Colleen's Column

Now that we've had frost, we've been bringing in our Concord grapes for making juice and jam.  On Saturday I picked four and a half bushels but didn't quite finish, so I was out there again on Monday morning trying to finish up before going to my new tutoring job for a homeschooling family.  It was a wet, windy, overcast morning and the grass was soaked - so much so that I had my basket up on a stepstool to keep it dry.  I was underneath the grape trellis, nearly finished with the grapes that were within reach from the ground, when something small and brown walked past behind me. "Wait a second," I thought.  "That looks like the brand new baby calf that was just born Sunday morning (that I hadn't even seen yet) who is supposed to be locked up in the barn!!!" And...Mom and Peter were in the house, and that baby was making a rambling beeline out into the pasture where the big cows were already starting to take an interest in the situation.  She cou

In the process of transferring some Altar & Hearth Magazine things so I can upload directly to that website, I had to get a WordPress account.  So, since I had this nice free potential website, I decided to play with it and set it up as a tentative site promoting this book I'm working on - not to mention that practicing like this will keep me from messing up something on the A & H website. So far the website looks surprisingly professional after loading some pictures from my California trip last year (hard to believe it's been a year already!).  I need a lighter home page image but I need to make a haori first, talk to the folks in town who have an old Colt 45, and the people north of town who seem to be owning or boarding a dun paint that looks remotely like one in my book....yeah. Anyway, enjoy the snippets that are up right now!  I still need to figure out if I can copy my Excel calendar files over into Photoshop for the dates section.  I'll mainly be doing c

I haven't seen any news reports or other posts about this incident (because miraculously no one was injured - none of the cars were even clipped as far as I know), but as I was driving home from Rochester Hills on Saturday July 16th around 5 pm I had my first experience avoiding what would have otherwise been a full head-on collision. I had just gone through a 4-way stop, turning from 29 Mile Road northbound onto Romeo Plank, when a black SUV pulled out of the line of oncoming cars into my lane.  It was far enough ahead that at first I thought it was just turning into one of several residential driveways on the right side of the road.  I noticed, eased up on the gas...and the SUV kept coming! I remember thinking, "He's going to hit me head-on!" My first split-second escape reaction was to pull to the left, but realizing that there was a solid line of moving traffic there, I slammed on the horn and on the brakes and swerved hard to the right instead, onto a narro

Yesterday, I was able to see an old friend realize a long-held dream.  She didn't want to go to Disneyworld.  She didn't want to fly in a hot air balloon.  She didn't want to go skydiving.  She didn't want to go horseback riding along the Pacific Ocean. No, at just shy of her 89th birthday, Irene Ulanowski had a very specific dream. To see my younger brother Philip ordained a priest and receive his blessing. For the last six years, ever since he went to the seminary at age 18, she would tell me, "I hope I live to see him a priest!"  Through having to leave her house due to rising crime rates, to suffering a nervous breakdown, several hospital visits, rehab, moving into a senior apartments complex, to having a stroke that paralyzed her left arm and leg - through it all, Irene kept praying, clinging stubbornly to the Catholic Faith as she was raised in it and to the Polish traditions of piety handed down to her from her parents. And yesterday, in a nursi

For those of you who know my brother Philip, we are happy to announce that he has almost reached the end of his seminary training and that he will be ordained to the Catholic priesthood on June 29, 2016, the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. The ordination will take place at Most Holy Trinity Seminary, which is just outside of Brooksville, FL.  Details such as the time, accommodations, a reception, First (public) Mass, etc. are still to come but should be out in a couple of days.  We are now rushing to book our flights and finalize our travel plans...  :)

In one of my sister's college classes last year, the teacher was talking about the job market for the students' prospective field and various other topics, and she started out by saying, "I think I can safely say that everyone here is over 30..." My sister freaked out and politely inserted that she was only 19, which resulted in a moment of stunned silence.  Then everyone had a good laugh over it and class continued.  Later, the family had a chuckle over it at home during dinner.  But it got me thinking. My sister (now age 20) and myself (a venerable ancient at 25) don't wear the "uniform of youth."  We don't wear scuffed flat sneakers or trendy sandals, torn skinny jeans, and faded tops from trendy stores - we wear nice, pretty clothes that are less likely to go out of style; things that are actually feminine.  We don't wear heavy eye makeup  and funky nail polish, or jingle with cheap jewelry.  Christina actually DOES things with her hair -

The last few times I went to post on here, I had trouble uploading pictures and doing basic paragraph formatting, so I kind of drifted away from the blog and started a business Facebook page instead, since it was easier to upload pictures. In the meantime, I've been up to "the usual" - sewing, teaching, and working on Altar & Hearth Magazine. Right now we're working on Issue 4, and I've had to do a lot of it since the main editor has a new baby (#6 for her and her husband, so she's just SLIGHTLY busy).  It's supposed to come out March 30, ideally, which is Easter Wednesday. Nothing too exciting going on otherwise...