Hello Reader, "We're so busy and I'm all by myself and I can't help you now." That's what the woman at the grocery store told me on Saturday. I'd come in to rent a carpet cleaner, with a storm on the way and the whole town of Pacific Beach stocking up. I said I'd wait. (Cue me settling in by the registers like I lived there.) She came back three more times to tell me she still couldn't help. Meanwhile I could see stock people and a couple of cashiers with nobody in their lines. Then the shift...
4 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, An hour after I told myself "just a few laps around the block," I was still walking. Yesterday I hit the 4pm wall. Hubby usually walks with me, but he was away at a conference, so I made myself a little deal. Some steps are better than none. Then I opened the front door. It was sunny and in the low 70s with a soft breeze, one of those early fall days that feels brand new. One lap turned into a longer loop down a street I haven't walked in a while. I didn't put on a podcast or...
15 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, By Saturday night, there were twelve apple pies cooling on my stove. Every fall, we go apple picking. We've done it for as long as hubby and I have been together, and even before that. When he was a little boy, his family built a cute cabin in the Shenandoah Mountains with apple trees right on the property. My mother-in-law even wrote an apple recipe book. These days I bake at least a dozen pies every year, and a few of them are gluten-free. Pie day starts with bowls. I line up...
22 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, Hubby and I were talking this week about lasts. We think a lot about firsts. We barely think about lasts at all. There was a last time somebody carried you up to bed. You have no idea when it was. Same with the last tree you climbed, and the last night you stayed outside playing until the streetlights came on. Nobody stops you on the way out the door and says, well, that's the last one. He brought it up because of his parents, and the last time you drive a car. We're getting...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, For years I ordered our groceries from the couch. Mark called it armchair ordering. Phone in my hand, Giant app open, going off memory. I know what we like and I've made these dinners a hundred times. Then Wednesday would come and I'd be standing in the kitchen with everything for the recipe except the one thing that made it that recipe. I hadn't forgotten 90% of the order, just the one thing, and then I'd need to throw together whatever I could out of what we had. The other...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader, I've been reading Buckeye by Patrick Ryan. Not finished with it yet, but I've read a lot of good books this year and this one continues the trend. There's a section I bookmarked, and I've gone back to it a few times since. One character tells another about something he was taught a long time ago. "The things that we love tell us what we are." He loved that line so much he got a tattoo of it right across the top of his chest. I kept turning it over for days. It really resonated...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader, We're buying a house in San Diego, and we're handling it from a distance. So this week three contractors went to look at it for us. Only one acted like he wanted the job. That one moved his whole day around to be there for the inspection. He took his measurements, talked us through the work, and had a follow-up in my inbox by that evening. I could see from him that our business meant something to him. The other two? One went quiet, five days now and still no quote. The other...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, The other afternoon I was doing my stretches after our walk, and Mark was watching. He just had shoulder surgery, so he has been in physical therapy with someone correcting his every move. I lifted my arms up and down, slow and careful, doing my best. Then he said, you are going back too far, you don't want to go that far back. I really believed I was doing it right. From the inside it felt correct. But Mark stood a few feet away and saw what I could not see about my own body. I...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, I was standing in cloudy water off the coast of Kona (Hawaii) when my son started waving at me from the shore. I said "what, what?" and he called out, "there's a turtle." So I stopped. I went still. This sea turtle lifted its head, looked right at me, and kept swimming closer. I did not lunge for it or chase it for a photo. I just gave it room. So cool. So, so cool. (the video above isn't of this moment - it's of a different sighting) It has been a minute since I wrote, and that...
4 months ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, My youngest daughter called me last week to ask where we were staying in San Diego. Before I could answer, she stopped herself. Oh wait, I know. It’s in the spreadsheet. I’ll go look it up. I caught myself smiling after we hung up. We’re getting her ready for graduation, which means the whole family is heading on a trip with more moving parts than any I’ve planned in a long time. Different flights for different people, a road trip down the coast with my aunt, San Diego, then...
5 months ago • 1 min read