How the Pandemic Turned Working Moms into Mommy Pig

I first published this post in April, 2020. Today things are better, but not fixed. We have childcare, but it feels precarious. There are snow days and teacher training days and holidays and sick days. So Many Sick Days. On Mondays, public school ends at 1:45pm. ONE FORTY-FIVE! And there are still too many things […]

All Delight We Cannot See

Like just about everyone else on this planet, I’ve been having a hard time lately. The world’s on fire, and denial and cruelty seem to be the law of the land. I’m tired and angry and heartbroken. It’s been more and more challenging to imagine a future or find pockets of joy, but I know […]

Bloom Where You’re Planted

In spring 2021, I wrote about my pandemic obsession with my echium plant. I realized how happy this plant made me, so now I’ve got several all over the yard, in different stages of their spiky lives. A few days ago, I noticed that one of them was starting to make that skyward move that […]

Bloom Where You’re Planted

Last spring, I wasn’t sure how to use Instagram. I mean, I technically knew how to use it. When I logged on, it was honestly keeping me going each day, watching everyone try to figure out what to do at home and seeing that they were just as uncertain as I was. People made sourdough […]

Plunge

            The other day I hovered over the computer as the clock counted down. Was I on the right page? Refreshing, refreshing, refreshing. Was I logged in? At 7:00 p.m., the screen changed, and I zipped around with my cursor, checking the open slots, trying to check the right box.             It wasn’t a vaccine […]

Number the Days

Last January I wrote a post about how much I loved my calendars. All of my calendars. You see, I had several. And I had so many plans. And you know what happened to those plans. Here they are again, looking so shiny and hopeful. * So, on Monday I went away to get some […]

What to Do During a Pandemic? Go Occupy Those Forlorn Chairs

During this summer of covid, and I’ve been thinking of what poet Billy Collins called those, “forlorn chairs/though at one time it must have seemed/a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.” Even situated, as they usually are, to take in the view, it’s hard for those chairs to compete with the attention-grabbing distractions […]

Hoot

We have been going out to see the comet—to try to see the comet, that is—almost every night for the past week. I read articles to figure out where to find it, beneath the Big Dipper after sunset.  Most of the articles call it a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and it’s true. Comet NEOWISE won’t be back […]