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the forty-secondth one.
Last week (maybe the week before – who is keeping track of the days anyway?) was my birthday. I decided if there was ever a year for me to take matters into my own hands for my birthday celebrating, this was the year. When the kids asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday my answer was immediate. “I want to go find that Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest and see some giant trees. And. I want all of your guys to go with me and be happy about it.” And so we did. And so they were. Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest is a spot I have held in my imagination…
Keep Reading . . .
Guatemala: Day One
love. (for a concert and a band.)
books that work their own magic.
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this is what it sometimes looks like ….
During pre-bedtime prayers the puppy loudly learns that he has the ability to completely leap on to the kitchen table and help himself to a plate of leftovers. Someone says, “Oh, Mom. Yeah. We ran out of cat food. I meant to tell you last week.” I discover a completely empty, recently purchased, bottle of body wash in the bath tub. No one can explain it and no one is any cleaner than they were. Cobwebs form on every surface, seemingly overnight. Recipes are crafted purely from imaginations and we are all forced to sample bread-like dough muffins filled with raisins and mini marshmallows. A boy rises from his sleep…
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soon, but not right now.
There’s a lot on my brain right now. And kind of nothing there at all. Do you know what I mean? I have so many posts jotted on backs of pages and wadded up in one of the three bags I routinely use. (My three bags range in size – small, medium, large. That’s all the options I need.) I miss the act of writing when a day is too full or the internet is too unavailable for me to accomplish the practice of words put to “page”. I’m still longing for the time when these words here make some sort of tangible income – be it through a book…
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about hope and band aids that only cover but don’t heal and the beauty that remains
A couple years ago there was this article circulating amongst the social media fodder about the dangerous use of Instagram and Facebook to make one’s life look unreasonably beautiful and perfect. And (way back then) I wrote a post about how I think it’s perfectly fine and completely fitting to share your favorite pretty moments and your kids dressed in plaid if you feel like it. I think that’s how I’ve been feeling again lately with posts and updates and all that jazz. There’s just so much and so much and piles on top of piles (and no, the extra so much is not a typo) of less than stellar moments…
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a picture book of the days.
The days have just been flying by. We have taken great pleasure in hanging out with our friends this week and have tried to stuff the days with fun memories, relaxing moments, rope swings, baking and sharing our town with our out-of-town buddies. And – I find that I am just too tired or too something to write at the end of the day. Please forgive me for resorting to sharing another series of photos. But it’s what I’m going to do ………
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the way it is tonight.
Hi friends. I just spent twenty minutes writing a cute post about today. It wasn’t genius. It wasn’t hilarious. But it was pretty pleasant. And, more importantly, it was finished. I don’t know what happened next. I blinked. The dog yawned. I stretched my legs. I looked at the screen and some words appeared that said something like “are you sure you want to do this?” but I didn’t know what it was talking about and there was nothing else to click so I clicked some link and suddenly all of my pretty pleasant little words were gone. I just spent twenty minutes trying to retrieve them. I can’t…
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he speaks. we laugh.
Out of the mouth of O-T-T-O. (Which is how he says his name some days. All spelled out.) “I love everybody in this house – but not strangers.”
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the birthday day.
What a wonderfully sweet twelfth birthday London Eli enjoyed. And I am so tired, somehow. Maybe because of the early rising to bake monkey bread and sausage per the birthday girl’s request. And to bake that extra cake that just didn’t get baked earlier. And to whip up the frosting. It was both quietly satisfying to bake a cake before eight a.m. and highly unusual for me to be productive at that time of the morning. But hey, it’s a birthday morning. You gotta do what you gotta do. We opened presents and enjoyed a lovely breakfast together as a family. For a really long time London has been pondering…
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happy birthday my twelve year old lovely.
It was the eve of my thirtieth birthday. I was scared. Terrified – actually. Afraid of giving birth. But you can’t stop what nature has started and late that evening, an incredibly beautiful and tiny London Elizabeth Scout was born into this crooked world to hopelessly flawed parents. She was magnificent. She was itty bitty and brand spankin’ new and gloriously perfect in our eyes. It was after midnight and I found myself somehow entirely alone in a hospital room in my hometown in Virginia, cradling this swaddled, wrinkly, smooshy-foreheaded newborn in my amateur arms and singing a quiet little whispery birthday song to the both of us. “Happy birthday to us.…
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thriving in captivity: the story of an exile
Today this phrase – this piece of a sentence – was spoken to me. Thrive in captivity. And I can’t stop thinking about it. What does that mean? How does one do that? What does that look like? It’s a garden in prison. You know? A flower box inside a jail cell. It’s being a slave but not losing hope. It’s like being a foreigner but not being forsaken. The idea really captures me. And my language here might be a mix and a jumble of both my words and my thoughts and her prompting and her questioning and I hope that doesn’t qualify as plagarizing…
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cute strikes again.
I know I have an addiction to Cute. It’s made me say yes to goats because – they are so adorable. (No, Dad. They don’t produce any tangible product for our family. They produce happiness. And cuteness is their commodity. I find it sufficient.) I do have the ability to say no, of course. And we have let our rabbit move on to greener pastures to minimize what animal care we can over here. (And by greener pastures I simply mean we found a very loving, better equipped, farm family to raise her.) But I’ve been longing for an inside dog. A friendly sleeps-in-your-room-at-night kind of canine companion. A cute one. I tried,…
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when plans change
It was Friday afternoon. The clock was ticking away and the kids were watching it move until the 1:30 magic number was reached. Swimsuits were on. Sunscreen applied. Goggles positioned as headgear. Towels draped over shoulders. Their brains filled with thoughts of splashing and swimming strokes and rafts and diving for rings at the pool’s deepest bottom. That was the plan. An afternoon swim date. Listed on the calendar. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches scarfed down, a peach following after as an on-the-go lunch so the maximum swim time could be spent in the water and not on the water’s edge. And then. Then the text. The pool was not going…
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tuck in time.
I love the simple honesty of six. Tucking Otto in at bedtime is always sweet. He’s cuddly and huggy and all adorable with his back rubs and his face touches and his little cooing noises. But it’s been a little hard lately come the bedtime hour because it seems as though we returned from Virginia but perhaps Baby Timmy has not. As if we need anything else to make our bedtime routine more traumatic than it already is. (Baby Timmy. Otto’s special blanket. His special very-very-worn-out-kind-of-super-gross-but-special-to-us-ratty-torn-up-tied-together-used-to-be-yellow blanket and sleeping companion. Yes, I agree that six might be too old for such a ragged out sleeping buddy. But. I don’t care.) Anyway.…
