• The 2026 Writer’s Retreat

    I am writing this post on notebook paper, old-school journal style, sitting in the Savannah Convention Center while Jared finishes his GAMEIS Conference. We had to be out of the hotel by 11 AM and the conference doesn’t end until noon.

    I have this gorgeous view for the morning, sitting by a massive wall of windows in a corporate seating style rocking chair I turned toward the window. The weather and the River Street view are both gorgeous.

    It has been such a fun week with Jared in Savannah! We stayed in Room 404 at the River Street Inn and had a stunning street-level view even though it was the fourth floor of the building. I took some photos around the room.

    Housekeeping kept me supplied with very yummy coffee and half and half all week long. I brought my tumbler from home and made double cups every morning, so my coffee stayed warm and lasted for hours.

    We slept in and hung out in the room on Tuesday morning. When we finally got out midday for our walk, we ran into someone Jared knew from Carrollton. We walked up to Reynolds Square where the John Wesley statue is and walked a few blocks over in a little square around the blocks, for a little photo walk for me. Then we went to The Broken Keel at the hotel for lunch.

    After lunch, Jared surprised me by telling me he really only had badge pick up for the conference for Tuesday, so we got in the car and headed south to St. Simons. We managed to find parking right in the Village, right in front of Go Fish Clothing. It was a beautiful afternoon if hot, and I was shocked it was not crowded despite being just after the 4th of July. I had fun with my camera around the Pier.

    It’s always an emotional exercise to go to St. Simons with Jared alone these days, just us. Not sad, just wistful and I turn inward. I associate St. Simons so strongly with my family— I can’t remember many 4th of July’s not spent there growing up. We went for whole weeks; sometimes two. And it wasn’t just my parents and me, it was my mom’s whole side of the family.

    So, sitting on the Pier Tuesday afternoon for that brief time with Jared in silence I felt an intense, indescribable peace; a zen of reaching across time. I particularly thought of my Nannie and GaGa— GaGa has been gone since 2007 and Nannie has been gone since 2015. I do miss them so.

    When we left the Village, we drove the back way down Mallery Street, so familiar to me from my teen years, to Demere Road and stopped for Waffle House. An odd choice maybe, but I’d had chicken already in the day and do not eat seafood and wanted to watch my sodium.

    Then we hit up Walmart in Brunswick for some snacks so I could avoid eating out Wednesday and Thursday for breakfast and lunch.

    Then it was back to the River Street Inn. Jared and I are in the middle of watching the show Severance and we hooked my phone up to the room TV to stream the show.

    Wednesday, I slept in after Jared left for the conference. I got out a little before 11 and found excellent parking right in the Bull Street Library’s parking lot just in time for my noon appointment with Ethan at With Love Tattoo. Ethan touched up the camera tattoo behind my ear.

    When I had the tattoo done in 2020, I didn’t pay close attention to the proof and she put the viewfinder under the shutter button. But Ethan made a brilliant adjustment to make it a proper dial knob rangefinder by adding a tiny box line on the opposite side of the camera from the original shutter. It is so cute!! And we decided it was best to just go over the whole thing after he made the addition. It looks and feels just like a brand new tattoo!

    I went back to the hotel and had my mini-writer’s retreat on Wednesday and Thursday; I brought SARK’s Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper and The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop by Stephen Koch and Mark Woodhouse’s Paradigm Wars for reading. I journaled and I blogged and I wrote in Scrivener. I did some of Byron Katie’s The Work. It was glorious.

    Room 404 was the perfect setting for this sort of endeavor. The marketing person for the hotel came by with someone to measure the windows for replacement. She had been with the hotel for 25 years and she said our room was one of her favorite rooms. The noise of East Bay Street set the scene. The whole setting was balm for my soul this week.

    A very kind vendor treated Jared and me to dinner at FraLi Gourmet on Wednesday night and it was beyond yummy. I had a four cheese ziti. Then we went back to the hotel for more Severance.

    Room 404 was quirky— the battery in the door lock was dying so it clicked. It added to the ambiance, as strange as that sounds.

    Thursday, I continued my writer’s retreat but decided to get out midday to Hayley Black Vintage, right next door to the River Street Inn. I found the cutest pink costume necklace from the 1990s that Hayley said she found in California. Her prices were shockingly affordable for a River Street adjacent prime real estate vintage shop and she had the cutest things! I found her on Facebook and she ships! The necklace in the photo with the tattoo above is the necklace in question that I couldn’t leave without.

