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.
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 woke up several nights in a row recently with inspiration to write something brilliant and swore I didn’t need to write it down, but come the next morning, all I could remember was the theme of “hot feet” and a vague gist of the direction that theme needed to go. The more I fleshed it out, the more I realized it was just shaping up to be similar to this time last year’s middle aged woman’s rant about becoming invisible and was quite obviously related to what had actually woken me up – a case of hot feet. Clearly, February is a lot in a good year – My Aunt Loretta used to throw a “Fabulous February Festival” because she firmly believed February needs a good party to get through it. And if there was ever a year that needed a huge blowout party to get us through the slog of February, it’s this year, the year in which we cannot have parties. Certainly not indoor parties, in February.
Continue readingI have this thing about being productive – at the end of the day, every day, I like having something to show for myself. I’m not sure if this is related to how I have a hard time sitting still, although I’m sure people that have known me for a long time who have complained for years about my need to be productive/inability to sit still /certain level of constant energy would probably say these things are in fact, entwined.
There have been some new additions to the cookbook collection recently, some of which I’m ridiculously excited to share because they have sent me down a number of internet rabbit holes while also inspiring me to reconsider exactly how I organize the collection.
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Chicken Wire & Paper Flowers 