-
this stuff really happens at our house.
Ryder is still under house arrest after his surgery. House arrest for this giant puppy involves leash walking exclusively for every bathroom break. We’ve got a decent little system of sharing the load between the kids and I and the friendly fur face is progressing nicely and honestly such a happy dog despite his kennel and his steel plate. However. Because this is real life and not a comic strip (But that would be funny – right? Think Calvin & Hobbes meets Family Circus meets one of those serious ones that no one ever actually reads.) sometimes the trips outside can get a little rowdy. Ryder is still a puppy…
-
numb and the hope of others
I think I’m going to pull my car into the parking lot labeled Numb. I think Ill just camp out here for a while. Just Numb. Recognizing that life is moving on around me, toward me, for me but I’m just not doing the same. I’m not doing the same. I’m just numb. People talk about hope. I don’t know right now. I think Hope is too prickly. It’s too dangerous. It’s too heavy. It’s too hard. When Emily Dickinson wrote her words about hope and its feathers and how it perches and when she wrote that “hope doesn’t ask a thing of me” well, I think maybe she was…
-
abundance, grit, desperate: lessons from the flower patch farm girl
I wish I had taken better notes. There were so many stellar speakers. So many good words. And I was going from zero to eighty because it’s been quite some time since I sat in a conference-style learning environment and paid close attention to grown ups speaking. Shannan Martin, known on her blog as Flower Patch Farm Girl, taught a session I attended. Her words certainly gave me pause. She had my dreamy ideal life. A lovely farmhouse home and a little spot of land to call her own. And then she and her family left all that. To move to a city and live on the other side of…
-
Go Set A Watchman: A Book Review
Since the dawn of the age of time I have made deals with myself about the books that I read. (It’s like I am always trying to trick myself into following some convoluted rules. Be careful. If you are my friend for long I will try to trick you into playing along.) After Allume, my stack of want-to-read books is on the verge of toppling across the floor so I decided to refocus my reading intentions. Generally my go-to reading pattern looks a little like this: fiction. fiction. non-fiction. fiction. classic. fiction. non-fiction. And then repeat. (This list is, of course, steadily interspersed with young adult fiction with the kids…
-
Attending Allume
“How’s it going so far?” That was the text from my friend. It being the Allume conference I was attending this last weekend. I laughed. (Yep. A real laugh that was sort of a hiccup but was very much made out loud.) How’s it going? Well. I knocked over a chair. My chocolate covered almond slid across the floor. I couldn’t get my tongue to agree with my brain when I opened my mouth to speak. I felt intimidated by the myriad of professional looking women laughing and having conversations all around me in the lovely Hyatt hotel lobby. The snacks were cooler than I was. You guys. I have…
-
(the first annual?) Autumn Poet Tea
Turns out it wasn’t enough to just enjoy our Poet Tea with the family. This week we welcomed with open arms the perfect loveliness of the autumn season. With open arms, sweet friends and thoughtful words from celebrated poets. And – with desserts! And tea too, of course. Oh my word, you guys. The cuteness was intoxicating. We invited a few friends and set out some fall treats in the moderate fall weather. (Pumpkin muffins and hand pies and scones and lemon curd and tea served in my mother’s tea pots.) Each of the guests were asked to come prepared to share an autumn poem. That was the best part.…
-
Field Trip: Eliada Corn Maze
The best part about writing for the local website Kidding Around Greenville has been embracing the opportunity to explore our own adventures right here where we live. Looking for article ideas for them has given me fresh eyes for discovering cool spots across the mountains in North Carolina and right here in our town too. Last week the kids and I made our favorite over-the-hill drive (I just can never get enough of those mountains, no matter the season) to Asheville to a well known annual corn maze that I had only heard about but had never visited. Eliada is an organization in Asheville that is doing really fabulous things for…
-
oh, the questions.
Why is there a pumpkin in the hall? Where did the number 11 on our steps vanish to? Why is Otto wearing gun range quality ear muffs while high step walking up the stairs? Whose ear pieces are those anyway? Why do my children insist on running the window unit AC in October? Why do the children’s feet still stink two minutes post shower? Where does that single mismatched sock under Bergen’s bed keep coming from?
-
cute dresses and sparkly skin.
Sometimes I put on sparkly lotion. (I don’t care if that was a style in 1980 and not in 2015.) I feel under dressed without my earrings. My bracelets dangling and stacked and clinking together on my wrist is a little joy to me. I dress this way because I want to dress this way. I wear my favorite black dress on a day I don’t even plan to leave my house. It’s what I do. And some days – it’s not what I do. Some days I wear the same running skirt all day long that I fell asleep wearing the night before. It’s how it is. (And I hadn’t…
-
words after dark . . .
My mind never rests. There’s no at-ease button. I lay down the book I am reading to review for a Book Club choice and it is as if I hear an audible click in my brain: Now. I should first – fill the diffuser with eucalyptus oil and run it in the bedroom where Otto and Piper and I are sleeping to combat the chest cold/cough thing we’re fighting against next – I should write this week’s meals on the menu board then – I should walk Ryder and after that – should I try to submit another article or take a break and watch a show? I hear sounds…
-
know this my sons & daughters
There are so many many things I want my children to know. (Jesus’ saving love. The parts of speech. How to look people in the eyes when they speak. The times tables. Their family’s history. What makes a work of literature great. How to climb a tree. The love of a good dog.) But. In its simplest form, I want my kids to know that I like them. That I really truly genuinely like them. I’m glad they exist. They are not, never have been, will never be a burden to me. I want them to remember more days of laughter than tears. More days of sunshine than gloom. But…
-
surprise & delight
About five or six years ago Kevin and I attended a conference in Chicago. (It remains one of my favorite memories of he and I. I don’t know how that part of my mind is supposed to work. I refuse to toss out the beautiful with the ugly.) The conference was cool and shifted my thoughts in lots of arenas, but one bit of magic that I took from there and have applied practically to where I am is a little term called surprise & delight. At the conference the surprise & delight was a part of the conference founder’s philosophy. In particular, that weekend, he used it as a guide to create…
-
this is not how the story ends ….
We live in a really hard world. People do wicked acts. Deceit is heavy. Cancer is stealthy. Death shocks our senses even when it is anticipated. We believe our own lies and our self-deception is astounding. (And I use the pronoun we intentionally and collectively.) So often I lie my head on my pillow at night (the portion of “my” pillow allotted to me by my eight year old daughter) and I think And that was another day that justice was not seen. Another day that seems as if evil is winning. Do you know what I mean? (maybe you do. maybe you don’t.) But it seems in itsy bitsy…
