Recommended Tags

June 5, 2026 — Pat Bertram

In yesterday’s blog post, I wrote about gardening being A Strange Avocation, and I explained the difference in the behavior of flowers between this year and previous years. The tags I used for the post are gardening, home, life, bees and flowers, bees in a garden, larkspur, lily trees, purple echinacea, purple echinacea turned pink, yarrow. All garden related and directly related to the article I posted.

WordPress, the platform that hosts this blog, has an AI tool that suggests various tags for posts. In case you don’t know, tags are words or phrases that bloggers use to help people find their articles. For example, broad tags such as “gardening,” don’t do much to drive people to a blog post since they are too general. If someone were to Google “gardening,” they’d get millions upon millions of hits, and the chance of their finding any particular article are close to nil. Specific tags are best, or so they say, because the chances of someone stumbling upon your immortal words are a lot better. (I was being facetious about the “immortal words,” making fun of the fact that so few of our blog posts say anything of importance, and yet, in the electronic age, everyone’s words, no matter how puerile, truly are immortal.)

You will never in a million years guess the words that the all-seeing, all-knowing AI suggested for that gardening post, so I’ll just list them for you: “Auto immune disease, breastfeeding, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s, IBD.” How is that even possible? I’ve gone over and over what I wrote yesterday, and I cannot see anything that could possibly have generated such a wildly inappropriate group of words.

I know artificial intelligence is supposed to be a great thing, and it might be for other people, but I’m not that impressed. From what I have seen, generative AI in particular is not any more intelligent than most humans seem to be. (I slipped and called it degenerative AI before I corrected myself, but I like that term!) It also has huge biases, especially political ones, which makes sense, I suppose, since the vast majority of news sources and sites like Wikipedia are liberal, and generative AI is only as smart as its input. It would be nice to be able to use Google’s AI generated summaries for a quick perusal of any given topic, but I can’t rely on its answers because it makes mistakes that I know are mistakes. It doesn’t always understand the question, either. I wanted to check out “immortal words” to make sure I wasn’t making up the phrase, and all the AI would tell me is what immortal meant. I also wanted a quick definition for “tags,” and what I got was a whole lot of information about where to buy paper tags with strings. (I’ve noticed more often that search engines seem to be geared to products first, so if I want to know the definition of something, and it happens to be the name of a musical group or a brand name or whatever, that is what shows up, not the more generic term that I was looking for.)

I suppose, in Pollyanna-style, I should be glad that I didn’t need the suggested tags. Glad I don’t know enough about those medical issues from a personal angle to write about them. But still . . . utterly bizarre.

Actually, I’m not one to talk about intelligence, artificial or otherwise. Earlier, I was doing a puzzle, and I needed an eight-letter word beginning with L for a flower. And all I could think of was lavender. Lavender? Really? When I’d spent hours in the morning clearing away larkspur? When I’ve written post after post mentioning larkspur?

Oh, well, such is life. My life, anyway.

PS: The recommended tags for this post are Project Life, Heidi Swapp, San Diego Comic Con, Becky Higgins, Studio Calico. I don’t even know what most of that is!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, gardening, internet, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

A Strange Avocation

June 4, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Gardening is certainly a strange avocation. What has happened year after year isn’t guaranteed to happen again this year, and what has never happened isn’t guaranteed to continue never happening.

This year, a few years after the seeds had been planted, hollyhocks suddenly decided to grow. Why? I don’t know. Snapdragons survived the winter intact, and at a time when they should just be getting started for the season, they are already finished blooming. The moss rose and marigolds seeded themselves as they sometimes do, but this year, even though I thinned them dramatically, they are still coming in so strong that I’ll have a jungle, especially considering that I’d already put in petunias. The poppies are a no show — none of the red corn poppies came back and only a single California poppy put in an appearance. Blanket flower is one of those plants that are supposedly impossible to get rid of, but one of my blanket flowers decided to get rid of itself. As in previous years, I’ve been blessed with an abundance of larkspur, but most are not going to seed the way they should. Also, a swath of them are lying flat, as if some animal used them for a wallow. Some other plants were flattened by the wind, but the larkspur are in a protected area, so who knows what’s going on.

