Red and gold lantana blooms Crab grass prickles bare feet Avocado tree and hazy purple hills - Vista from the hot tub Water warmed by parabolic mirror One of many inventions - Ideas, plans, musings Gadget bursting garage Dreams half-formed, many yet to come - Fragrant cedar chips Dancing branches of eucalyptus shadows Strawberry haven for the grandkids - Cousins, aunties, siblings, clan Catalina Island, saltwater…
I never used to think of myself as a gardener. There’s a patience and a faithfulness that it calls for. And I didn’t possess a lot of patience for most of my life. Until my firstborn came along and then…I just had to learn it. Gardening requires a good deal of foresight and hopefulness. You weed and prune and look forward to that gorgeous season where…
Some of you know that my family (my husband and my two kiddos and me + my brother and his wife + my sister and her husband + my parents = 10 of us!) traveled together to Costa Rica at the beginning of 2023. It was a beautiful adventure. We got to swim on gorgeous beaches, watch incredible jungle life (monkeys! iguanas! parrots!), hike, zipline, explore,…
Hi friends! It's been a while since I've checked in, and I want to explain part of that. The beginning of school was a *really* rough start for me and the kids this year. It's my fourth year of homeschooling, so I'd like to think that I have at least some of it figured out by now. My daughter entered kindergarten this year, which meant I…
This week, my kids (8 and 5) are having their first swimming lessons of the year. On our first day, we had some trouble finding a parking space and ended up scraping our van's tires against the curb in front of a lovely old house. As my kids scampered out, an elderly man came across the yard toward us. I was steeling myself for a grumpy…
Friends who are familiar with my writing know that some themes tend to come up again and again in my stories. Two such themes are family and memory. I decided to dig around on the topic of why I find human memory so fascinating in this blog post that appeared in Analog's blog, The Astounding Analog Companion. It was published as a companion piece to my…
There’s smoke in the sky. Wildfires on all sides, it seems. The air is filling with ash, tinting the sun sets a beautiful weird orange. In preparation for the Christmas calendar that I make every year for the family, I sorted through digital photos, effectively reliving a year’s worth of memories: my kids playing in the snow, a beach birthday for my dad at Jetty Island,…
I can see it coming, and yet I can’t see it at the same time: that moment when Covid lockdown finally lifts, fully and completely. Maybe that upcoming lifestyle won’t resemble the “old normal,” but the clinging fear and timidity and obsession over clean surfaces and safe-to-breathe air will have settled into something that doesn’t raise my blood pressure…as life after lockdown begins again. Yesterday my…
“Honey, is there anything else I can do for you?” My miserable six-year-old looked at me with tears in his eyes. “Snuggle me.” The morning had begun with an announcement from my kiddo that his tummy didn’t feel good. For the next five hours, we attempted a semblance of our regular morning schedule, punctuated about ten times with rushing-to-the-bathroom episodes. This may be the sickest my…
Lake Kachess, WA Pebbles grind beneath my shoes on a rocky beach overlooking the blue-green waters of Lake Kachess. The clouds are clean white and bunched, like someone pushed them together to bulk up their size, then puffed them up using a straw. One cloud strongly resembles a charging elephant—how long has it been since I looked for shapes in the clouds, and for only my…