On the day before the hurricane was due to make landfall, the harbor was silent. In the city and along the shores of the port, the locals scurried along hammering wood over glass windows and cramming cardboard between glass and the outward facing metal bars, but the harbor was still. On the approach to the…
Essays / Family / Life Lessons
Lessons in chess and in life: There is a tendency for new players to run when backed into a corner – practice resilience. All is not lost following a misstep. Recover and move forward.
Sixty-four years, $35 and one heck of an art school story. That just about sums it up. But for me, it goes even farther. I’ve said before (and am likely to say again) that I am beyond fortunate to occasionally contribute to Arkansas Life magazine. Writing about food, wine, travel and every corner of the planet has…
When I first started devouring (and subsequently writing) blogs in 2008, one of the first I ran across was Simple Mom by Tsh Oxenreider – and I inhaled it. I followed Tsh like some kind of organizing, coffee-drinking, living right Pied Piper right over to the other sites that fell under the Simple Living Media umbrella…
I have a very exciting – and possibly hilarious – announcement: I’m beyond excited to have joined the contributor team over at IHeartOrganizing! Now, before you fall out of your seat laughing, a little bit of background context: I’m not even going to pretend to be like the rest of these incredibly capable women whose…
I’m completely transfixed by the timeworn and riveted by the road-weary. Despite my efforts to have a home not completely overrun by knickknacks and dusting-required tchotchkes, I do sometimes fight the battle of objects on display. However, as I’ve revealed in my tirades on National Geographic, batched tomes of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books and archaic…
I am elated to introduce my new/old bike: Isn’t she a beauty? I am literally beside myself with excitement. She came to me by way of my cousin Kimberly, an aspiring writer with an intriguing YA novel in the works. She spends a lot of her spare time at Renew, a consignment store in Springdale…
Actually, as it turns out, 2014 is the year of the horse. However, for me it is the year of the book. First up is The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, as I ruminated about recently. We had watched the 2011 Martin Scorcese film version of Hugo, and it was completely epic –…
The girl is sitting next to me, and we’ve both taken our favorite (super soft!!) blankets and wrapped ourselves up in them – burrito-style – before carefully inserting ourselves beneath the covers. . It is 3 degrees outside in Arkansas on January 6. My husband reminisces that the last time he recalls such affronting cold…
I’m constantly torn between my deep devotion to innovative small businesses and boutiques like Grey Dog Vintage, my defensiveness of big retailers like Sam’s Club who do support small businesses and make it possible for them to thrive (and who have every bit as much right to capitalism and success!) and my desire for convenience.…
As a writer and blogger, there is this constant struggle between the everyday things you must do – i.e. earn a living, feed your children consistently – and the things that you want to do, i.e. consume and generate content. I find that the more I consume, the more I generate – and that every…
As 2014 ambled into view in a good-natured manner with relatively balmy temperatures, the neighborhood kids gathered to compare Christmas notes and expend excess, pent-up energy from too much family time. They congregated in the alley, strolled along the sidewalk, bounced on the trampoline and climbed on an ancient, rusting metal swingset. The girls sat…