Some things are going along as they should be — the lily tree garden is taller than ever and is filling in with offspring plants, though the flowers are budding a month early. The daylilies also seem to be spreading nicely, but oddly, one of the plants already had a flower, also a month early. The purple magnus echinacea are growing extremely well, but the flowers are now pink — some bright pink, some pale pink. (As soon as I’ve cleaned up my garden areas to ready them for summer, I might have to see where I can move some of them. It’s truly great having a ready source of transplantable plants, especially ones that do so well around here, and pink is always a cheery color.)

The yarrow was another plant that seemed to have been used as a wallow. It’s possible it’s been getting too much water, though it’s hard to believe that anything around here gets too much moisture. And anyway, I’ve been treating it the way I’ve always done. Still, this might be another plant that needs to be moved.

As you can see, in a garden, there’s always something different. The larkspur surprised me — I don’t know why they aren’t going to seed, but luckily I’ve saved seeds from previous years to make up for the lack. And, since I don’t have to wait for the seeds to mature to pull up the dead stalks, I can go ahead and plant other flowers now instead of in July as I normally have to, which is great. It’s hard to get anything to grow from seed in July around here — the ground dries out too fast.

I almost forgot to mention the bees! There are way more this year than normal. Some days my yard is buzzing from the sound of dozens of big black and yellow fuzzy bumblebees feasting on the larkspur. I’m hoping they’ll like other plants as well so they will stick around for a while. There’s something so pleasant and right-with-the-world to have bees in a garden.

All this and summer isn’t even here. More changes from previous years are on the way, I’m sure. But it’s all good. It’s a garden, after all.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

 

Posted in gardening, home, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 6 Comments »

Minimalism

June 3, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
Do you believe in minimalism?
View all responses

I’m not sure I believe in minimalism. I mean, I know it’s a “thing,” so I believe in its reality. I just don’t know how important it is as a universal lifestyle. Nor do I think it’s something I want to believe in for myself. Minimalism, by definition, is a philosophy centered on living intentionally with only what is essential. Sounds bleak to me. Not to take part in the abundance of today’s world? Not to celebrate small treats and treasures of the day?

Yep. Sounds bleak.

For artists and art lovers, minimalism is about simple-seeming artworks that the artist wants appreciated for the shapes and materials used rather than for some sort of narrative. Minimalism nowadays, though, generally refers to the way one lives. I imagine what is essential to a minimalist lifestyle depends on the person. I bet a lot of minimalists have more luxury items than I do — televisions, streaming services, fancy bathrooms, whatever. Of course, most people don’t consider those things luxury items, but a lot of what we take for granted truly is luxury — running water in the house, an “inhouse” rather than an outhouse, space to move around your home without being elbowed by others, heating systems, cooling systems, clothes washers and dishwashers. For thousands of years, these would have been considered unimaginable luxuries. Anything beyond these “basics” would have been utter opulence.

Hmm. I think I’m getting away from my premise. Or perhaps not. A true minimalist would be living in the woods, without any of these trappings of civilization, so I tend to think what the minimalists of today are really looking for is to own their possessions, not to be owned by them. Having a lot of things can weigh one down. Having to take care of a lot of things can take up time better spent on other things such as new experiences.

It’s funny to think how after Jeff died, I got rid of about half of all we owned together as well as all he owned by himself except for a small box of things I promised to keep plus a few items I couldn’t get rid of. Then, after my father died, I got rid of about half of what was left, just enough to fit in a single storage unit. My goal was to eventually get rid of everything and just live with what fit in my car. I liked the idea of not owning anything, mostly, I think, because I didn’t how I was going to live on my minimal income and I didn’t want to keep paying to store my personal effects.

Long before I could get rid of everything in my storage unit, I had the great good fortune to buy a house, which ended that minimally minimalist aspiration. So then I started in a time of “upsizing.” Besides my vintage car, I now own a house and a yard and a garage and furniture and appliances and tools and oh, so very many things. (A lot of the furnishings and such came from other people downsizing, so I suppose it evens out in the end.)

A few weeks ago, I responded to another blog prompt about Minimalist Living and mentioned that to a great extent, I do live a minimalist lifestyle, but as I said, I don’t call it that. I call it not buying things I didn’t need. I call it living debt-free, not buying anything I can’t afford right now. I call it using things up and not wasting anything.

Every once in a while, I think about owning all this stuff. Not worrying about it; just thinking what it means. My house, after all, couldn’t fit in a storage unit if it would ever come to that. But part of my “minimalism” feeling is realizing I won’t have to dispose of anything I own. With luck, I’ll be here until my end, and then it will be someone else who has the headache of figuring out what to do with it all.

