HomeLife
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard
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How To Find Me Now
Hello dear friends! There is a treasure trove of story here – photos and memories and bits and pieces of my heart. I’m still writing and sharing. But I’ve tried to make it easier for you (and certainly easier for me) on a new platform. It’s called Substack and you can find it right here. The writing is the same. The handy dandy part of Substack is that you sign up for the posts and they are delivered directly to your email. It’s all free! (You can pay for a subscription and that helps support my writing, but it’s most definitely not required.) See you on Substack!
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How to Get Over the Guilty Feeling of Relaxing
Have you ever felt a pang of guilt when you’re not doing something “productive”? Like, you finally get a moment to chill on the couch, look into where The Last of Us streaming, so you can have a binge-fest. But instead of enjoying it, you’re plagued by thoughts of all the things you should be doing. Maybe you should be doing something like cooking, running some errands, cleaning, or doing a DIY beauty routine before bed. Well, welcome to the club! Thanks to hustle culture and this whole mentality of always getting stuff done (or making money), many of us are in the same boat, feeling like we need to…
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The Post Winter Home Health Check
Though it’s not quite over yet, we’re starting to look at the end of winter, as well as those comfy winter feels, and the thaw to what has felt like a pretty bitter cold over the last few weeks. Before you start looking for ways to escape the home into better weather, however, you should make sure that the stress of winter hasn’t done a number on it. Here, we’re going to look at all of the little checks you should make, and the tasks you should do to ensure that your home can be prepared for spring. Take a look at the roof Whether it’s just because you’ve been…
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… typing therapy …
I haven’t picked up a pen or logged into a post in over a month. Which, incidentally, means I have not really processed or worked through a solid feeling in about that long either. Who could? Who can? I have never understood people who say, “I have no regrets.” I HAVE A MILLION REGRETS. I regret wasted time and wasted worry. I think about YEARS I spent selling myself short and thinking endurance and keeping the peace was more important than healthy relationships and setting important boundaries. I regret not finishing book ideas earlier and I regret being distracted when my babies were toddlers. Shoot, I probably regret what I…
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oh, the month ahead. and the month now.
If I could draw a picture of me right now, what I feel like somewhere inside, it would probably look a little like some Monet version of me because I feel more like an impression lately than a solid shape. And I’d probably have my hands at my head, maybe pulling my hair in two directions and shouting, “THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH TIME.” Because. There isn’t. At Book Club this week Heather said, “It’s about to be Mayhem” and I was like – what, why have I never heard that phrase before. BECAUSE MAY IS INSANE. Was it always insane? It it only insane to parents because schools try to…
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here we go …
Well February came up real fast on us now, didn’t it? Over the last few weeks I have: Lived life with five teenagers. Readjusted to having London home again as she begins local college classes. And by readjusted, I actually don’t really mean that. I love having her home and she’s been a fabulous help – dishes and meals and driving siblings. But that late night college life schedule is hard to curb once you’ve gotten a taste for it. And it does NOT partner well with a thirteen year old. Or a forty nine year old, to tell the truth. Created a gallery wall in my house that I…
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you can’t call it a mid-life crisis.
I doubt I’m living until I’m 100. (And I’m mostly okay with that.) So I can’t fairly call All The Current Feelings mid-life related. In fact, it is possibly precisely because I recognize that I am no longer mid-life that I am feeling whatever it is I am feeling. Were those sentences helpful? Doubtful. Flannery O’Connor said, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” Same, Flannery. Same. I’ve been waking up in mid-night with these thoughts. I’ve been missing sleep with these thoughts. I’ve been preoccupied with these thoughts. I have a senior again this year. Third row straight. And I’ve been…
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the winter feels
The thing about winter in South Carolina is that it’s not all that different from fall in South Carolina or spring in South Carolina, weather-wise. And that makes me sad. I need some snow. A crisp breeze. A forecast with low temperatures. A chill factor. I know I have chosen to live in the wrong part of the country to achieve these simple winter goals but I am not able to alter that course currently. You know what month is not my favorite? This one. Or February. Both. I have two months that are not my favorites. But here we are anyway. I like starting things. But being in the…
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that magic moment
Imagine you live in a place where snow is a rarity. Say, South Carolina, for example. And you somehow missed the news of the potential snow and the mad dash of Southerners to grab up every loaf of bread and gallon of milk as if we might actually be trapped in our homes by the snow. So there you are. Blissfully unaware of the long lines and the milk rush and you go to bed like you normally do. Then imagine you wake up, earlier than anyone in your house, and you scuttle around quietly and as you head to the kettle to start the water boiling for your morning…
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five finds friday: dutch babies & my babies all grown
It’s Friday and it’s already December and I guess that is just how it’s going. Our tree is up – about a week early, breaking Keigley tradition in order to be sure London could decorate with us. But I have liked having the cheerful lights and the happy ornaments in the living room for an extra week. It’s been so long since I have written a Five Finds post that I think I’m out of practice. (I had to look up what each of the five Fs were!) But you know what I am NOT out of practice doing? Giving my opinions. And that’s basically all Five Finds Friday is.…
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Thanksgiving Tables …
It’s Thanksgiving week and we all know it’s a FASSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTT roll right on to January from here on out. But it’s Thanksgiving this week so let’s focus on that. I’ve got my college girl home and we’ve got our family Thanksgiving dinner this week and every single Keigley kid will be together at one table at one time and that is delightful! We’re keeping it relatively low key this year but low key does NOT mean that there won’t be plenty of pies and too much food in general. One of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving week is the day after the big meal. Yep – the day after Thanksgiving.…
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Stages & Seasons: From Diapers to Dissatisfaction
There was the season of diapers. Remember that? It was almost an ENTIRE DECADE at my house. I cannot even believe that. For nearly ten years of my life I was in charge of checking for poop, wiping poop, cleaning poop et cetera ad nausem. Now I live in a frat teen house. Teens are everywhere. More accurately, the teens are often difficult to find but their STUFF is everywhere. (I’ll warn you, I might use an excessive amount of capital letters in this post. YES IT IS NECESSARY.) Bergen collects jackets. Thick jackets. Sherpa lined coats. Denim jackets. A pea coat just joined the family. He routinely scours thrift…
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This Age.
Ryder and I are the same age, apparently. He in dog years and me in people years. We’re both fans of slow moving and it seems like we spend our days switching from one spot to the next throughout the house. He to rest and nap and me to write and read and work. I went out to eat recently with a few friends. The light was dim, but not that dim. The words on the menu were small, but not that small. And guess what? I could not read them. Literally could not see the descriptions. I either had to guess or ask my friend. A few days after…
