Janet's Blog

An old Nebraska hotel was a magical place to grow up, with creaky staircases and secret passages, expansive party rooms and a huge, mysterious basement where we played for hours and, of course, we met so many interesting people! We were just kids, but hotel living was our everyday reality. Our upbringing was not typical. My brother and sister and I were raised in two different hotels. We moved into the first, the Oxnard, in Norfolk, Nebraska, the week I started Kindergarten, and we moved out of the second, the Mary-Etta, in Fairbury, just two weeks before I graduated from Fairbury High School. I was 4 1/2 when Mom and Dad had a farm sale, bought the Oxnard, and moved to Norfolk. At first, Dad relied on a manager to oversee the hotel business while he worked for Nash Finch, loading and unloading freight that was being shipped to grocery stores all over northeastern Nebraska. It wasn't long, though, before he and Mom made the decision to move into the hotel and take over managing it ...

We don't often stop to think about the light that brightens our days. We take it for granted, expecting it as our right. After all, the sun comes up each morning and gives light even on the cloudiest of days. The moon shines clearly from many nighttime skies, and the stars twinkle brightly even when the moon is absent. And on those dark, cloudy nights, we still have street lights and headlights outside, and plenty of electric lights in our homes and businesses.  I woke up suddenly around 3:00 a.m. yesterday. The stillness was startling; even with the wind rattling the windows, I was aware of the complete absence of normal inside, background murmurings. The darkness was all-encompassing--no night lights glowing, no street lights casting their faint light through our shaded windows. When I picked up my phone to check the time, it lit up immediately, providing the comforting light we've all come to expect. That's when I realized that we were in the midst of a power outage. I r...

These Kids Are Driving Me Crazy is a book for adults who work with kids with neurodivergence or mental health issues. It is currently available on Amazon in Kindle ebook format as well as paperback. I started the book several years ago, soon after I officially retired from teaching. However, as long as I was homeschooling my son, Levi, I didn't have time to  concentrate on writing this book. It was much simpler to publish my first children's book,  Grandma Whatcha Doing? , which is also  available on Amazon. I decided that the Covid-impacted winter would be a good time to buckle down and finish writing the book I abbreviate as  Crazy! --as in   "the thought of actually finishing this book is driving me crazy!" When my church invited me to participate in a book signing earlier, I was motivated to have this book ready, too.      Life is all about building relationships, but that can be hard to do in a school or extracurricular setting, or even at ...

October really flew by this year, but some days, it seemed as though life was just creeping along. Either way, I have been having a hard time keeping up. Bill and I spent a few, fabulous days in New Orleans at the beginning of the month; then I had oral surgery, two-and-a-half hours away from home, in Fort Collins, which has meant three car trips back and forth, so far, and some unexpected, coexisting, health issues. I was just beginning to recover when our 13-year-old cat, Charlie, had to stay at the animal hospital three different times, before we made the hard decision to end his suffering. In the midst of it all, I was excited when my new children's book, Grandma, Whatcha Doing?  was published and became available for purchase on Amazon.com and  BarnesandNoble.com .  All of a sudden, I had to scramble to put together an author webpage, which can be found at  https://grandmajanetk.wordpress.com/ , and set up author pages on Amazon and Goodreads . ...