    Then more writer’s retreat.

    About 3:50 Thursday afternoon I left the room to take the ferry across the river to wait on Jared…. I caught a waiting ferry! We were to go on a dinner river cruise and the boat picked us up at the Wyndham. I found my sweet spot that I have made my convention center home where I sit as a type this into my phone, after sitting here writing this post in my notebook. It really is a stunning view.

    On the boat, I learned to play Black Jack! And I wasn’t terrible at it! There was Chardonnay and some fabulous biscuits and mac and cheese for dinner. The Mac and cheese was really great.

    It came a downpour on the way back across the river. We watched the storm coming our way; the lightning was terrible while we waited for the ferry. The lightning was close, too close, while we got on and off the ferry in the downpour.

    Monday night we had stopped in at River Street Sweets for candy to take back to the boys, and in that downpour in the dark we stopped in again for more candy as I had raided the boys’ stash in the week. My feet had to be washed immediately on getting back to the room as I was wearing Birkenstocks and my feet got soaked in unavoidable dirty River Street puddles on the way back to the hotel. I took the hotel hair dryer to my Birkenstocks this morning; they were still very damp.

    Getting to the Convention Center this morning was a breeze; Jared loaded the cart with our bags and I took them out to wait on the valet while Jared checked us out of the hotel. And the Convention Center uses the same Metropolis parking as is used in downtown Decatur so I didn’t have to do anything to park except update my card info when we arrived this morning.

    And so, the writer’s retreat has been a massive success. A much needed vacation and respite; I go home ready to get back to real life. Our children have done a phenomenal job taking care of themselves, each other, the pets, and the house while we have been gone. We have raised incredibly responsible young adults and it is a new, slightly surreal feeling to find independence apart from children.

    That’s a post for another time.

  • The Severing

    July 8, 2026.

    I didn’t set out for today to be a before and after day.

    And really, not much has changed about life.

    Except it also feels like everything has changed.

    I used Byron Katie’s The Work to figure out that the entire past four years, I have been attempting to do something with my subconscious that I haven’t really succeeded in the past 28 years to do:

    I have been attempting to decide it was okay to not want someone to matter anymore. And, more: I have been attempting to decide that it was okay for me to not matter to them anymore, too.

    And, well….. I think today they don’t matter anymore anymore, and equally: it is okay on my end for me to not matter to them anymore, either.

    And, well, does that mean that is what true closure looks like? I don’t really know.

    Forgiveness is one thing, but forgiveness doesn’t always look like irrelevance.

    For a lot of the last several months, forgiveness for me has looked like, well, a trophy. A “Look! I did it! Be proud of me!” kind of thing.

    But now, I’m realizing: I’m the protagonist of this story. Antagonists come and go, and that particular antagonist exited stage right a long, long, long time ago. 

    Almost four years ago I discovered this particular person following me on Linkedin, and that opened a can of worms I never dreamed prior would be opened ever again.

    And, actually, that four-year process has brought me to today, where I can decide that it was actually the decision I made, not that person’s actions in any way, that were notable and interesting about the stories in question.

    And, well….looking at these situations in that light is a new way of thinking, and it feels like a breath of fresh air in a stagnant coffin. 

    Because reframing the entire sequence over since 1998, in a “and this is what I did next” kind of way, makes the entire thing seem like a superhero novel, not a tragedy at all. 

    So…..severing.

    I like the photo above, and I’ve taken several in this style on our jaunt to Savannah this week while Jared is at a conference. This particular photo was taken right in our River Street Inn hotel room a few minutes ago. 

    I figured out finally this morning that the reason I like it is because it resembles my natural, uncorrected severe near-sightedness— it most closely resembles the real way I see the world.

    I’m going to be taking an awful lot more photos just in this kind of style moving forward. 

    And, I got my camera tattoo touched up this morning, and it doesn’t look like a moderately embarrassing mistake anymore, at all— it looks like a beautiful, unique rangefinder. 

    And you know, the one thing that has struck me also throughout this entire day, is the uncanny prescience of my own intuition. When I shift the story back onto what I did, the thing I come back to is the decision to choose Jared. The reality is that it does send chills down my spine, exactly how casually I dismissed the other guy’s question to talk about marriage in that Marriott hotel room in September of 2003. I don’t recall a long silence before I told him “no,” and that there had been too many lies, and that I was talking to a man (Jared) and I wanted to see where it might go. I didn’t think hard about it, I didn’t get emotional at the time, and I didn’t feel sadness or fear or even consider that that was essentially the end of the road with any future with that man at all. 

