
WELCOME
Peace be with you
Welcome to stillhotunderthecollar.com, a continuing conversation for those things that stir us up, give us pause, or make us hot under the collar.
Monday Morning Musing: Poured Out
In four months it will be Christmas Day. In a few days it will be three months since Bruce died. Time has taken on an almost slippery...
Monday Morning Musing: In Bruce's Own Words
I’ve written so much about Bruce’s death and my grief. But Bruce lived a big life. And he would have been the last person to tell you...
Monday Morning Musing: Cloudy With a Chance of Tears
The Pacific Northwest is having a heat wave just now….we reached 90 degrees yesterday and the same is forecast for today and tomorrow. ...
Monday Morning Musing: August Arrivals
Time, as we grieve, as I grieve, has taken on a strange quality. Twenty three days of May were lost to the calendar, it seems, and belong...
Monday Morning Musing: Light and Shadows
There’s so much that I learned from Bruce over the almost two decades of our relationship. It was fortuitous that, while we held the...
Matchbox Messages + Other Pink Signs
I am really just winging this grieving/bereavement thing. Honestly. Someone recently chastised me, me, over here still counting in...
Call My Name
This one hits so differently this year. Honestly, everything hits differently now. Making coffee, going to sleep, waking up….nothing is...
Monday Morning Musing: God Calling
I’m beginning this Monday after a full and lively weekend of celebrations for my new colleague at Gloria Dei, Pastor Zach. Or, as the...
Monday Morning Musing: Signs, Signs, Everywhere....
Bruce proposed marriage to me in the least romantic place possible….in front of a STOP sign while parked in the carpool line at my...
Monday Morning Musing: Healing One Another
In the days following Bruce’s death I had a repeated longing to talk to my maternal grandmother, my Nanny. She has been gone from this...
Independence Day
Bruce and I were never consistent about how we celebrated Independence Day. Sometimes we just stayed at home. Sometimes we braved the...
Monday Morning Musing: Time Travel
Yesterday I realized that we would have no June 31st on the calendar to mark the month since Bruce’s death. As we do in September,...
Monday Morning Musing: Maps & the Places We Inhabit
There is a store near Pike Place Market called Metzker’s Maps. I’ve always loved this shop where everything they sell is designed to...
Monday Morning Musing: Lean on Me
Lean on me, when you’re not strong, I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on, for it won’t be long ‘til I’m gonna need, somebody to...
Friday the 13th and Black Cat visitors
Friday, June 13, 2025 When Bruce was in the hospital, the day shift nurse always changed the day and date on the white board in his room,...
Monday Morning Musing: New Truths
For the past month, the majority of my writing has been posted to Caring Bridge. There was, I believe, exactly one Substack post in what...
Monday Morning Musing: The Beating of the Drum
For the first time since I started this Eastertide gratitude practice, I’ve let it lapse. It’s not that I am not grateful for many...
Fifty Days of Gratitude: Days 6,7,8,&9
Now that the PNW is trying its hardest to give us more consecutive days without rain, I’ve been walking outside more often than I do in...
Fifty Days of Gratitude: Day 5
This morning I read that the National Institutes of Health were going to cut funding that supports research into women’s health,...




