Meantime, I live quietly, frugally (though frugal connotes a sense of deprivation, I don’t deprive myself of anything I want; I simply don’t want a whole lot).

So does this mean I believe in minimalism after all? No. I don’t believe in any movement. I was living small before there was such as thing as minimalism. I don’t need a name (or permission!) to live the way I am living.

To be honest, if you saw my house and my yard, minimalism would never enter your mind. You’d see (as people always tell me they see) comfort, coziness, cleanness. And lushness!! A fully modernized house with old-fashioned touches and set in a gorgeous yard is definitely not minimalist.

It is utter luxury.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, culture, home, house, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 11 Comments »

As Old Fashioned as a Hollyhock

June 2, 2026 — Pat Bertram

There are a lot of topics I stay away from mostly because . . . well, because I don’t welcome backlash. I’m just too sensitive. But sometimes a topic keeps staring at me, which makes it impossible not to face it. For example, every time I opened my internet browser the past couple of days, I had Google reminding me about pride month (small letters are my subtle rebellion), which reminds me that the only group in the whole country that’s not allowed to be proud are whites. If you’re proud to be white, then you’re automatically a white supremacist. According to some people, simply being white means you’re a white supremacist, which is utterly ridiculous. (And so is the term “white privilege,” now that I’m on my soapbox. It used to be that certain minority groups were considered under privileged, but that terminology, which was deemed racist, was replaced by “white privilege,” which is racist in a whole other way.) And why are whites so despised? We might not yet be the minority in western countries, but we are perhaps only 10% of the entire world population and destined to decline even further.

I’m not proud of being white, but not in any sort of apologetic way for crimes my ancestors never committed or crimes I am supposed to have committed simply for being born the way I am. I’m not proud because why would anyone be proud of the way they were born? It’s not something we could choose. It’s not something we did. It’s not something that took courage. It’s not something we earned. It’s simply who we are. Pride used to be a sin. Now it’s — apparently — something to celebrate.

I looked up the definition of “pride” in my actual book dictionary, printed before “diversity” was a thing, and pride is (or at least it used to be before the word was redefined) “Conceit. Disdainful behavior. Ostentatious display. A justifiable self-respect.” In other words, pride is not good unless you did something to earn your self-respect. (Or perhaps it’s just an excuse for that “ostentatious display” as the dictionary defined it?) But then, as I’m finding out, I’m terribly old-fashioned with old-fashioned values. I suppose I could be proud of that, but it’s not something to be proud about because it’s not something I earned. It’s just who I am.

I am proud of my writing skills — that is something I earned, something I worked hard for. I am proud of my blog, because it takes a certain discipline to keep a project going for almost twenty years. I am proud of being kind (mostly kind, anyway). I am proud of opening up and telling the truth about grief and dealing with the absence of a deceased spouse or life mate. I am proud of the work I’ve done on my yard, though I’m not necessarily proud of being a gardener, because the truth is, a garden does what a garden wants to do. (As I discovered again today. Years ago, I tried to plant a hollyhock garden, but it died and no other seeds ever grew. Until now. Apparently, the garden decided it wants hollyhocks.) I’m sort of proud of being a good photographer, but the photos are more from an excellent camera as well as the instinctual sense of artistry I was born with.

But being proud (or not proud) simply for of sake of pride? I don’t understand that. But then, I did say I was old-fashioned. As old fashioned as a hollyhock, actually.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

 

Posted in being me, culture, gardening, history/myth, life, photography. Tags: , , , , . 6 Comments »

Eye-Catching

June 1, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
Go on a walk today and share a photo of something that catches your eye.
View all responses

I thought I’d respond to this blog prompt by actually doing what it asked. I went on a walk! First time in I don’t know how long, though it must have been a very long time because the neighbors have been waiting outside for me to stop by, and well, as you can see, that didn’t have a good outcome for them.

I was only going to walk a couple of blocks just to say that I walked, but I ended up walking a couple of miles. It reminded me of what I liked about walking — the lovely morning, the clean smell, the soft air, the blue skies, the gentle breeze. But it also reminded me of why I have a hard time forcing myself to get back to daily walking — utter boredom. Nothing to see other than what I’ve already seen a thousand times. (Well, the family on the bench was a bit different configuration; they are often rearranged and dressed to memorialize the season with hearts, Easter baskets, or Santa hats.) In previous living situations, when I walked for miles each day, I was able to find isolated paths, hiking trails, and vistas within walking distance of where I lived, but now all I see are the same houses, the same parked cars, the same cracked pavements, the same brown fields.

