November 2, 2024 I return home after ten days away and without any effort whatsoever notice what’s wrong. The neon pink mums I labored to plant before I left didn’t get watered, and they’re shriveled now. Squirrels have dug in the pots, seeking homes for buried treasure and leaving a trail of dirt in their wake. The porch is covered in dirt and leaves, joint effort of squirrel, bird, wind. And...
October 2003 I had forgotten my camera that day. I was disappointed I could not capture the beauty of the lake we visited, but, and it was probably a suggestion from someone in the group less brooding and with fewer visions of grandeur, the idea was raised to photograph it in my mind. To use the absence of a camera to force me to notice with greater focus what I was seeing. I thought of the...
Back From Vacation Soup Remove all passable contents of your fridge and stare at them. Wait for inspiration to strike. Put together whatever works for you. Or, to make what we ate, as described here, do as follows: Ingredients: “Just shy of 1lb” of carrots, peeled and trimmed and cut into large-ish pieces (don’t be precious; it is all getting pureed anyway)1 sweet potato, same treatment, to make...
August 26, 2022 In advance of vacation, we can look forward to the time away as a kind of salvation from the normal life that has grown to feel wearisome, like a burden. We’ll leave our boring normal life, and experience a taste of real life, something beautiful and thrilling. We’ll rest, we’ll adventure, we’ll get good instagram photos. But when vacation ends, real life is waiting, collecting a...
1/28/22 Our daily routine doesn’t leave a lot of free time: get the kids ready, school/daycare drop-off, work til a few minutes before pick-up ends, rush to pick-up, playground detour, make dinner, eat dinner, bedtime…and only once all that is done, a few precious obligation-free moments. Often by the time they’re all down, it’s late enough that all I want to do is passively take in something on...