A DIY writing retreat

For as far back as I can remember, going on a writing retreat has held a certain allure. Blame it on my third-grade teacher, who encouraged me to enter a writing contest through the school. When my story advanced to state, I got the exciting news: I was invited to spend an entire Saturday at Illinois State University with other elementary school-aged writers. That day, I met my first real author, as I clutched a hardcover book that she signed on the inside cover with large loopy letters. I was star-struck. I was hooked.

The cosmic loophole of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse

The headline came to my phone while I was at work: “Pee-Wee Herman Actor Paul Reubens Dead at Age 70.” My heart sank. I waited for the world around me to take a collective moment to remember Paul Reubens. But in the office, phones kept ringing and computer keyboards kept clacking. My younger coworkers may not even know who Paul Reubens is. Was. But I knew.

Vactation, I’ve dreamed of this

It’s T-minus five days until vacation, and my legs and arms are restlessly pulsing along to the tune of the cicadas. It’s all I can think about.

My highly scheduled existence consists of work schedules, school schedules, and deadlines. My grocery lists are categorized into four columns where I systematically tick off each item as it lands in my cart. I write menu plans, fill out calendars, and make to-do lists: Lists of things I want to do. Lists of things I have to do. Lists of things I want other people to do.

Snapshots of the heart last a lifetime

After raising four children, I have certain mental snapshots I keep close to my heart. There was the day when my 5-year-old held my hand to cross the street. He paused to look up at me and said, “Momma, I love you so hard.”

There are those first few seconds when, after glancing over their shoulder, the realization sets in: Dad has let go of the back of the seat and they are, in fact, riding a two-wheeled bike.

Weaving in the Imperfections

I slid a slightly crooked hand-woven bookmark into the envelope before sealing it and mailing it to a friend. I attached a note:

“My newest fascination is hand weaving on a loom. I made this bookmark for you. It’s one of my first, but I’ll send another one after I’ve had more practice. Hopefully you’ll see my progress. Happy Reading!”

We are a bird-friendly family. We don’t put chemicals on our lawn, put out birdseed in the winter, and we are delighted when our bird friends chirp happily from the branches of our crabapple tree out our front window. But even our bird loving has limits.

Somewhere in the ‘In-Between’

I never met a notebook I didn’t like. My bookshelf is crammed with journals with creamy white paper. Some of the books have beautiful covers with vibrant colors; others are simply notebooks, the kind with the spiral binding made of metal wire. On the pages, I scrawl goals, recipes, scraps of ideas that I write down quickly, thinking I’ll come back later and recapture some brilliant idea that I didn’t want to let slip away.

Too difficult to even try: a conspiracy

This week I made spanakopita for the first time. It is a savory spinach pie consisting of spinach, feta cheese, egg, and fresh herbs, surrounded by flaky layers of phyllo dough. I love it.

Given the choice, I will always choose a spanakopita appetizer or entree at a restaurant or party.

Loving in specifics, not platitudes

I may have mentioned before in this column about my love of true-crime shows and podcasts. I enjoy hearing about the evidence, the motives, the sometimes arbitrary clue that will reveal itself by chance, leading to some top-shelf detective work. All of this, plus the final swift arm of justice that comes down on the perpetrator, are all satisfying parts of these shows.

Making do: the food of discovery

Every household probably has a go-to meal they whip up when there’s “no food in the house.” Maybe for you it’s a pb&j. A bowl of cereal can be nice. Some pasta with a little olive oil, garlic, and lemon, perhaps?

Time for a spring fling

Here we are again, on the precipice of a new season, and I open my closet doors each morning and immediately hate all my clothes.

It would be so much easier if I could just decide the night before what I was going to wear the next day, but for some reason, I never get around to it. That means often feeling completely defeated first thing in the morning.

Mornings are for coffee and playing happy music to get revved up for the day ahead. Mornings shouldn’t be about defeat.

Head for the trees when it’s all too much

The immediate neighborhood serves as a satisfactory landscape on weekdays for morning and evening walks with the dog, but on the weekend, the forest calls. As soon as I step onto a curved path winding through the trees, my lungs begin to tingle; I gulp the air laced with the perfume of soil and wood and leaves in various stages of birth, life, and decay. I can’t get enough of it! Even bare branches teem with life.

This is 22

Looking at my son’s face, it is easy for me to see him as he was when he was an infant, with silken hair kissed with just a touch of blonde. Or as a toddler, the way his cheeks would jiggle when he took halting, determined steps across the living room. I was there for all those little moments as he grew up: the birthday parties, the book reports, and the Band-Aids.

But that little toddler with the blonde hair is no longer around. That sweet, bespectacled student leaning over his homework has grown up.

Date night in the glow of the silver screen

It was my favorite kind of date night. My Gentleman Friend asked me if I wanted to go out to see a movie, A Man Called Otto. It was Sunday night, which made going out feel a little rebellious. We were going to squeeze just a little bit more “us time” out of the weekend.

Create a spending obstacle course

There is a story that’s become legend in our family: it’s about the day we took money from our baby’s piggy bank to buy groceries.

We had just moved halfway across the country from Illinois to Colorado. Our first son was just a toddler. I was primarily a stay-at-home mom, doing some freelance work on the side; my husband taught music to middle school kids in a small town situated in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains.