I’d walked all over town during my first years here, and because of a definite dog problem in this area, I soon learned to stick to one guaranteed safe route. But oh, so utterly boring seeing the same thing over and over and over again. (It’s why I stopped going to the library — the thousandth time I saw those same books did me in.) When I do manage to get out to walk (hard in the summer because I use up my energy on yard work), I try to think of it as a walking meditation, paying attention to the simple act of walking, but then I become aware of my slightly unsteady knees, and that’s no fun.

But that wasn’t today. Today was a real treat. It was also nice to find out I can still walk at least that far without any trouble. Added to the benefit, I exchanged a few words with one neighbor and made a point of stopping to visit with a friend.

Tomorrow, I get back to yard word, so there won’t be time or energy or inclination for a spur of the moment walk. Today was a rare day off, taken because in a few days, I won’t have any days off. The larkspur are finished flowering (which is odd because usually at the end of May they are at the height of their beauty). Soon the seed pods will form, which means collecting the seeds and pulling up the dead larkspur — not an easy task since there are so many of them. And after that, it’s a matter of planting new flower seeds for the summer, buying new plants, or transplanting overcrowded plants to fill in empty spots.

Later in the summer, there will be more color, and perhaps a real explosion of color come fall when the chrysanthemum bloom. Actually, it’s the lack of things to see outside of my own yard that helped me overcame my reluctance for work-heavy landscaping in order to have something fun to see. Even in a time where so many flowers are finished for the season, there are new areas that are flowering.

In fact, the thing that most caught my eye during today’s excursion (besides my skeletal neighbors, that is) was my own wildflower garden leading up to my back door.

These yellow coreopsis (or coreopsises or even coreopses for you Latin afficionados) started with only a couple of seedlings, and now look! So prolific and so sunny.

Truly eye-catching.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, gardening, home, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 11 Comments »

Unlimited Budget

May 31, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
If you had an unlimited budget for 24 hours, what would you do?
View all responses

This blog prompt should have been a no brainer. Unfortunately, because I overthink everything, I have a hard time with hypothetical questions, this one most of all. For example, I started out wondering what it means by “budget.” To me (and to the dictionary), a budget is basically a financial plan that helps a person understand what money they have to spend every month, allocates a sufficient amount of income for fixed expenditures such as rent and utilities, and helps control spending to avoid going into debt. But that definition doesn’t fit the postulated scenario at all. I suppose I could make out a budget for an infinite amount of income for a day without actually spending anything, but it seems a waste to go through all that simply for one day’s worth of phony money.

So if the question isn’t about a budget as such, does it mean simply having an infinite amount of money to spend for one day? If so, how does the money appear? A credit card with no limit? If so, who pays the bill? Or does the money appear in my banking account? If so, how does the depositer know how much I will be spending?

Do I know ahead of time what day that “unlimited budget” will show up so I can plan how to use the largess? Or will it just appear one day, leaving me to wing it, and hoping I don’t get so overwrought by the stress of it all that I blow the whole deal?

And how does one spend the money? Go online and book airline trips and cruises for a future day? Will the travel plans still be available when the time comes, or will they have disappeared along with that “unlimited budget” day?

How would a credit card work anyway? The charges don’t always show up the same day as an order is placed, so if I were to buy a whole lot of stuff at a mall or online or wherever, there’s a chance that once the “unlimited budget” deal expired, I’d get stuck with a bill for things I would never have bought in the first place.

It would make sense to buy property or some other tangible asset, but I know for a fact, one cannot buy any property in a single day. Or maybe one can if one has that “unlimited budget” at one’s disposal. But still, I tend to think not. Realtors, lawyers, sellers, escrow folk and everyone else involved in a major sale don’t work on a moment’s notice.

I would think a good use of the budget would be to write checks to local non-profits, but would the money still be there when they cashed the checks? It doesn’t seem like it would be, and I have a hunch if I went to the bank and got trunk loads of cash to hand out to those groups, I would get into a whole lot of trouble. First of all, you can’t take out too much cash from a bank without dealing with a lot of paperwork. Second of all, unless the organizers were greedy and grabbed the cash for themselves, they’d certainly have questions about its legitimacy.

It all seems like too much headache.

