I knew going into this year we’d have some amazing celebrations, Michael & Sabryn’s Wedding, Finn’s graduation and college move-in, Ryan & my 50th birthdays, our 25th wedding anniversary, our goddaughter’s wedding … so I kept track of everything that felt like a celebration… and wow this list, man I really love my life! 🎉 🎊 2025 in particular felt like I was living life’s highlight reel! 🎥
The best day was for sure Michael & Sabryn’s wedding, not only because Sabryn was the most beautiful bride in the history of the world, and love is the most precious 💒💕 of all celebrations, but because I saw the love between Finnegan & Michael too, and honestly, what else is my life for here on earth 🌍? I think it’s a brilliant way to spend my time and energy raising two good humans, and making sure they cultivate love for each other as well! I’m so grateful they have a brother! 🩵 that is what I want my legacy to be, children who love each other and spend time together even after I’m long gone … 💗
✍️ 📓 📝
1/1 started the New Year in Punta Cana surgery free – beach vacation with our family and friends 🏝️ ☀️ 🌊
1/19 Illini @ MSU 🏀 ❄️
2/2 Groundhog Day in Woodstock 🦫
2/5 Blackhawks Game in Abbott Box 🏒
2/13 Taylor Tomlinson (My Christmas Present) at Chicago Theatre 😂 🎭
2/16 Coach of the Year Banquet for Ryan 🥎
2/22 One-Derland 💯
3/5 Mirabelli in Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat 🎭
3/10 Published 5th Kindle Bk 📚
3/16 Free Day at Shedd Aquarium 🐬
3/21 Saw Finn break < 5 Min Mile 🏃♂️
3/26 Kaylen’s baby shower @ Work 🎁
3/28 Saw Sabryn run Steeple Chase 🏃♀️
4/6 Tina & Amy with Robin 😂
4/12 Same # Days as Keegan & Baillie 💒
4/21 Finn’s senior night and Shot-Put-Iversary for Sabryn too 🏃
4/30 Mammogram & Massage (and final exam for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence library classes) 🧖
10/18 Michael’s Bachelor Party 🎉 & my 50th Decorating Witch Hats 🧙 and Bouquet 💐
10/23 Nate Barghetze with Robin 😂
10/24 Dinner with WonderBra’ds 🎀. (Booked a Hot Tub Boat ride for Finns birthday, but on Nov 30 they had to take the boats out do the water, so it was cancelled!)
10/25 Witch Paddle with Tammie 🧙 🌊
10/26 Stained Glass Art Class with Robin 🎨
10/31 Halloween 🎃
11/1 T-shirt Quilt class at Lure of the Local 🪡
11/8 Jen Vincent’s story exploratory book launch 📕 and Meatapalooza 🥩 🍔 🧀
11/12 Christmas Movie Premiere at Woodstock Theatre 🍿 🎄 🎥
11/13 Ryan, me and Michael all new glasses 🤓 👓 (withdraw from AQR job)
11/14 Dina’s Birthday Dinner 🍝
11/14 eyebrow wax and tint, highlights, haircut, nails pre-wedding 💅 💇♀️
11/15 Photo Class with Jen Fletcher 📷 🌳
11/16 Tote Bag class at Lure 👛
11/17 Angel Tree shopping (legos, blankets) 😇
11/19 Sprained right hand 🩻 💊
11/20 Pick Up Finn for best man job 🚙
11/21 Rehearsal Dinner 🥘
11/22 Michael & Sabryn 💕💒
11/24 Coffee Shop Crawl in St Joe’s ☕️ 🌊
11/25 Paul McCartney at United Center 🎶 🎤
11/29 Salt Cave Massage (bday and Mother’s Day gift cards) 💆♀️
11/30 3 days of fires and Finn home ❄️ 🔥
12/5 New Restaurant Smokin’ Jacks BBQ 🍗
12/6 Christmas Tree Lighting 🎄and crafts at Jen Fletcher’s house
12/10 Vickie’s favorite thing party 🎄
12/14 (Cancelled 11/30) Hot Tub Boat Ride for Finn’s bday 🛀🎂 Steak Dinner in Milwaukee
12/15 Finn’s 19th birthday 🎂 (watched Ryan coach 2 games 🏀)
12/21 Solstice ☀️ and Baillie Christmas 🎄
12/24 Keegan Christmas 🎄 🎁
12/25 Slow, Warmth, Peaceful, Restful time with my people Christmas ✨ 🌲 🔥 🎥
12/26 Shedd Aquarium with Sara & Brock 🐬
12/27 cooking class with Kristi 🥂
12/28 Brunch with Tara Wojick 🥂
12/31 NYE ✨ 🎉
Not to mention all the delightful story exploratory and orange theory moments ✍️ 🍊 and books I’ve read and podcasts I’ve listened to 📚 🎧
We all know how the story will end (we all die) so let’s make the middle really f’ing great!
