“You know this blood test is almost out of date. I wouldn’t be able to issue your license if it were any later.” The county clerk was chastising us for waiting until the last minute to apply for our marriage license. No matter that this was the first chance my fiancé and I were able to be in the same state before our upcoming wedding. We really didn’t need any reminders of our long separation. “But it isn’t out of date. And we’re here now.” I said a little testily. With a rat

“Hurry, Christine! Grab that net over there and help me land this beauty!” My dad had invited me along ice fishing so I could enjoy the smooth skating surface we’d been blessed with that winter. The bay ice stretched for miles, and I took full advantage of this almost endless rink. But now my dad was struggling with an exceptionally large fish on the end of a taut line. I knew enough about using a net, but this small hole in the ice created a different challenge, especially b

“Listen to his breathing! He’s wheezing! I just know he’s punctured a lung or something! He never sounds like that!” “If Mom would just calm down, I believe her son would also stop crying and start breathing normally.” Oh. I guess I was being a bit hysterical. But who could blame me? I had rushed our youngest to the emergency room, sure something serious had happened. Our “little climber” had really chosen the wrong object to conquer and had fallen quite hard onto the garage

“I want you to write down ten things you aren’t good at that you’d like to improve or what you don’t especially like about yourself that you wish you could change.” We immediately got busy scribbling furiously our various faults and failures. In no time, the entire group of teachers was finished. “Now, I want you to write down ten things you are really good at or what you like about yourself.” There was a long pause. Then carefully-pondered lists began to take shape… and ende