In the end, I suppose I’d just buy what I normally buy on any given day, which is . . . not a single thing.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, internet, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Self-Censorship

May 30, 2026 — Pat Bertram

You’d think that someone who says she writes for herself would write whatever she wants, and that would be true if I saved the writing for myself alone as I did with the journal I kept after Jeff died. Once a piece is written, however, and I go to post it, things change. Suddenly, it’s not just for me but for anyone who wants to take a peek into my life and thoughts and emotions.

For example, I tend to stay away from anything controversial, and if by chance I happen to mention something that could be construed as political, I edit it out because it’s just not worth the backlash. So perhaps it’s not self-censorship so much as it is simply editing to make a more universally accepted piece. Or do I mean peace?

Either way, I do sometimes second guess what I write, not just when it involves world affairs, but also when it involves people in my life, especially if I know they read this blog. In fact, I’m sitting here right now debating about whether or not I should mention something that recently happened. (Apparently, I decided to go ahead with the article, because here I am.)

A few days ago, I accompanied a friend to an appointment. I’ve driven with her hundreds of miles over the years, so I’m familiar with her driving, and I’ve never been concerned about safety, but that day, she was driving erratically, swerving from lane to lane, cutting in front of cars she apparently couldn’t see, seemed to have no depth perception, had a hard time hearing, could barely handle the steering wheel. Bizarrely, she had no idea what she was doing. To her, all was fine, she was just tired after a sleepless night. In fact, when I later mentioned that it would have been better to have cancelled the appointment, she said she had no idea there was any need.

I wondered if she’d been having a mini stroke, so when she next went to the doctor, I urged her to tell him the story. She did. What she discovered is that all out-of-whackness was caused her insomnia the previous night.

That is why this story is important and why, even though I worry my friend might think my writing this might be a betrayal, I ignored my inclination for self-censorship and posted it anyway. If you have a sleepless night, especially if you are getting up in years, please stay home even if you feel fine. Truly, the symptoms she showed were traumatic and life-threatening (for me too) and are common side effects of a sleepless night. It makes me wonder how many people are going about their lives as if everything is fine, when in fact, it isn’t.

I’m lucky in that I don’t worry about not sleeping. If I have a rare sleepless night, I just stay home the next day. And if I ever can’t because of an appointment, I hope I am as smart as I am urging you to be and cancel the appointment.

It’s funny how small things can have such devastating effects. We never think of a sleepless night as being life threatening in the short run, but it is or it can be.

So be careful. Please. And don’t drive if you’ve had a sleepless night.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, dealing with old age, history/myth, life. Tags: , , , , . 13 Comments »

Profound Advice

May 29, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What’s the most profound piece of advice you’ve been given? Did you take it?
View all responses

WordPress, the host of my blog, is starting to pull out all sorts of tricks to get us more involved, or so I imagine, since people tend not to like long-form blogging anymore, seeming to prefer the photos, quick clips, and brief comments posted on most social networking sites. Some of what WordPress is doing is fun — for example, I won a “streak freeze” badge, which if I’m reading it right, if I miss a day of blogging activity, it still counts as an active day. It won’t matter to me and my personal stats, though. If I miss a day, I’m honest enough to admit it, if only to myself, but so far this year, I’ve posted each day. (149 days in a row so far.)

Oddly, though WordPress does keep tabs of my posting “streak,” they’ve only been counting the past ten days for their new activity badge, so according to that I’m on a 10-day streak.

Another thing they are doing, besides the badges and different challenges, is listing the blogs I posted on a particular day. Supposedly, I’ve only posted five times on a May 29th, but they don’t seem to include the ten years prior to 2016 when I was blogging every day. If I really cared, of course, I could go back and find those posts for myself, but I don’t. Don’t care, I mean. The past is the past.

Still, I did check out a few of the previous May 29 posts that they listed, and I came across an interesting one that seems to fit today’s blog prompt. In the post, When You Have to Go, I mentioned all the different places I went when I had to “go” during my cross-country trip, and I found a bit of advice that I’d forgotten. I don’t even remember who told me, but it was profound to me, anyway. She suggested that when I was camping, I should take a quart yogurt container into the tent for late night emergencies. The container easily contours to fit, and the cover made it spill proof. I followed her advice, and it truly was miraculous! I keep a container in my house in case of plumbing problems, which has also been a boon.

Okay, so the advice wasn’t profound in the sense of emotional or philosophical depth, or of something with far-reaching significance, and I’m sure it wasn’t the most profound advice I’d ever been given (though I can’t think of any such advice offhand), and yet, when you have to go, there’s nothing more profound than a place (or a yogurt container) to find relief.

