HomeLife
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard
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weekend ramble (a short list accompanied by zero pictures)
Is it actually a blog post if you don’t use any photos? You tell me. Here is what I did this weekend, in part: Felt burned out, exhausted and comatose. Tried to compensate for said feelings by spending my Friday night lying perfectly still eating strawberries dipped in Nutella and catching up on This Is Us. (I’d stopped watching for a while and was quite behind. Because – good grief that show is emotionally draining. But. It was also somehow emotionally rewarding. Like – space to cry for problems that weren’t my own and, I don’t know, it’s a TV show I know, but it’s just plain old good writing.)…
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Five Finds Friday (this, that & the other, also blanket sweaters, food documentaries and college thoughts)
It’s been a little while so let’s see if I have Friday Fives within my abilities this week. You just never know. funny During last week’s writing class at Meadowlark, we worked on a project where we created bad titles and then tried to turn them into good poems. It was fun and I loved hearing what the kids did with their poetry. Some titles that they created were . . . Where Did My Sibling Go?What’s on My Sandwich?The Obsolete OreoUncle Hitler’s Birthday The time spent together with this group of bright and funny and interesting kids is always time well spent. fashionable Here, I just don’t know.…
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according to the schedule, there’s no space for that
I do not have many minutes of unstructured “free” time in my current life schedule. It is likely true that I actually have none. This is the season in which I currently am living. It’s a full season. Not a busy season. (Well, you know – it’s a busy one too. So be it.) I’ve reached the nearly half a decade mark and one thing I have learned is that seasons change. Busy now does not mean busy always. Full now does not mean full in the future. If the Lord allows me to live long enough, I will have days ahead of me (and relatively soon, I might add)…
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the weekend ramble
The weekend was gray and drippy and those are not two of my favorite words in describing a weekend. But still, I was grateful for school duties to be put on hold and work to take a backseat. Saturday was an early morning meeting about upcoming new kitchen counters – wood counters crafted by a local couple that I am thrilled to have in our house. The fancy faucet is waiting in its box in my bedroom. If you think that sounds boring, I disagree. I’ve never been so intrigued by a kitchen faucet in my life. I spent a ridiculously long time pondering options – at Lowe’s and online.…
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Kick start the new year with a Grove giveaway
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a little step
I didn’t make any actual resolutions because follow through is not my jam. Kidding. Kind of. Small steps, little changes, have generally had more longevity in my own life. This is one of those. Just a teeny tiny little thing. I started putting this one into practice sometime in October. I like to do that. Not share with you guys something I have just decided to do, but instead share something I have already been doing. Because, follow through. (I need to give it a few months to see if I will actually do it.) This one is going to be simple, maybe a little too simple. This…
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the ramble (weekend & beyond)
I won’t pretend to try to keep up with all the holiday happenings and shenanigans. I will say that we were out of school for the better part of three weeks and I didn’t spend any day where I thought, “I have gobs of extra time here” and yet I didn’t write anything for this blog and I barely worked for Travelers Rest Here and I didn’t teach school – Wildwood or Meadowlark – and we didn’t take any big traveling adventure. What on earth did we do? We did rest. And we did celebrate the holidays in lots of our favorite ways and traditions. It was beautiful to…
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A Toe Tip In
What a long delicious break it was. It was a break from writing because I needed it. But it was also a break from writing because the back end of the my website has been All Kinds of Wonky and frankly, I’m still not certain it’s performing at peak level currently. Whatever peak level is. Peak level to me basically means – I type and the words look accurate on the page through no skill set of my own. So we can consider this post a wee bit of a test. I want to see if a picture shows up where I ask it to. Which is here. And…
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Five Finds Friday
It’s been a week. Which is a phrase that, if someone else said it, I might laugh. Because, well, yeah – of course it’s been a week. That’s how time works. It seems that this particular Christmas is the sort of Christmas where I’ve said, “Oh – we were supposed to go look at lights? Hmm. Maybe we won’t get to that this year. Oh what’s that you say? Making homemade ornaments from applesauce and cinnamon like we used to do when you were little? Uh – I guess we can do that ….. another day. Our annual Winter Solstice Hike? Man, it sure is raining. A lot.” Is that…
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five finds friday. (the wrong shoes & Christmas stuff)
This week has not felt like a regular week since before it began. Mainly because it started Sunday with the power out from a snow and ice storm that caused lots of trees to fall across lots of wires. But we have power now and we all have been singing the praises of modern technology since then. funny My son is thirteen years old. Not a toddler. That’s important to this story. He left to attend an evening event. When he returned, he pointed out something to me. What on earth? Can you not tell your shoes are different from one another when you…
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Dear Duke Energy Employees,
Hi Guys. You won’t have time to read this right now because you are busy serving and helping restore power to thousands of homes across Greenville County. (And elsewhere too, of course, but I’m currently talking about my family’s little corner of the world.) It was Saturday night – around 1 am – when the power that we absolutely take for granted stopped surging toward our house. We didn’t know. We were blissfully asleep and comfortable in our beds. You probably were not afforded the same luxury. You were awake, preparing, watching, getting all the stuff ready – and I don’t even know what that stuff is actually.…
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what didn’t get done.
But seriously. I’m shutting the lap top (or about to) and it’s 1:49. A.M. That’s nonsense. And I have a list of Five Finds Fridays but I’m too tired to complete it now. I just finished writing the newsletter for Travelers Rest Here. (If you haven’t signed up, even if you’re not local, you totally should. It’s funny (I hope) and it’s informative and subscribers help make the late nights feel more worthwhile.) (This is the link – sign up is at the bottom. Travelers Rest Here. I”m at 1,730. I’d like to reach 2,000.) It goes out once a week and I usually write it Thursday…
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holiday season. not for the faint of heart.
Some nights you complete a puzzle at 1 am with your daughters and you know the price everyone will pay for staying up so late but you also know the moment is necessary and worthwhile, has value and importance. And that’s the horse you are betting on. Some nights you head to your bedroom and a boy and a puppy are cuddled into your space already and you know that it is Gift Enough for the moment. Navigating holidays in divorced families, blended families, step families, broken families, dysfunctional families is like walking across a room strewn full of Legos barefoot at 1 am in…
