“I will not live in fear of falling, or catching fire.” -Dr. Dawna Markova   I stopped writing. I didn’t wish to stop writing. It certainly wasn’t planned. But for a long time, everything has hurt. And when I hurt, I go quiet, and speak of it after it has passed. I’ve been doing some…

Photo courtesy of bando.com (socks available for purchase) As we’re wildly running about town, trying to create Pinterest-worthy tables and ingredients we’ll never need again, I thought the timing was right to publish my “Effortless American Woman Quiz”. Are you doing a great job pretending it’s easy to do a great job? America 2016 has…

  Michigan, the year 2002…snowing…SO cold…kind of ruined me to soccer… About a million years ago I was 17, and I fell in love with a football player with a dark sense of humor and dimples. These are the things one does as a Senior in High School, followed by Prom, Junior Miss Pageants, Senior…

Kelly, like 99.9999% of little ladies in America, desired a 4-post canopy bed for her birthday, encased in shimmery curtains of LIGHT. “HOW glamorous”, I remarked, as she invaded my Pinterest boards with beds that cost more than all of my living room furniture. Problem #1, I explained to her, was that she already owned…

Last shot: pre-tow truck, epi-grieving, post-last-mile-driven. The Chicken Box departed this life atop a mountain in West Virginia on Sunday, June 26th. While her health deteriorated rapidly in her last year of life, it was the transmission which finally caused her demise. Her family takes pride in the fact it took a mountain to kill…

  Dear Duck & Chick,   We’ll probably look back on this year fondly. I hope. Perhaps we’ll cringe. But if this messy math of mine works out, we’ll certainly come out on the other side of this year changed. I KNOW I WILL. After 8 years of swearing I was happily retired, I went…

As per my tradition while mourning, all pictures are from times spent hiking. Nature soothes a hurting heart. I know, I know. We were rolling about in post-Christmas bliss, cleaning out leftovers and taking down ornaments, and you were expecting my final piece about the hostess tackle boxes I crafted. I had a funny picture…

Christmas doesn’t come without Goomommy. Go ahead, Google it. I’m so right. A better title for this gathering would be, “The Christmas Eve Champagne Brunch, Holiday Tea, a little wine, A Hot Chocolate Bar, and Oh Good Lord, why does Lori always make too much food?” Or maybe the most fitting title is, “I’d never…

  Friends, the journey we’re about to take over the next few days will drive you to drink (I suggest a Hot Toddy made with Basil Hayden’s Whiskey). Reviewing the work any Mother does over Christmas makes us all shake our heads in a dizzied-retrospective-collective-UGH. HOW DID WE MAKE ALL THAT MAGIC? How did we…

All pictures taken during my long hikes this Autumn Depression. Even the word itself sounds like a thud. Like falling down a rabbit hole; but not the vividly colorful, manic hole Lewis Carroll described. Depression is darkness on the way down, with continued darkness at the bottom. One, last look at my family, and the…