HomeLife
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard
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parenting blues
Exhausting.Rewarding.Comical.Lonely.Time consuming.Lovely.A pain in the rear.Life giving.Emotional. Yes. All of the above. Parenting is ALL of that. And about a thousand things besides. I don’t have a plethora of experience with teenage boys, but I’m having a crash course in teenage girls. It’s ridiculous to compare. And nearly impossible to stop one’s self from doing it anyway. So many bits and pieces of life as a whole were entirely different when I was parenting my first teenage daughter. Naturally, she had her own personality to bring to the story. Her own story to add to ours. And – of course – there was an “ours”. Two parents do things differently…
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weekend ramble (break week is over, we threw axes, I want the sunshine to stay)
Although break weeks are glorious, they are also troubling. They end too quickly.We stay up too late.Our meals are haphazard and not at usual times.We all get a little extra sad when they are over. And this break week pretty much rained every single second of every single day. Here are a few things that happened: Mosely made a nearly perfect chocolate cake with some sort of dreamy fudge icing.Ryder enjoyed the remainder of the fudge icing because we walked out of the kitchen thoughtlessly.I started reading a collection of poems by Billy Collins that are so wonderful.I had a half day window of time that I was actually…
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five finds (asleep with a book, love anyway, i like big sinks)
BREAK WEEK! Whenever it’s break week I think – how am I still so busy when I removed one gigantic to-do item from my list? And by the end of break week I’m wondering how I ever have time to actually homeschool my kids. It’s been a great week – although I could have done without the endless rain. I had big thoughts for this week. I always have big thoughts for break weeks. I dreamed of a two day adventure to Charleston, a day trip to Congaree, time spent in the mountains of North Carolina. But we pretty much didn’t go farther than fifteen minutes away from our house…
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love. (for a concert and a band.)
Last fall, my friend Karen texted me. “Buy tickets for this show. You won’t regret it.” These words were followed by a link to purchase tickets to a show at the Peace Center. Drew Holcombe and Ellie Holcombe. The You & Me Tour. I was already very familiar with Ellie Holcombe. I’ve enjoyed her music for years. Probably mentioned it over and over on my Friday posts. It’s encouraging and hopeful, beautiful and upbeat. I knew that her husband was a musician, but for reasons unknown, I had never really listened to his music. I don’t know why, other than just straight up trusting my friend’s good judgment, but…
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weekend ramble (fishing, manicures and Noonday)
Time spent on work this weekend? Very little. And what a delight that was. (Of course, like any good grown up will tell you, time spent not doing work does not mean there is not work to do and the fact is – it is certainly out in cyber space and on lists waiting for my return.) Friday night I went to a little shop for a pedicure I’ve been intending to get since October probably. And somehow, while I was waiting for my turn, I got talked into receiving a manicure as well. Talked into by the nail tech and the kindest older lady receiving one herself. (She was…
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five finds friday: Dickens and Twists and a cake baker and a cuddler
It’s the end of another week full of . . . . well, full of everything. In the literature and writing course I teach my students are assigned copywork each week. The copywork is a quote or a short poem. It’s their task to write the quote down each day for a week. Then, when we meet together during class, the first thing we do is dictation. But really, for these students, it’s not even dictation – it’s just from memory. They write the quote down on a blank piece of paper – attempting to recreate the quote perfectly, with identical punctuation and spelling. Last week I assigned the longest…
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Noonday Trunk Show
Here are some things I love: Staying at home. Taking adventures. Hot tea. Big earrings. Sunny days. Hiking with people who are also happy to be hiking. Stacking several bracelets on one wrist. Clean sheets. When shopping is also for a good cause. Dinner cooked for me. Today’s post will not combine all of those. But it will hit on a few. I’m hosting a Noonday Trunk Show. Which means you can sit at home or at a coffee shop or in the parking lot of wherever your kid takes karate lessons/soccer practice/gymnastics and you can scroll through the spring lineup of Noonday earrings and bracelets and headbands and scarves…
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when even a basketball goal tells a good story
You guys have been my friends – both virtual and in real life – through a whole lotta years and a whole mess of life. (We’re talking toddlers and vomit and divorce and death.) All the dark, but plenty of light too. This is a story more about the light than the dark. More about the good shining through, than the dark closing in. It’s nice when it stacks up that way. I guess technically this is an affiliate post of sorts. But, it’s also an honest post – as I truly hope and intend for every word I write to be. It’s a post about a basketball goal. But…
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five finds friday (ryder dresses up & good friends are worth everything)
Goodness – we crammed a lot into one week this go round. I’m not sure I can even recall where this week began. Some days it felt as if we lived two or three days in that one twenty-four hour time period. But it wasn’t a bad week and I’m always grateful when that is true. funny When my brother and his wife surprised us with a visit this week, Ryder got his share of attention. Danny has loved dogs since as long as I can remember having an older brother named Danny. He used to routinely get in trouble at the dinner table (and the breakfast table) for feeding…
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weekend ramble (fly tying edition)
It was a full one. A Go & Do sort of weekend. One of my favorite Go & Do’s of the entire weekend was spent with Otto. His Christmas gift was a date to learn how to tie flies. Like – fishing flies. I don’t know if those are spelled differently than other sorts of flies. So far I’ve been bowling with Mosely and attended a brush lettering class with London, I’ve got an ax throwing date with Bergen and learning how to make pasta with Piper still to go. And none of those classes had the same price tag as this class with Otto. His was FREE. Which…
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Five Finds Friday (jewelry, ridiculous emails & oranges)
It’s Friday – hooray! This weekend I have a fun date with my younger son and the kids have some teenage events happening and it’s a funny mix of a house we live in lately, floating between grown and not. funny Lately I get more and more emails like this: They’re so ludicrous they make me laugh. Surprisingly, this guy is really a hidden gem! This is no joke. Except. It is. fashionable I think I’m going to do a Noonday online trunk show in February – because they have so much new pretty stuff. So save your pennies and don’t order any Noonday stuff until February – alright? Because…
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you’re worth it.
It’s the one room in your house that usually gets neglected. Especially if you are a parent. More especially if your children are still young. Laundry piles up. Clean piles. Where should I hang that painting that doesn’t exactly match our home but that I’m not ready to part with yet? It’s the resting space for those extra empty boxes from Amazon that you need to take out to recycling. The waiting projects. The broken toy you mean to repair. You’re thinking maybe the garage? Or the guest bedroom? Hey, maybe those are messy too, I don’t know. But I’m talking about the master bedroom. Your bedroom. What should be…
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single and other conditions
Life is just hard. Being married is hard. Being single is hard. I tell my teenagers – being human is hard. Someone recently asked me, but were you lonely even when you were married? Yes. Sometimes. Sometimes I was. And I have one friend whose foster son doesn’t want to go and doesn’t want to stay. Can’t find the yes and can’t find the no. What sort of world allows an eight year to feel so broken? I had coffee with a person recently and he shared stories of his youth and they were true and they were some kind of awful and he’s living through them all and…
