Clarity/Focus –>Curiosity/Happiness

On this last day of 2021 I'm thinking about my Word of the Year, CLARITY. I never live into anything as much as I hope or intend to... including Words of the Year. But maybe the only way we ever really see anything is in the rearview, so I'm looking back on ways that some …

Birthdays, Bucket Lists, and Beginning Again (Again)

I may have mentioned that I've moved a lot (ha). The longest I've lived in one place was just shy of 4 years in the suburbs of Chicago, and it happened twice: 5th through 8th grades, and again as an adult, from 2005-2009. Counted together, I guess those almost-eight years mean I'm more Chicagoan than …

To Everything a Season, and Trying to Be Ready for Anything

We're two weeks from Back to School, and I'm reminded once again that my life---even twenty years after my own last day of school---runs by the seasons of semesters. Back to school means autumn: shorter days of sunlight but longer days of solitude. This year, in particular, I'm curious how short or long the days …

What I Did on My Summer Vacation; or, Taking Things Apart

A couple weeks ago I took on a spur-of-the-moment, purely experimental knitting project. I'd heard that inside every Major League Baseball is a couple hundred yards of knittable yarn. As a fan of both baseball and yarn, I had to see for myself. I dove into the process of unpicking the ball's red stitching, unwinding …

Treadmill Pilgrim, Part 1: The Camino in my Basement

This is an intro to upcoming posts about pilgrimage---both outer and inner: the ways we move forward, the reasons we go, the company we keep, and the hopes that draw us onward. After I finished the Sesame Street 5K Fun Run I signed up for at the end of April, I was hurting. I'd been …

Working By Hand, and Minding My Business

I've seen this saying making the rounds and it's certainly been true around here: Life has been very lifey lately. Good intentions have gone out the window: regular blog posts, keeping up with laundry, eating more veggies... nah. We've all had senioritis (in spite of having no seniors in the house). It seems we've been …

The Writer’s Life; Or, How to Succeed in Writing Without Actually Writing

Spoiler: you can't. Apparently. Lately I've realized I'm more in the habit of thinking of myself as a writer than of actually being a writer. My first publication was in the newspaper in Springfield, Missouri, when I was in first grade. It was an exceptional (if I do say so myself) poem about our puppy …

Working for a Living: Or… Not.

I'm a stay-at-home mom. I've been one as long as I've been a mom, nearly 17 years. Before that I was a stay-at-home wife. This is not the life I ever wanted. And when someone asks me "What do you do?" I still feel embarrassed and stumble around an answer that feels weak and unconvincing, …

Spring Cleaning: A Matter of Life (and, yes, Death)

I have so many Spring Cleaning posts written... in my head. I wrote actual posts about spring cleaning my workspace and what it says about the way I work, and spring cleaning my closet and what it says about the way I dress, and shop, and live with my body. Then I spent the rest …

Spring Cleaning: Closets, Consumerism, and Who Cares

I'm bad at clothes. This is not new, and over the years I've spent many, many (shamefully many) more hours thinking about my wardrobe than I want to admit. As a teenager I had the typical issues: wanting more expensive clothes than my family could afford (how I coveted anything with a Guess or Esprit …