the window to my mind...

Here's a quick little update for those who have been asking about what's going on in my life: I moved back home to Michigan at the end of December, 2020. The plan was to beworking for a brand-new nonprofit that was going to be making temporary, movable medical stations for underserved communities around the world. One of the parts that made this extra exciting was that the first community was in Oaxaca, Mexico. This meant I was hired because of my nonprofit expertise AND my bilingual skills - SCORE! Plus, it was flat-out stated in my interview that I would be working from Mexico at times -DOUBLE SCORE! Well, since then, life happened. The boss has had several life-threatening health scares and is now likely never to return to work. This means that the nonprofit (his pet project) is indefinitely on the shelf, so to speak. He also owns a big exterior sign company and our office was within this business so I was offered a position as a project coordinator as a means of...well, pay...

 In 2018 I planned the trip of a lifetime. Ok, well, kinda. For me, it was a pretty cool trip. For Maria, not so much. But regardless, Maria, Ben, and I headed out on the road in mid-May. The plan was to visit each of the five Great Lakes in one trip. This was especially exciting for me because I had never seen Lake Ontario...AND we were going to visit Niagara Falls in the process...somewhere else I had never visited before.  So, I guess I should probably preface this post by explaining that I am a Michigander by birth. I was born and raised in southwest Michigan and most of my family trips as a kid involved somewhere in the gorgeous state. But even more than that, we Michiganders have an abundance of state pride. And part of state pride is pride of the Great Lakes. I mean, we are the Great Lake state, after all.  My kids, however, are Hoosiers through and through. Even though all of my kiddos were born in Michigan except Ben, they were all raised in Indiana (well, except...