It’s more than just a list (or a photo book), it’s my LIFE and wow am I lucky 🍀 what a life I get to live 💕
Make yourself useful doing hard things with good people
Sometimes the worst form of laziness (sloth) is busyness … you’re not being careful enough, undirected in your energies
Inattentiveness to things that merit our attention (laziness/sloth) so we can be busy and be slothful
I love my children and husband, but I have also learned to love being with myself and solitude. Delight in time alone.
Embrace solitude
Alice Kohler
Being solitary is being alone well. Being alone, luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice. Aware of the fullness of your own presence, rather than the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.
Loneliness is poverty. Solitude is richness.
Pico Iyer
In an age of speed, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow.
In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention.
In an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.
Delight is finding time for me … keep doing things for me until I feel like me again. Taking time to write and meditate and remember what is important to me, and then not breaking promises to myself. Focus on movement and stillness and creating and having artist dates.
Hopes & Dreams
Guidance inward to focus on me (empty nest) – embrace solitude, it’s not loneliness, it’s spending time with your spirit.
Peace, Joy, Ease, More Balanced in 2025 be Authentically Unique
What means the most to my heart, mind, body and spirit?
Empty Nest 🪹 🧘♀️ 📚
yoga, art, walking, meditation, reading
cooking, cleaning
Tina Fey said delight in her standup!
So many times this word showed up for me this year in books, podcasts and shows, cooking class descriptions, all that all delighted me! I embrace the use of this word! And treasure focusing on it all year.
I am delighted that I took time to write Kelly Corrigan AND that she wrote me back!! I am seriously fan girling 💕💕💕💕
I snuck away for a little writing adventure, and honestly? It was exactly what my soul needed. Picture this: brick streets that feel like they’ve been walked on for generations, lined with small businesses that are actually thriving. Every shop had its own charm, and every shopkeeper treated me like an old friend.
Strolling around safe and peaceful. I wandered slowly, letting myself get distracted by random bits of public art tucked around corners like little surprises.
I bought some treasures at the Local Art Store and the Independent Bookstore and the. Started my coffee stop crawl ….
And actually made a lot of progress on my book 📚
Writing ✍️ Forte Cabanas Broad street cafe ClosedFull of CrepeClosed KilwimsClosed for the seasonTosi Chocolate ShopThe Market
Forte Coffee – hot chocolate and sticker 🌈 🏳️⚧️ took it to go and listened to the waves 🌊 of Lake Michigan
Cabanas – ice cream and more – black coffee so it felt like a sin with all the cows on the wall & ice cream around 🐄
Broadstreet Cafe – bagel sandwich and Carmel macchiato, stopped to work on my book and sat in an old church pew – full of retired old men so you know the food is good and the prices are right 🥯
Açaí – closed
Full of Crepe – hot apple cider with cinnamon sugar 🍎 🍏
Brookie’s cafe – closed
Peppermint ice cream at Kilwims & fudge to take home 🍦
Copper Pot (is only open in the summer)
Had to finish the rest of Tuesday 🙂 it was raining so I watched a Christmas movie by the fireplace and dozed off but then headed out with my umbrella to Tosi, there were a lot of great breakfast choices, but I wasn’t that hungry so I settled on taking home a squirrel cookie for my loves. 🐿️
The Chocolate Cafe – I had to get the hot chocolate (also lots of good breakfast options), I’m coming back for grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch 🍫
The Market – I was expecting like a Starbucks inside a grocery store but this place was much cooler!! 🎄
I hope you are happy together forever. And I hope forever doesn’t sound like long enough 💕.
