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when I think there’s nothing to write about, there usually is . . .
I’m still trying to devise some apparatus that increases the hours in my day. Or blinders so I will ignore all the distractions that keep me from staying on task. It keeps being midnight and I keep still having a lot that hasn’t gotten checked off my list. I’ve been half heartedly listening to an audio book entitled Hands Free Mama and I think I audibly gasped when the author talked about literally throwing your to-do list in the trash. That feels like Crazy Talk to my brain. (But I’m still listening and thinking. Listening and trying to remain open to all I am hearing. We’ll see.) I’m also reading through…
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on fear and back roads and what once was scary but now is not
This past weekend I was driving in the dark down some Virginia backroads. The dark in rural Virginia feels way more dark than the dark in South Carolina. There aren’t street lights or lamps or houses very close to the road. Neighborhoods aren’t dotting the path and the night seems more dark somehow. Driving the rural roads this weekend reminded me of driving those same familiar roads twenty years earlier. And twenty-five years earlier. And I could remember with painful clarity a feeling I used to have when driving those roads home from work – alone – late at night – on my way back to the farm. Or driving…
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the maple weekend: a comedy of errors
Oh goodness, our weekend was plum full of good intentions. (I’m a feelin’ like story telling’, so settle in friends) What We Planned: Drive to Virginia. (The Motherland. The Oasis.) Meet my brother. (That wiley New Zealand one.) Visit the Maple Festival together in Highland County. What Actually Happened: We got to Virginia. That part worked out pretty much just as planned. Check. On Saturday morning the kids and I loaded up and prepared for the two hour drive up the mountain, anxiously anticipating All Things Maple. Maple donuts. Maple cotton candy. Maple syrup. Maple pancakes. Maple BBQ. Maple candy. Maple sugar. Maple cream. Maple skies. Maple roads. Maple friendships.…
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Five Finds Friday (seventeen) (kayaks and gouda grilled cheese and the bad lip reading)
FUNNY I can’t put my finger exactly on why this is so funny. But it just is. There’s Jack Black’s voice in there and it’s such ludicrous lip reading. FASHIONABLE Dapper Ink is a local print shop. Their work is fabulous. (I have the best little business cards designed by Emma and printed by Dapper Ink. I love them.) They have a new(ish) project called The Landmark Project. I love all of their shirt designs. But I am especially fond of this one. (I do wish they carried it in the women’s cut.) FLAVORFUL I brought this favorite grilled cheese version out when all the buddies were here for that…
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that’s right, john ronald reuel
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
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Mobi Max Math Game: A Review
(Cheers and party emoticons, you guys – it’s my first Timberdoodle review. Thanks to Timberdoodle I have the opportunity to receive this math game at no cost in exchange for my honest review – with opinions all of my own. The opinions — that’s the easy part!) Math and I aren’t BFFs so when I see anything that can make math seem fun or attractive or appealing — I’ll give it a shot. The Mobi Max Game arrived in the mail and the first impressions were of its cool packaging. Eh. Maybe fun packaging shouldn’t matter – but we all know, it does. The whale is cute, has a hook for hanging…
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Book Review: Homecoming
There are some characters in novels that stick with you all of your life. Do you know what I mean? We all remember Ramona Quimby – right? People fall in love with Harry Potter and Frodo and Lucy Pevensie. Maybe you can’t forget Oliver Twist or that one big guy in Of Mice and Men. I remember a girl named Dicey as if we were next door neighbors or first cousins. She and her siblings are the main characters in a book series by Cynthia Voight. The first novel is Homecoming and the storyline shocked me as a kid and stuck right in my gut somewhere and I’ve never forgotten…
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an education of sorts
I am learning to come to terms with the fact that my life is both beautiful and hard. I am learning to live content in the presence of both grief and joy. This is a tension not unfamiliar to me. When my mother passed away I received my first taste of the bitter and the beautiful in one life-altering mouthful. Season after season, the birth of two new children, life’s highs and lows, brought me face to face with both missing my mother and loving my life. Being grateful and being sad. Simultaneously. Constantly. A new steady. And now. After all that practice. I have new lessons to learn. A…
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Five Finds Friday (sixteen)
Well. This Friday came faster than others now, didn’t it? FUNNY Sometimes we just can’t help ourselves – the kids and I. We get started watching old Tripp & Tyler videos and we just keep clicking and clicking. I don’t know how we missed this one, but the Truth or Dare episode is hilarious. I want to play this version now – I’m looking at you Abby. I’m looking at you. FASHIONABLE Before I ever met Sean Penn I made friends with a sling back purse. The newest version from Patagonia is updated with some different zippers, but it’s still basically the same bag. I think mine is going…
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The Half Marathon. That I ran. Yes. I did.
Up until a few days ago I had never run farther than six and a half miles at one time. And that was only once. I still don’t know how to exactly think of myself as a runner. Remember my first 5K? I have zero explanation for how this happened but at some point in the past five months or so Amanda and hannaH said they were planning to run a half marathon. We were eating dinner. I smiled at them. They talked about the women who were signing up to run it with them. I smiled some more. Made some joke wondering why they hadn’t invited me into…
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dear friends ….
I am very tired. A lot busy. Too many spinning plates. Yesterday might have been an extra day on the calendar but it certainly doesn’t feel like an extra day in my schedule. My to-do list is unnerving and I think I have let the list get lopsided. I have a hard time returning texts and answering phone calls and checking off all the boxes. And I have no Brain Space for Any Of The Words tonight. So, if you’ll please forgive me, I’ll be back soon with regular words and regular thoughts. Until then – you’ll still be my friends, right?
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Five Finds Friday (fifteen) (loose tooth and BBQ sauce. unrelated.)
Hooray. It’s Friday. FUNNY I have six children. They each have a mouth. And in those six mouths you would find the normal human amount of teeth. And – during the course of five of their lives – they have all lost the normal amount of baby teeth. I’m not great at math and I’m unwilling to figure out the exact number but you can assume with me that the baby teeth lost numbers are high in this family. Yesterday Otto – the baby of the family and the Keigley with the most baby teeth still in his mouth – lost his FIRST tooth. It was perfect poetic justice that the…
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is “alone” a curse word?
Life is funny. (And by funny I probably mean about one thousand other words but funny works too so let’s just stick with that one word.) I had this experience a week or more ago. Life handed me about two hours, a sold out movie to which I had received two free tickets and alone time as my daughter, who was to attend said movie with me, had a sick husband to tend to. So what do you do with two hours, a movie you can no longer watch, an already planned childcare arrangement and nothing that has to be accomplished? You go into a nearby Barnes & Noble and…
