I looked out my kitchen window and stared into the woods.
Most of the leaves have fallen.
A late fall, soon-to-be winter landscape was before me.
There was something quiet about the view.

I looked at the swing set that my husband made and remembered the children climbing there.
I saw movement and thought perhaps it was a perfectly camouflaged deer.
I looked at the edge of the woods, that distinct line between the grass and the trees.
I smiled at the memory.

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I got back from my walk and entered my garage.
The door to my house was locked but one garage door was open.
My husband has just left for work.
I was hungry since I walked before having breakfast.

I had a full day ahead of me.
I am not a clock watcher.
In fact, I cannot stand being dictated by a clock.
It is necessary in this world we live in but I reject clock watching every chance I get.

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People are always surprised to learn that I never journaled.
I always loved to write but never took the time to write each day.
Until now but that is a different story.
I always wanted to write in a diary and even asked for one for Christmas.

I wanted a pink diary.
I wanted the kind with a lock and a small key on a satin ribbon.
The ribbon was always far too short.
I simply cut the satin ribbon on the one diary I ever had so I could easily open the lock.

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It was a wonderful place.
It had old wooden floors with wide beams.
Some of the beams had knots in the wood that I tried to peer into on many occasions.
As a young girl, I was sure that the holes in the wood went down to some secret tunnel.

This wonderful place was a drug store.
Not like CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens today, this was an old-fashioned apothecary shop.
I was just a little girl when I went into the store with my mother.
I loved the way my shoes clicked against the wood floor as we walked to the counter.

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I walk through my laundry room every morning.
My back stairs come down into my laundry room, which is attached to my kitchen.
I love to do laundry.
For some strange reason, there is great satisfaction in seeing the dirty clothes get clean.

Like other rooms in my house, there are little country signs in my laundry room.
There is a picture of an Amish clothesline that a friend gave to me.
She knows how much I love Amish clotheslines.
The colors of the simple clothes, waving gently in the breeze, always catches my eye.

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Wednesday is our trash day.
The trash and recycling have to be put out the night before since our trash men come so early.
I am grateful to these two men who faithfully take our trash away each week.
When I see them on my walk, I wave to them.

If my husband is away on business, I am the one who puts the trash out the night before.
When I put the trash out this week, I thought of my sons.
Taking the trash out to the end of the driveway was always their job.
You would think that since there were two of them, they would take turns.

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It was time to change the shower curtain liner in our hall bathroom.
It has to be changed periodically.
I made a mental note to do that when my daughter went back to college.
I always keep spare liners in my linen closet.

Our master bathroom has a glass shower door.
The two other bathrooms upstairs have shower curtains.
I wanted to change the liner the day I cleaned that bathroom.
However, I had already mopped the floors and needed to wait until they were dry.

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I remember the day like it was yesterday.
I was shopping with my mother.
It was the days before malls.
It was the days of the department store.

I loved to ride the escalator.
It was a pastime my children somehow inherited from me.
I would ask to ride up the one side and down the other.
Eventually, I was allowed to do that by myself as my mother waited at the bottom.

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My son has been married for one month.
Right before their month anniversary, his wife celebrated a birthday.
I had a present for her.
They live an hour away; I was hoping that I would see them to give it to her in person.

Newlywed life is quite busy.
My son and his wife love to sing and play worship music together.
One weekend, in their first month of marriage, they were asked to sing at a friend’s wedding.
Another week, they volunteered with a ministry my son was part of all through college.

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When my husband and I bought our first house, we had very little furniture.
We splurged and bought a new bedroom set before we were married to be delivered later.
We had a few pieces in our family room that we brought from our apartment.
However, most of our house was empty and would stay that way for quite a while.

My husband went to Georgia Tech for his undergraduate degree.
He was in a fraternity, in fact, he was the president of the fraternity in his senior year.
He brought his desk chair from college to the apartment we rented.
He lived in the apartment for four months before our wedding.

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