January Cozy-ing
January 4, 2024 § 1 Comment
Unlike many people, it seems, I’ve never minded making New Year’s resolutions. I don’t feel stressed about them. Instead I tend to find them inspiring. I like fresh starts. I’ve always, for better or for worse, liked the idea of reinventing oneself. Or perhaps rather to allow a tucked-away part of oneself to blossom. Resolutions can help with the unfolding.
If I succeed, lovely, but if I don’t, well, I usually find I’ve forgotten about the resolutions and don’t even remember to chastise myself (heh). So it’s all right.
That said, this year I’m finding myself to be a funny paradox. On the one hand, I’ve been reading about and leaning into the idea that winter is for coziness, hibernation, rest, renewal, ease . . . and that SPRING is the natural time to begin new things. I love this. I am a gardener. I feel this in my bones, in the soil in the creases of my hands.
And ALSO: this is 100% my year to get myself into financial ship-shape. After years of dashed hopes, an aching heart, and infertility, I finally had my dream baby at the end of 2022. It took surgeries and IVF to find this little love, and he had a pretty rough start (but now he’s chubby and happy and trying so hard to walk!). As a single mama by choice, I am the sole provider and daycare-payer for our family. I do have some savings and investments, but I need to increase my income and tidy up loose ends in order for us to be solvent, or better yet, to thrive.
I also miss writing terribly. My creative self has largely been tabled while I threw my heart into my nonprofit summer camp community garden all-the-things job. There has absolutely been creativity within that role – gosh, so much, of another kind – but I miss the writer, the dreamer, the girl who posts all the pretty pictures and imagines how to spin beauty around her with words and things.
Luckily, I have two circumstances attempting to bring these opposite tugs back towards one another.
FIRST, my writing, multiple-income-stream-developing, financial-self-education time has to happen when my little one is asleep. So I sit down with a cup of hot chocolate next to a heater that has fake flames and fake crackles (I scoffed at this heater when I read about it and then the reviews convinced me and I actually love it – it’s the littlest bit of easy ambiance, ok? Here’s the link! Not an ad, everyone just needs one). I pull out my computer and I remember how I like to wend my way through words. I remember graduate school in the yellow Victorian house in Iowa, the smell of spices coming from the kitchen, my first golden retriever lying beside me on the floor, so many curly-haired boys the five clever women in our house were crushing on, the late night cups of tea with my dear Japanese friend.
SECOND, my sweet babe has to have a surgery early this month and the recovery is expected to be rather difficult. So I took two weeks off from my job and we will be home. I anticipate mostly holding him, at least for the first week. We are going to be extra, extra cozy. And perhaps in between snuggles and consolation I will find time to write. And if not, the wonderful thing about an imagination is that it works while you are doing other things. I can hold a baby and plan out a book proposal. I can kiss his little head and think of characters for a story. I can have a tired cry in the bathtub while he sleeps and then lean back and remember the hope of new ventures, of easier days.
We push ourselves through challenging things hoping for better times on the other side. Human nature? Optimism? In any case, here we go (again)!
Bookstores
January 30, 2013 § Leave a comment
Dear readers,
At the risk of continuing shameless self-promotion, I’m wondering if any of you have favorite independent bookstores you’d like to tell me about?
I’m trying to get my act together in terms of marketing my book, since I’ve been fairly lackadaisical about it up till now – admittedly, because it makes me feel silly to promote myself. But you know? It’s not about me. It’s about the story, which in many ways isn’t even solely mine. Because the story is the product of so many life experiences that the world generously offered me, so many people I came into contact with, the space to daydream throughout my childhood, and the inspiration and creative nudges of so many other writers and their books.
There are lots more readers our there that I’d like to have access to this story. So I need to get over myself and figure out how to get this book in their hands. Girls who love horses have just gotta read this story.
So. As I explore more venues, what bookstores would you like me to know about? Could you provide me with the name and either the web address or street address so I can send them a reader’s copy? I’d be grateful!
