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By Lisa Batten Kunkleman It’s like a treasure hunt searching through other people’s antiques and collectibles. Some memorable items leave us full of pride while others leave us full of questions like, “What were we thinking?” or “Why in the world did we decide that was a good thing to possess?” My husband and I […]
By Lisa Batten Kunkleman While cat-sitting for our daughter and son-in-law, I thought it might be a good time for our car-ride loving Coonhound, Sadie, to tag along and get to know her feline cousin, Lilly Cat. Not my best thought. First, I learned that Sadie is terrified of noisy garage doors. That […]
A Bathtub of Hurricane Prep Water? By Lisa Batten Kunkleman What do you do with a bathtub-full of water after the danger of hurricane force winds has passed? Do you pull the plug and watch it glug down the drain, serving absolutely no purpose except to give the pipes a little rinse? No siree, not […]
By Lisa Batten Kunkleman Eclipse, eclipse, eclipse.That’s sure been a big story on the news. You’d think it’s a rare occurance or something. On our farm in Charlotte, NC, crescent shadows shone everwhere. With no fancy eclipse glasses, of course we couldn’t look up toward the sun and burn our retinas, so we looked […]
By Lisa Batten Kunkleman It’s Empty Nest time again. Time to either cry or celebrate, depending upon your point of view. It’s a little different for us this year because we’re sending five family members back to college instead of the usual three. Each of our twenty-year-old triplets came home for the summer, two of […]
By Lisa Batten Kunkleman Do you ever have one of those days when you finally get the free time and quiet you’ve been craving, only to find you spend so much time deciding what to do first, that nothing gets done? That’s me. Today, I’m in my mother’s lake house, looking out at the glassy […]
By Lisa Batten Kunkleman Tending a puppy is a reminder of what life is like with toddlers around. Exhausting. Time consuming. Frustrating. Impossible. I’ll try to remember that most dogs do end up house-broken and finish teething. I made it through the toddler-years-times-four, and my kids are all potty trained and no longer bite. […]
By Lisa Batten Kunkleman Families all over the place are experiencing reverse-empty-nest-syndrome. The birdies are flying back in from college with either big plans for work, internships, and trips or perhaps big plans for lying on the couch and playing video games. A summer of recuperation from the rigors of college life, they might […]
What do you call millions of mayflies swooping in and covering your house, boat, cars and ground? Annoying? Ridiculous? I call it a plague. When these two-inch long cousins of the dragonfly swarm in, there’s nothing to do but watch in amazement. They covered our family lake retreat in eastern North Carolina with the speed […]
By Lisa Batten Kunkleman Eureka! Sadie Hound finally went. All day I’d been begging her to go outside and do her business. Her eyeballs had to be floating. Every time the torrential rain slowed down a tad, I tried again. Of course I’m the one who got wet, standing out in the rain trying to […]
