Family Room
Visiting lonely seniors and lovely parks
What’s on the plate is not important. Who’s around the table is what counts. Home Instead Senior Care is encouraging people who live near — or even not so near — their senior loved ones to make time for regular meals together. Time is the major stumbling block, according to Home Instead, which conducted a […]
Journey to enlightenment
Adopting my dog was a snap decision. It was Friday afternoon, just before Mother’s Day, when I checked online at the Humane Society for Southwest Washington. Several dogs were available, including a peculiar, little, red Dachshund with one blue and one brown eye. I had to meet him. I pushed and pushed, reassuring my fiancé, […]
Summer’s here. Time to volunteer
When you’ve just been sprung from school, summer seems gigantic, endless, brimming with freedom and possibility — or, perhaps, just brimming with endlessness. Many local nonprofit agencies and jurisdictions offer summer outings for young people who want to put some free time to good use. Plenty of opportunities are regular enough to keep you feeling […]
Sharing special expertise
Parents and families of adults with serious mental health disorders carry a huge and ongoing burden. Figuring out how to lighten the load is the theme of a free conference on the afternoon of June 24 that’s open to families, caregivers, professionals and anyone else who’s interested. The event is sponsored by the National Alliance […]
Everything’s coming up bicycles
Far as I’m concerned, the second-greatest invention in the history of humankind is the one that took the greatest invention and made it good clean fun. So it’s totally awesome — yup, that’s the appropriately mature term — to point out that May is both National Bike Month and National Bike Safety Month. It contains […]
Today’s breakups are plugged in
Taxes and romantic bust-ups. It’s April, the “cruelest month.” Based on unimpeachable data like miserable status announcements and no-comment relationship switches on Facebook — or in the hallway between classes — smart statisticians and even smarter high school students have confirmed that partnerships tend to explode between Thanksgiving and Christmas and then early in the […]
Real men get mental health help
Most news organizations, including this one, have a policy that we generally don’t print news and names of suicides. While it’s not universally true — exceptions are when public resources or public people are heavily involved — it’s a well-intentioned policy that seeks to steer around deeply personal, private tragedy. It especially holds for children. […]
Ruminating on my friends’ home renovation
On Sunday, my boyfriend and I helped out our friends who are fixing up their home. They’ve owned it about as long as Alex and I have been dating – almost three years – and are getting around to projects they wanted to do when they moved in. The ranch-style house in Orchards, about 1,200 […]
Just another warm winter Sunday in Vantucky
What’s a family? You know what they say: Love makes a family. (Taking out the trash helps, too.) Here’s a grab bag of lovingly compiled, loosely family-related matters for your sunny Sunday. Boy, am I enjoying this freakishly warm weather. I’m also trying not to think too hard about what it means, big picture and […]
Office Moms bring love to kids in twilight zone
A couple years ago, foster mom Sarah Desjarlais was at a meeting at the downtown Vancouver office of the Department of Social and Health Services where she asked the obvious questions. “Who are all these little kids running around the office? Why are there two- and four-year-olds just wandering around in cubicle land?” Turned out, […]