My mom's birthday is coming up. A day that used to inspire joy now comes barreling at me, a reminder that she was too young to go. The idea of milestone birthdays and anniversaries rings more shallow to me now. Don't wait to celebrate. Don't put off a party or a celebration or a vacation together because it's not "a big one". My mom didn't make it to her 60th. This year she would be 63 and I wish I could throw her the biggest damn party she'd ever seen. Or surprise her with tickets to Broadway. Don't push off celebrating. I've been sitting in grief today. I opened the pages of the second volume of Every Moment Holy: Death, Grief, and Hope, a gift from my grandmother. A gift for no occasion. Be like her - buy the gift and send it when you think of someone. Don't wait for a reason or an event. You speak love when you do this. Send the card, text the verse, leave a voicemail. The saved voicemails I have from my mom are...
Using his best Sean Connery imitation, this was Zach's sage advice for me as I whined about my lack of projects during this quarantine. As natural doer, having nothing to do has been rough. To be a doer who's not doing is... "unnerving" as Lumiere puts it in Beauty and the Beas t. Which is why Zach has tried to get me to write, regularly quoting Finding Forester to try and motivate me. The problem is that I don't like to write unless the words are flowing out of my soul with ease. My fingers fly over the keys, barely keeping up with my thoughts, my body feels as though something is quite literally brimming inside of me that is spilling out onto the page. When I don't have words... punching the keys feels like a chore. A discipline. Work. As I thought about it some more, I realized that, while I may not have any new words, there are words I've written that haven't been shared. More correctly, they have only been shared with a very small group of pe...
I am in a horrible dinner rut. When I plan our weekly dinners on Sundays, all my creativity seems to leave my body. It doesn't matter that I have a shelf full of cookbooks, that I am addicted to Pinterest, or that I watch several different Food Network shows. All I can think of are turkey burgers, spaghetti, tacos, stir fry, pancakes. Almost every single week. Even Peyton is eating more interestingly than the rest of us are with her crazy combinations of zucchini and bananas! I think it's to the point where my family might mutiny. So I'm issuing myself a challenge: for the next month, no staples. No spaghetti with marinara. No burgers. No pizza with chicken sausage, bell peppers, and onions. I love to cook, but I'm bored with my cooking. Here's how it will work: each Sunday I will pull 6 recipes out of my recipe box, which is full of recipes I've clipped from places like Everyday Food, Penzey's Spices, and my mom's own...
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