Delight is everywhere, if you look

My word of the year for 2022 was Delight. Instead of traditional New Year’s resolutions, I’ve tried to focus on one word to shape how I approach another year of life. So this year was about finding delight in the ordinary: being more spontaneous, tuning in to the world around me, searching for good things that might go unnoticed.

Scenes from the Big House

It was about 26 degrees the day I went with my daughter, son, and best friend to watch a football game at the University of Michigan, where my son is a freshman. This was my first football game watching the Wolverines at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. Nicknamed “The Big House,” the stadium is the largest stadium in the United States; the third largest in the world. It boasts over 107,000 seats. I only know this because my friend, the ticket holder, was kindly sharing her knowledge of sports trivia with me.

Regrets, I’ve had a few

Elon Musk, the Tesla billionaire, recently bought Twitter for $44 billion. Since the beginning of the year, Musk began purchasing shares of the publicly-owned social network, Monopoly-style, before announcing he would buy the company outright and privatize it. By May, the deal was put on hold. By summer, Musk hinted that he might abandon the deal to buy Twitter altogether. But in October, Musk finished the deal: $44 billion for the purchase of the platform.

Folks are leaving Twitter in droves, and many who remain are mercilessly trolling Musk with fake accounts impersonating him.

Just my type

It was as though the chocolate brown typewriter had a spotlight on it. There was no chance of passing by without admiring its beauty. I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

For the love of Autumn

Ahhh, she’s here. Can you feel it?

Although there is an official day on the calendar that tells us autumn is here, it isn’t really here until she glides effortlessly through the door, fashionably late for the party.

Woman laundering, mind wandering

I’d rather be doing something else than folding all this laundry. How many towels have I folded in my lifetime? How many fitted sheets have I wrestled with before half-folding, half rolling it into a croissant-shaped white flag of surrender?

Pomp(adour) and Circumstance

It was just 30 minutes before we had to go to the high school for the graduation ceremony, and it suddenly got quiet in the house. I couldn’t imagine where everyone had gone. Just a few minutes before, my son was frantically asking, “Where’s my tie?” “Has anyone seen my tassel?”

Now? I heard nothing.

Something’s afoot

My right foot looks like an overstuffed sausage in my black flats. Yesterday, a faint, kiwi-green bruise was on the top of my foot, casting a shadow on the bulging portion of my foot, which in turn spilled over the edges of the shoe, reminiscent of a muffin top. Today, the bruise has migrated closer to my toes—concealed by my shoe, at least — but angry and purple.

Ugh. I was trying to help out my Gentleman Friend, who is a band teacher at our local high school. It was the first home football game, which meant the first performance for the marching band, too. Everyone looked sharp: brass buttons shining on their jackets, plumed hats dancing impatiently in the breeze. They were lined up on the front stairs of the school, and all I had to do was snap the group photo to be used in the yearbook.

Letting go

There’s expectation in the air. It’s my daughter laying out different outfits on her bed, deciding on the perfect thing to wear to high school. It’s my husband, giving himself a smart haircut early in the morning before heading out to his teaching job. It’s the expanding stash of dorm room supplies growing in a corner, in anticipation of my son heading off to his freshman year at the university.

Yay-cation’s top five

Our annual family vacation took us more than 1,400 miles away to Utah: Our brand of vacation typically involves lots of driving, camping, and at least one National Park. This year, we visited Capitol Reef National Park and camped beneath a breathtaking view of a huge red cliff that took on ever-changing light and shadows from sunrise to sunset.

Even after being home for a couple days, I’m still feeling mellow and happy in my post-vacation glow. Here are my top five takeaways from vacation.

Sock-timism

I consider it a good day when I remove an even number of socks from the dryer. I always put in an even number, that I know. With military-like precision, I unroll each and every sock from the hamper and verify its mate before throwing it in the wash. But somehow, by the end of the drying cycle, something’s gone awry. There’s usually one, lonely sock.

I keep the single socks. What else can an optimist do? Admittedly, I have looked up articles like, “37+ Unusual Uses for Lonely Socks,” but I just wasn’t really in need of a sock puppet or golf club covers or windshield wiper cozies. I once made a cardboard box to go above my wash machine and labeled it “Sock Orphanage.” Soon, it was overflowing with socks, yet when I dumped them all out to sort them, none of them seemed to match.

This is only temporary

Every so often, I’ll have a week where it seems as if my coworkers hate me. Later that same week, my husband will start eyeing me in that way that convinces me he’s desperate to divorce me. My friends won’t call — a sure sign that they absolutely cannot stand me. And it isn’t just people turning against me — it’s dinner, scorched in the oven; the latch on the window that snaps off in my hand as I hurry to let the smoke from the oven escape. It’s the spot on my favorite pants, rendering them unwearable.

Little is cute, and oh so likable

Never have I been so reluctant to return a book to the library than Yossy Arefi’s Snacking Cakes: Simple Treats for Anytime Cravings. Most of the recipes are mixed in a single bowl, and use simple ingredients. I baked my way through that book, making the cute little cakes. I started with chocolate, then graduated onto oatmeal chocolate chip, lime-coconut, and finally plum-cardamom. Each cake reminded me of my time as an exchange student in Germany when I was in high school.

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