Each morning begins with a ritual

Our ritual each morning is this: he pads barefooted to the kitchen. He is a fast waker-upper; I am not. Even though my eyes are still closed, I follow along by listening to the sounds he makes. I hear the shoosh of the water from the tap going into the tea kettle, and the click of him turning on the stove. He tends to favor the burner at the back of the stove to the right, while I am partial to the front burner on the left. With the water set to boil in a bright turquoise-colored kettle that I bought one day when I was feeling sad and drab, he crosses over to the far end of the living room where I hear him lower himself to the ground where he does pushups on a mat.

Facing another summer as an adult

Summer hasn’t even started, officially. But school is out, and as I’m writing this, my teen daughter is waking up on her first day of summer break. Her alarm clock went off at 6 a.m., a leftover relic of our automated life that cruises along during the school year. Instead of hitting snooze, she gets to hit “off.” In less than 24 hours, the clock has suddenly lost its authority.

Hope takes root

It was a gorgeous day at the garden center. A gentle breeze danced through the heavily perfumed air, playfully mixing and mingling with the sweet and savory scents of the flowers and herbs. The earthy scent of grass clippings and warm soil felt like a tender embrace, comfortable and calm.

Going Up? The harrowing ascent to the Yellow Brick Road

For a good five minutes, I was convinced I was going to have to listen to the Elton John concert while stuck in an elevator.

At, least, it felt like five minutes: the time it took for the elevator to arrive to take us up to our seats in the nosebleed section, where our seats were located at Ohio State University’s Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio. We were there to see Elton John perform live for his Farewell Tour.

We were relieved, my friends and I, to see there was an elevator operator, who had an air of authority perched on a stool in front of the panel of elevator buttons.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” said a woman to the elevator operator. “Up, please.”

A pencil-thin line between stranger and friend

In the summer of 1992, I was packing up for my first semester of college. I was 17, about to move to another state, to live in a dorm where I knew no one.

That’s when my Dad gave me a gift, wrapped in the comics from the Sunday paper. The Sunday funnies were always the first choice for wrapping paper in my house, and Dad would take extra care to wrap it so that his favorite comic strip — featuring Charlie Brown and Snoopy — were prominently displayed on top. You would never fold the flap over Snoopy, or place tape over Charlie Brown. No, the Peanuts gang always got top billing as gift wrap.

There’s no entrance exam for parenthood

Before we had children, my husband and I decided to adopt a cat.

We were in our early 20s, starting our jobs that we hoped would turn into careers, living in a sunny one-bedroom apartment. We had to download forms off the internet, fill them out, and take them to an office where a woman looked at us sternly from across her desk. She asked us if we had a vet.

A vet? No, we don’t have a vet. We don’t even have a pet. Yet.

There’s always room for one more

Last week, a group of dear college friends came to my house for fondue. Every few months, for the past 20-some years, we track each other down and have dinner together. Each time we gather, a new chapter is added to our ongoing stories: We’ve shrieked over engagement rings, attended each other’s weddings, compared swollen ankles during pregnancies. We’ve rocked each other’s babies and handed down clothing. We’ve helped each other move out of apartments and into houses. We’ve held each other at funerals and during divorces.

Pandemnesia

It could be argued that, between the fact that my husband is a band director at a large high school and that all four of our children have either gone through or are going through the music department at the same high school, I have attended dozens —-maybe hundreds? —- of concerts.

I enjoy the concerts, but you could say that over the course of a couple decades, the novelty of attending these live performances has worn a bit thin.

Confessions of a library lover

My childhood library stood directly across the street from the church where my father was a minister. When I wasn’t helping Dad in the church folding bulletins, or sharpening the pencils in the pews, I was across the street, exploring our local library. I spent hours there. Each time I entered the front doors and heard the soft trickle of water coming from the fountain in the lobby, I felt as though I’d walked into a space just as sacred as the sanctuary across the street.

When cleaning is all the rage

It never fails: I’ll walk into a room to see my husband hunched over, vigorously cleaning something: scrubbing grease splatters on the stove, attacking some muddy footprints on the entryway rug, or coaxing out the ginormous dust bunnies that collect in that little space between the oven and the refrigerator, peppered with stray popcorn seeds, or, if you’re lucky, some pocket change. He becomes so completely absorbed in the task at hand, that I’ll slowly, carefully approach him from the side. Align myself squarely in his peripheral vision. Avoid making sudden moves.

“Are you … mad?” I’ll ask him.

Missing my forest retreat

When we bought a little teardrop camper in 2019, we had no idea how much we’d love it. And, much to our surprise, our winter camping outings became even more cherished than in the summer: something about the near-vacant campsites, the icy glare of the moonlight reflected in the snow. With fewer humans around, we became more intensely aware of the hooting of an owl, or the skitter of deer as they ran to a stand of trees.

My word of the year

As much as I love the idea of New Year’s Resolutions, I rarely make them.

Many folks choose a word of the year, and I’m one of those people. I choose a word rather than making a goal that I know, at a cellular level, that I can’t reach. Behind me, I leave a trail of unrealized New Year’s resolutions.

Imposter syndrome

Ever feel like a phony?

I have been feeling like an imposter for the last few days. I pride myself in being a minimalist, talk about simplifying life, and blog about wanting less…yet, if you were to come to my house today, you’d see that a corner of my bedroom has overflowing stash-and-dash boxes filled with who-knows-what miscellany, and I have laundry in various stages of dirty, clean, sorted, unsorted, folded, and yet-to-be folded throughout my house. There’s a suspicious-looking potato lurking in the very back of my fridge. I’m overdue to go through my closet and drawers to get rid of clothes I don’t want/need anymore.

Proudly Serving the Community of
Sun City in Huntley

Life in Focus

Each morning begins with a ritual

Facing another summer as an adult

Hope takes root

Going Up? The harrowing ascent to the Yellow Brick Road

A pencil-thin line between stranger and friend

There’s no entrance exam for parenthood

There’s always room for one more

Pandemnesia

Confessions of a library lover

When cleaning is all the rage

Missing my forest retreat

My word of the year

Imposter syndrome

Singing my Hallelujahs

In the mood for food

Throw out your microwave

Finding My 15 Minutes of Sunday

Let’s taco bout my small house

Living in the (fun-sized) lap of luxury

Proudly Serving the Community of Sun City in Huntley

Proudly Serving the Community of
Sun City in Huntley