Writing
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Darkness & Light
For four months this fall we lived on the brilliant paradise of Whidbey Island. We arrived by ferry in August, the perfect, late summer, Puget Sound weather surrounding us. Warm, dry days, huge, blue sky, sunlight for hours and hours and hours. The kids went back to school in September and I got busy writing and learning. Since both kids have been in school full time I have taken every advantage of the long spaces of quiet to work. Writing every day, learning about blog design and promotion, and practicing my photography.
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Gather Around the Table
I have a a new essay up on Her View From Home, in the kitchen section about feeding a family in an enjoyable way. In the scheme of things my essay is not that important compared to what is going on in the world right now. Bombings, nasty politics, child abuse, domestic violence, rape, drought, flooding, human trafficking, racism, hatred, fear, police killings, killings of police officers, any killings, the list could very well be endless. No, my recent, minuscule contribution, How to Simplify Weeknight Dinners & Please Everyone is just about one of the mundane aspects of parenting, getting dinner on the table. A lot of parenting is just that, mundane,…
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Preserving A Story
I stood in my steamy kitchen surrounded by glass jars, newly clean and hot from the dishwasher, a huge cauldron-sized pot of boiling water on the stove, and next to it a large saucepan of homemade jam ready for canning. It was about 104º outside on a late July day and it boiled hotter than that inside my non-air-conditioned kitchen, like a sauna, the sweat sticking to my skin. But somehow I didn’t mind at all as the aroma of hot sugary berries bloomed throughout the entire kitchen. It was the first time I’d ever canned or preserved anything and I was both slightly nervous and absolutely excited, like a…
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Missing Our Moms
My mom’s been nudging me from all over the universe this week. I miss her so much. Especially, well, especially all the time. But this time of year really gets me, as Mother’s Day approaches. I know I write about her often; she was such a precious, important person in my life. In “My Mother’s Last Days” from herviewfromhome.com, Amber Shoemaker says about her mother, “I hope she knows she was one of the great loves of my life.” Yes, I thought, this is exactly how I feel about my mom. I think about my mom daily, intentionally, but every once in a while tiny, specific glimpses of memory come…
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Writing vs. Gardening, the Battle Begins
Every day is a battle in the garden. A battle for survival, weather vs. plants, Dizzy and Jasper vs. plants, critters vs. plants. For me, finding, or rather, making time to write is also a battle. When both my kids started back to school for the whole day this past fall, I took advantage. I’ve been writing almost every weekday for three to four hours a day. What a difference that kind of writing time does for my writing, rather than the tiny increments I attempted to steal, once in a while, with the kids at home. A regular routine of writing practice several hours a day, five days a week.…
