Our first house was a fixer upper. It had hardwood floors underneath worn tiles and original bead board in the kitchen behind 80s paneling and avocado appliances. It “rained” in the living room when we flushed the upstairs toilet….that was a surprise we found right after we closed on the house and began to remove the drop ceiling.

There is something cathartic about painting a room. The closest I have come to a state of oneness is when I am painting. I get lost in what I am doing until the old color has disappeared and the space is transformed. Yesterday I found that calm at my sister’s new home.

I got a Garmin Vivofit for Christmas because I needed a gentle reminder to get moving. It started off as a fun way to track activity and challenge my sister and her fiancée to see who is the most active but ended up teaching me an unintended lesson.

Last spring, we cut down several overgrown shrubs in front of our house. We hauled them off to the side of the yard forming a massive pile and vowed to deal with them soon. Our next door neighbor offered to burn them; he even went out of his way to get a burn permit and dropped it off to us.

Drip, drip, drip…..it is the sound of the slow drip of maple sap into a galvanized metal bucket hanging from a Sugar Maple. Only in New England can you enjoy a walk on the beach one day and find yourself 20 people deep sporting rubber boots as you follow a path through the woods over crunchy snow, patches of ice and the occasional strip of brown earth to learn about a very New England rite of early spring – Maple Sugaring.