken. How different from when I was a child. Below is a recollection when I visited Grandma at about age five. I've included it in my cookbook Family Favorites from the Heartland. Fried Chicken-Grandma’s Style During the late 40s and e ...continued...

My mother said I was a wampus cat. What a wampus cat is exactly, I can't tell you, and I doubt if Mom could either, but there you have it. A wampus cat. It brings to mind some sort of wild animal, like a bobcat or panther maybe. A wild animal isn't me, though, but wampus sounds kind like whopper, and to my ears it also brings to mind big. Maybe that early conditioning is why I still fight the battle of the bulge today. After all, if I'm a wampus cat, I must be big. Nothing like starting on the old self concept a little young. Bu ...continued...

The big blow out! Mom entered my room, I can only imagine after grilling my sibling about her weight, spending habits and other things. She was on the war path and it just so happened that I was the nect victim. I heard a knock which lead to her helping herself into my room as though she owned it. To be honest, she pays the mortgage so every room in this house belongs to her. Immediately she went into the amount of pop cans that were all over my bedroom, and the garbage bag which she assumed was filled with crumpled up chip bags and empty pop cans. She wanted to prove that I wasnt as ...continued...

One summer we (Bill & Jim with us littler one's carrying the nails) built a addition to the barn, it was 3 stories high with 3 different floors. We thought it was quite sturdy but one day Pop went up to the top, he jumped up and down a few times and said it wasn't sturdy enough and had to be torn down, which we (they) did. One day we (I'm sure it was the older kids) took one- of Pop's cigarette packs and went out to the barn to smoke it. The neighbor lady saw all the smoke coming from the barn and she came out with a pail of water to put out the ...continued...

Living so close to our school had a couple of advantages: I could go home for my lunch and in the evenings Tommy and l would squeeze through the railings and have a kick about in the playground. One evening we climbed onto the toilet roof to look for balls. I was busy trying to dislodge a tennis ball from the gutter when I heard loud knocking coming from the main building, I glanced over and saw the stern face of our headmistress, ...continued...