Early this week, in a Chicago hotel room, I order French toast for eating in bed. Two rarities: sugar and silence. I’m punchy with anticipation. But then it arrives, and the plate is hard to balance on my legs, keeps tipping askew, the knife in need of a stable surface for cutting. I move to
The sun is shining, a neighbor’s lilac bush is in bloom. When its Lilliputian flowers dance over to my front stoop, I can’t help but sense they’re carrying an early conception of chimera. As it stands, every idea I’ve pursued at length – plans snared to sites built to projects born to gigs proposed –
Holiday excitement hit early in these parts. We started our annual Christmas puzzle in October (I know, I know) and have gone through no less than three sacks of flour since. The garden rosemary is dwindling; the cinnamon restocked twice. For two weeks now, I’ve passed the hallway and smiled at the quiet glow of
Boone Pickens perhaps said it best: When you are hunting elephants, don’t get distracted chasing rabbits. This week’s rabbit: Stranger Things. I’m not a TV watcher by nature, but every now and then, a show will grip my immediate community so tightly that it becomes a focal point for conversation after conversation, theories and recaps
Bang trims, watercolors, mango slices. Musical reenactments in the sunroom, her stage. She wants to know how to spell Gaston, needs to borrow a tote as a prop, asks me to put ‘Kill the Beast’ on repeat. For a bit, I say, sliding the door shut. She remembers candied pecans and puzzles from last winter,
This summer wasn’t a summer of reading for me. It was a summer of shooing away a toddler from outlets, of teaching a 5-year-old the differences between a redwood and a willow. It was an outside summer, a keep-em-busy summer, a run-em-wild summer, and on most nights, we all fell into bed with dirty feet
You know me; I’m not a shop-for-sport gal. It takes only a few, simple items to get the job done – whether “the job” is slicing onions or commuting to work. In the grand scheme of things, it’s my hope that the objects I rely on will tell a story – one of experience over
“[F]or just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there’s nothing else. It’s here, and you’d better decide to enjoy it or you’re going to be miserable wherever