Presence

Sometimes I Worry. Sometimes I Hope.

June 14, 2025

A monarch butterfly found the milkweed in my front yard. It’s something that gave me hope tonight.

I try not to worry. I know it doesn’t do any good and only robs me of joy and peace. But there is a lot going on in the world right now. So much! It was a week when my U.S senator Alex Padilla was thrown to the floor and handcuffed by FBI agents when he tried to ask DHS Secretary Kristi Noem a question at a Los Angeles news conference. You can hear him on video saying, “I’m a U.S Senator!” They dragged him from the room anyway.

My homeowners insurance is set to renew in August, which means that every day when I walk to the post office and reach into my mailbox, I wonder if there will be a letter that will bite me like a snake, one that informs me that my homeowners insurance policy will be canceled next year. State Farm has been our family’s insurance company for decades: not just for me, but for my sister and my parents before us. Last year, State Farm started canceling homeowners policies in our fire prone area. My sister, who lives a few miles from me, had her policy renewed. That was great news (the premium went way up, but at least she still has homeowners insurance)! Her good friend, who lives up the road from her, was not so lucky. To add insult to injury? Since her friend’s auto insurance was also through State Farm, they lost their multiple line discount when their homeowners insurance was canceled, which meant that their auto insurance premiums skyrocketed.

Doesn’t seem right, does it?

(It’s possible I misunderstood all this, so don’t quote me on it. But if it’s true? Terrible.)

I’ve also been wondering about what will happen to the subsidy that I’ve gratefully been receiving for my health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Seems like Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is cutting funding for Medicare and would also scale back health insurance subsidies. KFF estimates “a national average premium increase of 75 percent if the enhanced subsidies expire.” The Congressional Budget Office “expects that about 4.2 million more people will be uninsured in 2034 as a result.” Continue Reading…

Success

Where’s the Book?

May 31, 2025

 

A reminder that there’s lots of new life out there these days. Gives me hope.

I had something very interesting that I was going to write, but then I had to wait for my laptop to warm up, and then I had to wait for Microsoft Word to load. It took a long time because I am trying to finish final edits on my book, and that is a long document which I try to keep active, so by the time Word finally opened, I had forgotten all the things I was going to write that were brilliant. So instead I spent about an hour editing my book, which was probably a better use of my time, come to think of it.

(In case you are interested, my book “Ordinary Holy: Searching for Grace in the Everyday” comes in at just over 230 pages and is made up of 100 journal-like reflections. Some of the entries are a little vulnerable. Some are silly. Some are full of gratitude. Kind of like life, no?)

So I have a hard copy of something that looks like a book. I printed a few preliminary copies last November, so I could see how the whole thing came together in book form. A few generous souls volunteered to read that first version and gave me valuable feedback. I have been trying to make simple changes and edits since then; it has been a slog. The self-publishing company that I used recently abandoned the book building platform that helped me create the initial version of my book. Instead of being able to make changes in my online account with them, my only option now is to work with a PDF that they sent me.

So I just need to make changes in a PDF.  Surely this must not be so very difficult?

My brilliant and generous friend who is also a professional graphic designer sighed and shook her head when I asked her this. Because basically, it is very difficult.

Continue Reading…