Incidentally, the photo attached to this post is one I took at the Kohler Design Center located in Kohler, Wisconsin. If you look closely, you will see that the sculpture, which took up an entire wall, was created from dozens of stacked toilets.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, How to, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , , , . 11 Comments »

Nothing Doing

May 28, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I live in a town with a unique atmospheric configuration: a donut. Sometimes storms that punish surrounding areas gently move around the town as if to spare us good folk. Other times, it says “Oops, made a mistake,” and dumps the months of missed rain all at once while sparing others.

It rained almost all day yesterday, from about 11:00am to 8:00pm. Part of that was a beginning and an ending drizzle, but for the rest, it was a respectable rain. I imagine with as widespread as the storm was and as long as it lasted, that this entire area got much needed rain, not just as, and that’s great — it’s been months since we’ve had any moisture that made a significant difference.

The best part for me is that, aside from the great all-around soaking rather than simply the area watering that I do, is that I get two days off from . . . well, from everything. I won’t need to water for at least a couple of days. The ground is so wet that although pulling up weeds is easier, the heavy clay mud takes the “fun” out of the chore. And the alley I’d have to navigate if I wanted to use my car, is a quagmire.

It’s funny that even though every day is a day off for me, rain days and après rain days still seem a special treat of nothing doing (doing a whole lot of nothing, in other words). Oh, for sure, I will do things — a load of laundry is drying at the moment — but I get to cocoon myself in a dry home while the outside world deals with mud, bugs, and humidity. Tomorrow I’ll probably go out and pull a few weeds or do something to make me feel productive, because by then, the squishy mud will have dried to a more even footing. (You’d think with my grassy areas and crushed rock pathways, that mud wouldn’t be an issue, but most of my garden areas are too big for a simple reach. I actually have to climb in among the plants to get to the objectionable ones.) But tomorrow is not something I have to worry about today.

Today is . . .  freedom!

 

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

 

Posted in gardening, home, life. Tags: , , , , . 2 Comments »

Grateful for My Simple Life

May 27, 2026 — Pat Bertram

This is not another “ideal life” post, but it comes close. For sure, though, it’s a post about gratitude.

I am utterly and sincerely grateful for my simple life.

I just talked to a woman who has a four-hour daily commute for work, an Australian fiancé, a young son she has sole custody of, all of which turns her life into a logistical . . . well, not nightmare, because her son and her soon-to-be husband are not nightmares, but it creates an untenable situation. He can come here and they can get married, but once he’s applied for a green card he can’t go back to Australia for more than a year. And the same if she were to get married there. They don’t want to live here particularly, but they can’t take the child out of the country until he’s old enough to decide for himself where he wants to live. And if the fiancé moves here, he loses a great job, moves to a place he doesn’t particularly like, and leaves his extended family behind.

As we talked, she mentioned a few other logistical problems. Then we moved on to other topics, such as a mutual acquaintance who is dealing with some of the same issues, though he doesn’t mind living in Thailand with his new wife until she’s able to come to the USA. He has people here who take care of his house for him (me being one of them), but still, he’s been up in the air for over a year about what is eventually going to happen.

And a close relative recently married a Vietnamese woman who was twice turned down for a visitor’s visa. Now they have to go through the lengthy wait for immigration and then a visa (two different bureaucracies, apparently. It’s possible to be okayed for immigration but turned down for a visa.) She doesn’t want to be a US citizen, he doesn’t want to live there permanently (though they are hoping for six months in each place), so I don’t quite know how all that will work out.

But . . . and it’s a big but for me — it’s not my problem!!!

I don’t travel so I don’t have the possible nightmare of falling in love with someone from another country who may or may not be eligible for a move to this country. Frankly, I have no intention of ever being with anyone again. No falling in love, no getting married, no living with anyone. So, see? Simple!! I have no small children to take into consideration, no elderly parents, no horrible commute, no travel expenses.

It’s just me, my house, my simple life.

Maybe it’s a bit insensitive of me to be giving thanks for this simplicity when friends and relatives are dealing with such complexity, but this is the way things turned out for me. Usually at this point, I add a caveat about being aware that on a moment’s notice, things in life can change drastically (perhaps worse but possibly better) but I decided not to do that. I’m just going to bask in the simplicity — and gratefulness — of today.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, house, life, relationships. Tags: , , , , , , . 4 Comments »
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