It’s been over a year since we started empty nesting. I have spent the better part of that year resisting the urge to ‘blow it all up’ – I’m not really even sure what I mean by that to be honest. It just seemed that if menopause was going to kick into high gear as our one and only child went off to college, shifting the dynamic of everything at home, in the midst of a global pandemic that
has reshuffled numerous norms in the world, why not change as many things as I possibly could?
The squirrels are beating us to the tomatoes this year – Daisy hasn’t yet found her voice to scare them away as well as Betsy beagle did, but considering how far she’s come in every other way, we’ll overlook it. Without a beagle chasing unwanted visitors off, it’s become wildlife central out there, with rabbits keeping the sweet potato greens from running outside of their raised bed and an entire charm of hummingbirds fluttering about all day, stopping to rest on top of the cages around the pepper plants. The hummingbirds are next to impossible to capture with a camera but of course that doesn’t stop me from trying. All of the animals seem to be getting quite comfortable with us out there, which I suppose has its pluses and minuses.
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This little box has sat in the back of my nightstand drawer for years. My friend Candy gave it to me one year for Christmas back when we were in college, telling me I needed a pretty little something on my coffee table. I’m not sure when it got relegated to the drawer in my night stand – while I clearly didn’t use it anymore, I never could quite bring myself to get rid of it because it felt like getting rid of a piece of my youth. A pretty piece of it.
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When we brought Daisy home so quickly after losing Betsy beagle, we did not want Daisy to be seen as a replacement dog. After all, Betsy was the unofficial mayor of the neighborhood and there’s no replacing a dog like that. Besides, Daisy’s personality is not nearly as big as Betsy’s was. We knew she’d figure out a way to make herself known–little did we know that she would do so in a front-page manner, nor quite so quickly.
Continue readingIt’s been six weeks since we brought Daisy home. I’d love to write a glowing essay about how well she’s settling in, but the truth is, there have been a lot of stops and starts. Progress is made but for every step forward, there’s several back. We know this is par for the course with rescue dogs, that with time, patience and love, she’ll come out of her shell, but in the meantime, it’s like having a newborn.
For two years now, I’ve had a heck of a time keeping the days of the week straight. Like, what do you mean it’s only Tuesday? How is this not Thursday? Even starting a new job and my favorite yoga class going back to being in-person hasn’t helped shake that Groundhog Day feeling off that I’ve had since everything shut down and all the days started running together.
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Betsy beagle was the dog I wasn’t going to get, the dog I wasn’t going to have anything to do with that I somehow ended up running an Instagram account for and to this day, I’m still not exactly sure how that happened.
Continue readingI had a fall gardening article due and somewhere between feeling inspired to write before everyone else got out of bed and actually sitting down with my laptop Sunday morning, the feeling disappeared. I suspect it was in the middle of getting another cup of coffee and actually walking up the stairs to grab the laptop.
I posted a photo of dinner the other night to Instagram and got so many questions about it, I thought I’d go ahead and make it a blog post.
I quit my job last month without a plan. In the time since, there have been some changes, with a number of realizations and some self discovery along the way.
Last March, I had four, no five jobs, three email accounts, too many social media accounts to keep track of, worked at least several hours every day, seven days a week. I was almost never not working and I definitely wasn’t making enough money to justify all the work.
And then Covid shut everything down.
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Chicken Wire & Paper Flowers 