“Why are you using a good Sharpie pen to write a grocery list?” my husband asks. “Because I like how it writes,” I say. “Why waste a good pen?” “I care about how the grocery list looks.” (Why would I not select a smooth pink pen?) “Here, this is the pen,” he suggests, grabbing a [...]
My husband (who affectionately calls me the Laundry Fairy) says his socks are missing. I remember hearing tales of lost socks from others who were living in a different chapter and carried far heavier loads than I did as a single person. Where could it have possibly gone? I always wondered. (How did your life [...]
A man in a red shirt drives a blue tractor through our neighboring green field. Our black-and-white cat sleeps under my chair, while the gray-spotted cat’s busy hunting a cardinal. An orange popsicle to cut through the thick July heat. If I look hard enough, I see more than the black that paints all of [...]
I've never understood the pain scale. My doctor wants to know how I'm feeling today (during our telehealth appointment), can I quantify my pain on a scale of 1 to 10, sometimes she asks in the form of percentages. What percentage of improvement did you feel on that medication? 10%? 20%? 50%? I make something [...]
Our garden is growing weeds. We don't know what to expect in these garden beds because we weren't the ones who planted them. We inherited them when we bought the house in the dead of winter, bare trees and frosted beds. So I've been waiting and watching, checking each morning to see what pops up, [...]
Our cats have full roaming access to the whole house, and yet, all they want is a deep dive into the kitchen sink. We spray the water bottle, stomp our feet, clap our hands, put on stern voices, NO! GET! DOWN! BAD!, we've tried it all. J even became the blanket monster, draping the fuzzy [...]
Dear Friend, I know I joked that I wouldn't do it, wouldn't join the herds baking bread. But, can you blame me? It was Easter Sunday, after all, and I needed to see something rise. It should give you hope that hearts can change. My mother-in-law texted me that there's nothing like warm bread fresh [...]
My husband comes home from the grocery store and tells me that everyone’s baking bread these days, why is everyone baking bread? All his friends are swapping pictures of baking bread and these friends are males in their early 30s and they are all home, quarantined, baking bread. I tell him that yes, I’ve seen [...]
An overheard conference call: Wake up at the same time you always did on a normal work day, take a shower like normal, get dressed like normal, keep the same hours you normally did, invest in your space at home. This could be our new normal for a very long time. I can't help but [...]
Birthdays turn her to mush (she's a memory hoarder). Today, she reflects on her twenties, saying goodbye to the decade her old soul has spent too many late flipping-and-flopping nights wishing away. Did her circumference widen with each new ring of growth? Did she learn to number her days? Sometimes she remembers, other times she [...]
