Gratitude: I’m grateful for my husband and his everlasting support and patience. I don’t know what I’d do without him. I hope I never find out. 🥺
1. What currency is used in your country? The dollar 2. If you travel to a different country, do you rely on card payments, or get some local currency in cash? I’ve never traveled to a different country where I was paying for anything. 3. Do you buy souvenirs for yourself or family? Not usually though I was getting a refrigerator magnet when I travelled for work. Sometimes I’ll get a t-shirt. 4. When using an unfamiliar currency, are you aware of how much you are spending in your own? I recently bought a cap with my credit card. I was told how it’d show up on the statement as the equivalent of $20 US dollars. He didn’t want me to dispute the charge. I wouldn’t have known on my own.
Written for #SYW. Thanks Di for hosting. The rules and pingback are here.
So here’s a little story cause I always got one percolating in the background.
Lulu and I shared a 2013 Buick Verano for years. In 2022, I got a Buick Encore and gave her the Verano. She was working from home and didn’t need to drive except for errands but since March she has been commuting to a new job.
When it flooded here not that long ago, I was worried about her because I remembered driving that car and hydroplaning in it once upon a time. So I gave her my car. Yep, that’s what I do. I just try to fix things even before they break.
I thought I had a quick solution for what I was going to do which was trade in the 2013 Buick for something like the car I just given away. But then all the medical stuff happened and different things made me pause. And I decided well I’ll just be the one to be unsafe on the road. I mean how often does it flood here anyway? Not often at all. I was going to see what my baby Buick “Veruca Salt,” was made of.
So B goes fishing, and I try to go to the grocery store and you guessed it. The car wouldn’t start.
Ugh!
B got home and was about to jumpstart it. Without him doing anything but measuring the voltage, the damn thing turned over. I told him I swear it didn’t start for me and he said he knew, he tried to start it too, and nothing happened. 
So, …
We’re gonna let it sit as we do our grocery shopping taking his vehicle. It’s a holiday week where I only needed to go in three days anyway. I’m gonna ask for dispensation to just work from home as we figure this out. Come the week after Fourth of July, I may be touring around San Antonio in a brand new EV. 
As always, more to come.
My feature image was the day he told me goodbye before I road tripped it. I keep him around because he’s handy.
As much as I love both music and being in nature, I couldn’t come up with a song. I guess I was being a stickler for using the word “outdoors” in the lyrics. Even when I got around that idea, thinking more about the feelings of enjoying nature, I was still stumped. Then I did a generic search finding a few candidates to share yet none of them resonated with me. Instead of staying up as I usually do to find that perfect song, I went to bed early before 10 PM. And that is usually a recipe for disaster as I sleep poorly anyway, surely, I’d be up at midnight, mind racing. Miracles of miracles I slept, not straight through but better than usual which is lovely.
Now I’m up and thinking again when Tom Petty’s – You and Me solves my dilemma. “Wherever that wind might blow Wherever that river rolls …” I realize I need to take a road trip!
Written for #SLS. Thanks Jim for hosting. The rules and pingback are HERE.
Curiosity piqued. That’s how it always begins. Just one little peek. Before long, I’m aiming for the peak, convinced the answer is just over the next ridge. Then I get there, take a peek over the edge…and discover another question waiting to pique my curiosity.
My Ancestry subscription automatically renewed back in October when I was flooded with a bunch of new leaves. I started going down more rabbit holes again. I stopped because I learned some things that were hard to take. But now I’m at it again. And this time I added my brother’s maternal grandparents to our family tree. Each new name brought more leaves.
The more I dig, the more I realize that every family has its own remarkable story. Some are celebrated, some forgotten, some hidden for generations. But each one matters. Every life leaves traces, every branch adds something to the whole, and every story is worth remembering simply because someone lived it.
As always, more to come.
Written for #SoCS. Thanks Linda for hosting. The rules and pingback are here.
During the work week, my phone is on silent. I sometimes remember to turn it back on when I get home. When I am home and over the weekend, my sound is on. That’s when I have a potential to hear a “ping.”
For me, that sound carries two completely different emotions at the same time. It creates intense anxiety and profound comfort.
The anxiety comes from wondering if it’s Lulu and she’s in distress—that old pattern where every notification could mean something was wrong.
And the comfort… is when I realize it’s just someone checking in.
Friday June, 26, 2026, 8:40 AM:
Good morning, Jill. How are you doing?
Seven ordinary words.
They arrived while my brain was pinballing from one thing to the next—my medical, now Lulu’s medical, work, generators, electric cars, all the ordinary decisions that don’t feel ordinary when they’re stacked on top of each other.
I didn’t unload.
I simply told him his timing was perfect. I was sitting in my head, and his text pulled me out of it for a little while.
Then we did something that seems increasingly rare.
We connected.
Not because either of us needed something. Not because there was an agenda. Just because we genuinely cared how the other was doing.
It lasted only a few minutes.
Sometimes that’s enough.
Sometimes being remembered is enough, and I won’t take that for granted. Thank you, Mike, for being my friend.
Welcome to Haiku Fridays with J-Dub. Each week, I’ll post a haiku and a photo to spark reflection, emotion, or imagination.
Your challenge is simple: write your own haiku inspired by it—or on any theme that moves you—and share it in the comments.
Short, simple, powerful haiku—tiny poems that carry a big wallop. Capture a moment, a feeling, a memory—whatever comes through in 11 (3-5-3) or 17 (5-7-5) syllables. There’s no pressure, no judging, just a space to create and share.