I love you with my whole heart. My wedding day advice for you is to just stop for at least one deep breath today and look around the room, because everyone here loves you!
I hope your life together turns question marks into exclamation points. ⁉️I hope you dream so big (personally and professionally) it scares you. I know your brilliant brain, strong legs and giant heart will be able to carry you to achieve anything you can possibly imagine.
See all your problems as puzzles. Life is a puzzle, not a problem. You’re both so smart, fit together nicely and together you’ll be able to solve any puzzle you come across.
And Michael …. You know I love you! And I always will your whole life!! With my whole heart ❤️
I started in the 1900s, before Google, before laptops and cellphones were passed out at work, before A.I. …
It’s been my longest relationship. I have been an Abbott employee longer than I have been Cheryl Baillie and longer than I have been Cheryl Keegan.
There were no cell phones, you had to physically call your boss and let them know you’d be late or sick. And when there was a snow day at school there was a phone tree for teachers and it was announced on the radio or tv news. Just as you got your grad school homework done on your home desktop, the printer loudly printing what is due the next day, and finally got baby to sleep, the phone would ring, all the lights would go on, and we’d have to find the packet of paper and the next 3 teachers on the list to call.
There were no laptops. Which meant you could never work from home, you had to check out an overhead projector and laptop to run a one-hour meeting. And print slides on transparency paper ahead of time and pray you didn’t have a typo when presenting a PowerPoint.
I’d only check my email on breaks. I’d spend my day in the lab working. And for lunch or my 10-minute break I’d catch up on my email on a desktop computer. which meant no schedule changes, urgent emails, last minute meetings.
I was hourly, so if I was late to work it was a big deal. There were so many (52 for the first kid and 47 for the second) times they’d wake up with an ear infection, I’d take them to sick call, fill the antibiotics Rx, dose them with Tylenol because they weren’t contagious (but they had a fever) and take them to daycare praying I’d get through at least a little work before daycare called, so I wouldn’t lose my job.
And benefits…I got 5 2/3 pay sick weeks for maternity leave, $25 check for my first profit sharing (and 25% increase for 4 years), one week of vacation for the first 5 years, no work from home days for the first 15 years ….
There have been so many efficiencies since I started, and now that I’m promoted to manager I feel the pressure to keep being infinitely more & more efficient. We are humans and it’s not something that is logarithmic. Change takes time to adapt to. But the pace at which humans need to adapt is in the workforce is quickening.
When I started at $9/hr I needed a second job to pay my bills. I finally made a six figure salary in 2022 (25 years after I started).
I went to grad school (twice), but I think that really only taught me that learning is a lifelong adventure. And those study habits carry me through today when I’m in my 5th division and I have to keep learning and relearning.
I ran the women’s leadership group for 5 years, was on a board or directors for little league non profit for 10 years. Sold my blood, sold my urine, worked overtime, weekends, nights, holidays, different timezones …
Today, I can’t get my work done during work. I’m constantly spending 11-12 hour days in the office (after a 45+ minute commute) and weekends to do the strategic thinking. When I wanted to be a manager I’d thought it’d be development, mentoring and strategic thinking for part of my workday. Instead it’s supporting my team through the daily fire drills launching a software that doesn’t meet our needs, and taking my work home each night and every weekend, just to keep my head above water.
Not only leading people through these changes but adapting to it myself. no wonder why there is an increase in anxiety and mental illness. The pace at which work, politics and life moves is ever-increasing.
So walk in the woods. Meditate. Nap. Write on your paper calendar. Slow down!
From 📖 The Art of Stillness
It’s been my longest relationship, and the world is so big and there is so much opportunity. Gotta go see what else is out there!
Teachers work 176 days a year. I work 260 (plus most weekends). Teachers work 67% of the days I do. Plus 4-6 hrs a day less than me ….
Feel like a ghost in my own life. No one can reach out to me for advice or help…. I’m always working.
I want to be the one who makes dinner for my neighbor who broke their foot.
Who isn’t always 20 min late to 7pm dinner with friends because of “work”.
Who says “what a relaxing vacation day, I only have to call into these 4 meetings…. “
I want a gentle life filled with rest, ease, peace and joy. ❤️🩹 ☮️
The Lefty Writer 