I’m working on an author website right now – another thing I’ve shyly hung back from. I’ve got quite a bit of fine-tuning to do, and I need some fancy pictures of myself (and maybe some horses?), but keep checking back to get the link in a few weeks.
Other than that – what have you been reading lately? I’ve been alternating between Michael Pollan’s Second Nature and Holley Bishop’s Robbing the Bees and Rodale’s Ultimate Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening. It is fun to sit on the couch with three open books and to keep picking them up in intervals.
Breakfast at Home
December 22, 2012 § Leave a comment
The cow is milked. The chickens and ducks and sheep and steers are fed. So is the dog, after she and I romped around in the snow for a bit. She feels better, now that we went to the vet and got the tick diseases diagnosed (sigh) and got her on some antibiotics. There is a time and a place for them, and this is one of them. It’s good to see her old spirit back. And so – happy Saturday!
There is something about a late(ish) breakfast after morning chores. It makes me want to eat healthier, to crave things like, today, kale and eggs and fresh milk (in my coffee). Back in Colorado, when I worked at the horse barn, I would grab a granola bar for my pseudo breakfast at 6:45 a.m. – which didn’t really count, in my mind, as anything more than enough fuel to get me moving for a few hours. I’d go out to the stables to feed and move and turn out horses, and muck stalls, and then around 11:30 or so I’d head back home to my real meal, a substantial and fantastic brunch complete with meat and/or eggs and almost always greens (especially when I was also working at the organic farm several days a week). Yum.
There is surely a mind-body connection here. The physical effort plus the great outdoors seem to send little signals to the brain that we need nourishment! and nourishment that is natural, real, from the earth and its animals as directly as possible! So as much as I love a little pastry or tart as much as the next girl, this isn’t the time for it.
And I think that is part of why I crave this farm-life so much. It builds health up from, out from itself, in so many ways. Done well, it perpetuates health – health for humans, animals, land. And, in my opinion, communities.
I’ve been reading the book Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes – and, lest you be misled, this is not simply about lucky suburban stay-at-home-moms who are financially comfortable enough to be doing what they do, possibly with a nanny in tow, and possibly eco-friendly in the I-can-afford-it kind of way. (There is nothing quite wrong with that, but it isn’t a reality for most of us, right?) So, if you aren’t in this position, and it seems that you have to go to work, whether you like it or not, this book is probably equally if not more so for you. Hayes explores how the home has functioned past to present, how the choices we make are driven by and/or affect our communities and society as a whole, and how many families are assessing the current trends in career and home life and making deliberate deviations in the pursuit of health and happiness. The book is full of examples, quotes, and real people that make you think, “Huh. I could do this if they could.”
So much of what Hayes says here makes sense to me. It explains why, for so long, I wrinkled my nose at nearly every reasonable career option out there. As I read through the book, so many times I thought (in my melodramatic way) Oh my heart! Yes. This is the life I have wanted. Thank goodness the sustainable/environmental movement came along, where I could find a few more folks with my kinds of ideals, and find jobs therein. That said, as a (still) single girl, it’s challenging to think about how I can focus on home and how I can create homegrown community without a partner in this divine crime, this subversion of commercial, corporate society. But I mean to try.
Here’s an excerpt:
When women and men choose to center their lives on their homes, creating strong family units and living in a way that honors our natural resources and local communities, they are doing more than dismantling the extractive economy and taking power away from the corporate plutocrats. They are laying the foundation to re-democratize our society and heal our planet. They are rebuilding the life-serving economy. (57-58)
Read the book! And eat kale for breakfast, at a table, leisurely, like you deserve it. Your body will thank you.
Beatrix
June 29, 2012 § 2 Comments
It occurs to me that Beatrix Potter is a hero of mine.
We were watching the film Ms. Potter with my grandparents a few months ago, which surely embellishes as movies are apt to do. Still, in my (many years of) college studies I learned that in addition to creating her lovely children’s stories, Ms. Potter took on the cause of the small farmer. This determined, independent woman fought for the British countryside and published the most remarkable, beloved tales. Nature and community mattered to her. I can’t help but love her for it. And aim to do as much.