This is about voice, reflection, and the quiet power of small poems.
AstroWorld in Houston, Texas was our freshman-year class trip. Close enough to do in a day. We left at the crack of dawn, arrived at opening, spent the entire day there, and didn’t get back to school until after midnight.
As I write this, I can still feel the excitement and anticipation from that morning on the bus. I didn’t really know many people yet—it was a larger school—but I had found a small group of friends. We formed a “six-pack” and stuck together. Over the next four years, we did everything together.
My high school crew before the Riverwalk crew
Pretty quickly it became clear that Lori didn’t want go on the rides. She wanted to “cool off” in the souvenir shops. We went along because she was steering the group, even though we had other ideas.
During the morning parade—with a full marching band, crowds everywhere, loud and bright—Bonnie pulled me behind a trash can. “Shhh,” she hissed, “don’t let them see us. I came here to have fun, not go to damn ‘snowbird’ shops.”
So we hid there while the parade went by, watching the rest of our group through the bushes next to the receptacles. It felt a little wild, a little conspiratorial—like a prison break.
For a while they called our names, but we ran the other direction until we couldn’t hear them anymore. Just the two of us moving through the park, spotting people from school here and there but never staying long enough to be pulled back in. No cell phones—just staying one step ahead.
The best part was near the end when we rode the Texas Cyclone roller coaster with some boys we’d been flirting with all day. It had rained earlier, the crowds had thinned, and we got back in line and rode it three times in a row.
At the end of the night, as we got back on the bus, Lori was fuming. Linda was upset too because she would’ve rather been with us. Rhonda and Jackie didn’t care either way.
Years later, when I rode the Texas Cyclone again, I came away hurting—payback maybe… or genetics. 🧬🤣 Either way, I still know how to slip out of sight when I need to.
2026 Jill Witherspoon. All Rights Reserved.
P.S. My birth mother lived in Houston from 1972 until her passing in 2007. To think that we were that close geographically all those years and to imagine how we could’ve been at the same place at the same time is unnerving. Like she was hiding in plain sight. We visited Houston regularly when I was a kid. I’ll always wonder what if. Not in a bad way, in a sentimental way. 🥀
My Writer’s Workshop Entry: 6) Talk about a time you hid from someone. The rules and pingback are here. Badge/feature image by Patty, http://anothercookieplease.com
I don’t know if I’m just stretching the truth because I want so badly to feel connection. Even on the tiniest level, I want to see myself in others.
So when I see a picture of my nephew in his happy place, and it just so happens that his happy place is the same as mine, I feel this indescribable warmth and expansion. His cousins are readers too, and the idea that maybe all three of them got that from me makes me teary-eyed.
I’ve spent years trying to untangle what might have been passed down—addiction, osteoporosis, family medical histories that matter. So when I see a shared love of books, part of me wants to claim that inheritance too.
Then I remember my aunt telling me she loves to read and that she got it from Grandpa Eddie who was never without a book in his hand. If I got it from her, that kind of blows up my little theory anyway because she’s on a completely different side of my family tree.
And then I think about how many people love to read. It’s not like there are only a few of us on the planet. There are millions of readers out there.
So, yeah. My theory is shot.
This is what happens when you have time to kill before an appointment. Originally, I was going to go into work, leave for the appointment, and then go back. Instead, I decided just to go in late.
The filler time? Oh my gosh. Too much time on my hands is never a good thing.
It’s very relatable to see Linda write that she’s tired of complaining. That’s me too. Though I don’t think it’s complaining about complaining. I think it’s being tired of having so many things hit the fan all at once. That’s exhausting y’all.
AnyWho, in an effort not to complain, I’m listening to an audiobook. It’s my newest distraction technique. Thank you SA public library system and the Libby app. It’s free too!!
The deal is never anyone’s fault but you control the way you play.
Shelby Van Pelt – Remarkably Bright Creatures
Written for #1linerWeds. Thanks for hosting Linda. The rule and pingback are here.
I told my therapist about my health anxiety. I joked that I want my mama. I mean, what kid doesn’t want their mama when they’re sick?
She said “wow, that’s a lot”—She helped see I’m not being immature. Life is hard. We all want someone older and wiser than us to have the answers.
Since my elders are gone, I wrote this–
It’s Too Much
I have spent an inordinate amount of my life waiting.
Waiting for test results.
Waiting for connection.
Waiting for people to tell the truth.
Waiting for people to come back.
Waiting for answers.
Waiting for someone to choose me without me chasing.
This year I quit chasing and I’m feeling the absence of it in ways I didn’t expect.
The funny thing about waiting is that it disguises itself as action. It feels like I’m doing something. Thinking. Planning. Preparing. Rehearsing conversations that never happen.
But waiting is not action.
Waiting is standing still while your mind runs in circles.
Lately I have been waiting on doctors, insurance approvals, lab results, and follow-up appointments.
I have been waiting on certainty.
I have been waiting on my own fear to settle down.
Maybe that’s why my life suddenly feels too crowded.
Maybe that’s the real exhaustion.
Not the appointments.
Not the overthinking.
Not even the diagnoses.
Maybe it’s carrying around a lifetime of waiting.
As always, more to come.
P.S.
This isn’t a contest for who has it worse but a “wow, that’s a lot,” soothed me. I’m not exaggerating. Being validated is priceless.
This is where I am right now. Ask me tomorrow and you may get a different answer.
J-Dub's Grin and Bear It 