    I simply said, “no,” and went about my life, promptly to go home and message my now husband, to come invite him to meet me in person a week later.

    Because that is the intuition that has saved my life more than once. 

    That is the angle of the stories waiting to be told. 

  • Hello, Daily Forever Boots

    I’ve been on a boot kick for about two years now, wearing only my Aérosoles Daria boots near daily for a year and a half or so. I had two pair: one brown, one faux patent leather. I wore the brown pair so much that the sole came apart from the boot and had to be tossed. The faux patent leather ones are still in the shoe rotation.

    But I am on a buy it less often kick, and trying to buy better stuff that will last.

    And I love my 10 inch LL Bean Bean boots, so I went looking for a taller version. And they exist…. In the form of a 16 inch boot sold in the men’s hunting section called Maine Hunting Shoes. But unfortunately they were discontinued in 2025.

    I was undeterred.

    eBay was the first stop, and there was a multitude of antique varieties, some with the original Vibram soles.

    Poshmark was where I found these beauties. Apparently practically unworn, they smell brand new and the soles are clean.

    Score. I haven’t given up on the 23-year old yellow Cherry Bomb Bamboo galoshes; they’ll stay in the closet for fun days.

    But I am pretty sure I can live in these Maine Hunting Shoes daily forever. ❤️

    Also: in the grand scheme of potentially-forever shoes, were not expensive. I paid $123 including shipping and tax on Poshmark.

    I wore them for six hours today after disinfecting them, and they’re fantastic, comfortable, breathable enough with wool socks, and I can even get them on and off all by myself even though my spine is 2/3 fused.

  • Can’t Buy Purses in a Store Anymore

    So buy it/make it once doesn’t mean zero maintenance.

    When I made this 6-ply jute crochet jute bag in February or so, I waxed it with melted beeswax then.

    But beeswax wears down, so it has to be reapplied occasionally.

    And the waxing cuts down on the jute shedding but does not eliminate it. So, the whole bag has to be emptied and vacuumed out and I used tape to catch the fibers still caught after the vacuuming.

    And then I melted my wax, and used the dedicated brush I have for this purpose and went over the whole thing in the kitchen with melted beeswax. Then I went to our bathroom and used the hair dryer on high to melt the beeswax into the bag.

    I did the waxing process twice when I made the bag to begin with, but doing it again every few months is probably going to be a good thing, at least for a while.

    And while I didn’t do it when I put the straps on, I used leather conditioner on the straps today, too.

    The longer luggage strap is permanently affixed— I used 2-part jeweler’s epoxy to permanent close the clasps to the bag.

    Mama and Daddy gave me the 16 inch Holdfast stabilizer in 2018 or 2019, and it is perfect for days that I want a shorter strap— the luggage strap tucks in the bottom of the bag just right, as seen in this photo:

    The Holdfast strap comes off on days I have my laptop in the bag, or on days it’s otherwise packed to the brim with camera gear.

    In general though, Jared’s lining has proven to be hardy and holds up to my wear— I did manage to get an ink stain in the pocket and I tried the rubbing alcohol trick and while it didn’t completely do away with it, the stain does look more like a color block than a pen accident. The stain is deep enough to not be visible at all and is light, so it is just a part of the bag now.

    I’ve decided when the lining does eventually wear out, I will use stitch removers and cut it out and we’ll just make a new one.

    This bag is big enough to hold anything I want to carry on a regular basis…. If I remove the Holdfast strap I can fit my MacBook, a notebook, my paper calendar, and my camera with a lens attached. If I don’t have the MacBook in it I can carry a camera (or two) with two lenses in pouches.

    I kept 4 other purses for days it’s either not practical or inappropriate to carry this big bag.

    But I do love that it has turned out to be practical. Making bags like this has killed my purse addiction. It took 4 attempts to get one that was just right, and I don’t follow a pattern for these, I just stitch in the round till I decide it’s big enough, and then stitch till it’s tall enough. Not hard, except on my hands. Being able to make my own bags that fit my lifestyle better than anything I have ever found in stores has pretty much made it impossible to consider buying a purse off a shelf pretty much ever again.

    And re-waxing with beeswax once every few months is just fine with me, if this will last me several years before I have to make another one.

    Eventually I intend to try making a smaller one. Haven’t gotten around to it yet.