Riding the Neighbors’ Horses – Paperback
March 17, 2012 § 2 Comments
The novel is up on Amazon and ready for purchase! Be angels and pass it along to any horse-crazy kids (or grown-ups) you know, won’t you?
You can find it here: Riding the Neighbors’ Horses
A little novel excerpt
March 6, 2012 § Leave a comment
My book proof for Riding the Neighbors’ Horses is sitting on a shelf in my (temporary) bedroom. I’m sorry to say that in paging through it I found mistakes noticeable enough that I can’t overlook them, so we’re a few steps back in the editing/reviewing process. I’m hoping the book will be available in the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile, it is the funniest feeling to have a physical copy of this novel in my hands. I finished the first draft almost seven years ago. Followed up with lots of off-and-on revisions. Ignored it completely. Decided to do something about it. The book looks shiny and professional and it has my name on the front. Wheee!
For now, here is a small excerpt. Our narrator and protagonist, Susan Abbot, is about to get her first riding lesson from her neighbor, and new friend, Nan Whiting.
Horse’s hooves clopped against wood as Nan led a tall bay from its stall. “This is Bet,” she said. “The first time I rode her I was two, or probably even younger. Hold this a second.” Nan dropped a line of rope in my hand and darted around the corner before I could protest. I toyed with the end of the rope, following its white weave up to the halter of the horse. Bet stood near enough that I could feel the heat from her body and smell her scent—a blend of hay and wood, earth and sweat. She studied me with eyes so dark I couldn’t tell where the pupil ended and the iris began, and I wondered what I might read in those eyes if only I knew how.
Home, family, and traveling
February 28, 2012 § 1 Comment
Do you want to hear some good news? I am getting interviews!
Yesterday my mom and I drove to Cedar Rapids to pick up a truck – a red Chevy Silverado! – for my dad. We had our usual fervent discussions about life, faith, art, careers, personality types, travel, and the future. In the midst of this my phone rang and Interview #3 has been scheduled for the week. None of these jobs may pan out, but then, one of them might! I smiled for five minutes. Finally, the resume is doing what it was designed to do.
Iowa is brown, flat, hilly, barn-speckled. We drove through many tired-looking small towns. They fascinate me with their combination of rustic-ness and run-down-ness. Sometimes I like them in their familiarity. Other times I want to give them a good New-England-style overhaul. I like small towns, but I’m more of a quaint village kind of girl. Things can be small AND pretty.
(European countryside. Yes.)
One day when I settle down in my semi-remote (or maybe not remote?) wherever, it’s going to be lots of fun to consider how I can help make my nearby town (or neighborhood) veer towards quaintness. If they let me. Once they learn to like me. I’ll give it the good ol’ stubborn Dutch girl try.
So, anyway, I will be rambling around for the rest of the week. I aim to take a few photographs to show you some of these places. The fun thing about getting into photography is how you take on this mission to find things that are beautiful and interesting wherever you go. In unexpected places. From otherwise unconsidered vantage points. It gives one a new sense of purpose.
Around here, in the log-house-that’s-for-sale, we have been taking walks with the dogs, planning future books, planning future Etsy shops, baking, cooking, sweating in the sauna, trying out new hairstyles, and writing down to-do lists both ordinary and ambitious. I have ordered a proof of my novel, which will soon be available in paperback! Today is one of those days when opportunity seems within reach. Despite the gray skies and the ice that fell all night long. Despite getting home in the wee small hours of the morning and waking up later than industrious girls ought to do. Despite this tangle of hair on my head and the laundry waiting to be folded.
I have a Pinterest board full of dreams, and seed catalogs in the cupboard.
What is happening in your world?
A snowy view
February 23, 2012 § 2 Comments
Some dogs get to sleep inside when a blizzard swirls outside. My shoes often serve as a security blanket. This causes me to wander around the house trying to find them when I must go somewhere.
We watch the snow from big windows.
While the dog dozes, I sort through illustrations my sister has done for my book. Finishing touches are so exciting!
And drink coffee all morning, while snow collects in corners.
Kinds of Honey 