A Tuesday Sobbing

When I don’t write, I sit alone with my thoughts – smashing fists at four in the morning keeps me awake with the crunching of knuckles. That’s where I was last night, staring at a white ceiling fan two hours from my alarm in the spare bedroom. Affectionately named “The Happy Room” by my son, […]

Big Choices and Little Surprises

Let me just drop the big news first, from my last post in January – kind of like when you skip to the end of the book to find out if your favorite characters end up happy; WE ADOPTED A BABY GIRL! Nothing in our lives have been easy or less than dramatic. So, of […]

Reading about Myself

It was 2 AM, and I hit a mental wall. I’m normally a night owl, piecing together everything I need with the moths and sleeping dogs at my feet – but it wasn’t exhaustion which made my hands freeze and my eyes fixate on anything but the computer screen – it was the reflection I […]

Consequences

It’s taken me weeks to pump out this post – mostly because I wanted to avoid the swirl of emotions it would evoke in me – but here it is. Last semester, I barely survived the workload I gave myself. I did too much. Wow, that last phrase was harder to write than I thought it […]

Our Best

My sides were cramping, not from the routine but from watching Shiloh’s skinny arms swing furiously with the pale yellow 1lb weights. “Three, two, ONE!” he shouted as we finished the set on the TV, then he set the weights down and announced, “no weights!” He was now the instructor. Kevin and I couldn’t stop […]

Shredding

For the last two nights, I’ve found myself in the basement sitting crisscross in the middle of the night. There were two piles in front of me: one with papers ready to whir in the shredder and a small mountain of junk mail envelopes. I couldn’t make them pass through the machine fast enough, ripping […]

There by Now

Is it just me or does anyone else feel like it’s Christmas or their birthday when that direct deposit hits their account? Maybe my mind has been too focused on money and finances – but finally feeling like we’re not drowning is like I’m breathing for the first time. As next payday approaches, Sept 13th, […]

B+ Average

The last time I was at my gyn-oncologist, she asked me if I was still doing a thousand things at one time. I smiled because I knew it was a compliment and a testament to how I’ve been feeling energetic and healthy. I said, “Of course”, and told her of all the things I’ve been […]

Purple Lines

I try not to get self conscious when my only child smacks his little palms on the pudge like hands lapping water. He smiles because he doesn’t know any better. He smiles because he doesn’t know it makes me cringe. He smiles because he doesn’t know what happened. I realize his eyes have only seen […]

Valleys and Mountains

It wasn’t until my body was curled into itself and heaved erratically from the grief that I heard the bugle call me out of the valley. It wasn’t until I was standing at the top of a mountain in a celebration that I decided to make an effort to stay out. For the last few […]