This week our family’s beloved matriarch, my mother-in-law, has entered into hospice. For those of you from other countries or areas that may not be familiar with what that is, it is end of life care. As Hannah reminded me, her grandmother always tells people to bring her flowers while she’s still alive because she won’t be around to appreciate them when she is dead. Out of deference to those wishes, and owing to the unknown nature of things, I am changing this week’s usual post and running a gratitude note for her tonight (which will go out in a separate post a few minutes from now).

I am not going to be giving any reading or viewing recommendations because I know in our family at least, everyone will be far too busy coming together to be with family. I will also be changing a bit the planned order of topics and the length of posts for the time being so as not to put any unnecessary burdens of reading on other members of our family, and there will come a time as part of this process where I will take two or three weeks off of writing to focus on the needs of our family at this time. I thank each of you who have been continuing to read with us each week for your understanding about this and that you patiently slog your way through my meandering posts each and every week. Much love, Ariana