I shake cumin into my palm and toss it into the crockpot. Looks like a teaspoon to me. Not much different with picture hanging, where I’ve never used a ruler or a level but have found eyeballing it to suffice. Close enough. “Does it look good to a man riding by on a horse?” my friend always used to say…. Read More

They started talking about how crowded our school was back in May, and my brilliant mind told a story of how I would have to go back to my tiny classroom–no wait–maybe I wouldn’t even have a classroom and would have to travel to borrowed rooms, since I was a part-time teacher. Cue full-blown panic. I do panic well. But… Read More

Sometimes I think I should rename my website, “Anxiety Girl.” Here I am again today, with my latest installment about worrying and what has been helping me overcome this lately. Let’s start with the worries and how real they are: Money and old cars and old houses and old bodies. Grown kids. Kids needing jobs. Kids and their money and… Read More

Quaint, I thought, as I checked into the Locomotive Inn. It was a stop-off on the 12-hour drive to visit my mom over spring break. Then I woke up at 2:30 in the morning to realize Oh, a locomotive! I made a mental note to think more literally next time I was motel shopping. The train whistled only a stone’s… Read More

My mom calls it “cauliflower ear,” which is what happens to wrestlers when their ears get pressed into the mat too many times. I will not post an image of this but will leave you to your imagination. “I’ve got cauliflower ear,” she says to me, when I’ve talked too long. You might be saying that today, after I go… Read More

  I have another smokin’ hot car story. Really hot. Caleb called the day before he was to fly home for Christmas, reporting that he was driving and his car started smoking. He babied it back to his apartment and left it to sit over the Christmas holidays. So there I was, in the middle of the biggest spending time… Read More

Prepare yourselves, my friends. School starts tomorrow, and there are every so many spiritual lessons God teaches me from my one room at the school house. Walk into my space right now and see how tidy everything is. Shelves are dusted, and #2 Ticonderoga pencils are sharp soldiers lined uniformly in their plastic drawer. At each student’s seat is a… Read More