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.
I bought these Bamboo boots at Cherry Bomb at L5P in September of 2003. I remember they were probably about $100 in a time I had zero business spending $100 on a pair of shoes that were impractical, that I absolutely did not need. I did not need rain galoshes at the time; I probably needed dress shoes for work.
Here they are, three minutes ago, in June of 2026.
These boots saw me through two winters in Iowa. I remember a guy in the parking lot while I was working at Grinnell Mutual pointing at me and laughing and telling me I needed real snow shoes. But these rubber boots are completely waterproof and skid proof: perfect for snow and ice.
Most of the past 23 years, they have lived in the back of my closet.
I bought myself two pairs of Aérosoles Daria boots in 2025 and wore them near daily the entire year; I separated the soles on the brown pair, completely wearing them out. The faux patent leather pair still survives but is on its last legs probably.
And so, these are coming out and into the rotation more often, in favor of buying new boots. I wear mostly blacks and grays anyway, so a little color doesn’t hurt. And I do still love them every bit as much as I did in 2003.
I have owned these boots half my lifetime, and I’m hoping they last the rest of it.
I had someone repeatedly beg me to “not be mad at me for the things I did,” his words, a while ago.
What exactly did he do? Which thing, of the several I’d accused in the past, was I accurate about? I knew what I was angry about, but without an actual confession, with a blanket appeal for forgiveness without the itemized list, what was I to not be mad about?
I will never know.
That was December of 2024. It took me to October of 2025 to tell him in writing, that, why no, forgiveness was permanently off the table. In the same note, I basically told that person that he would not be in the line of work he is in today had I acted within my rights decades ago, had I known better at the time.
I’m pretty sure that is the line that earned me permanent silence on his end.
The forever silence is new. For someone who likes to have the last word, I wonder exactly how hard it is for him to restrain himself. The thing is, when that person is silent, it’s not because he wants to be. It’s because he knows it’s in his best interest to be.
And, it took me until April of this year to decide that yes, I was ready to extend forgiveness. I told that individual he owes me nothing; there are no strings attached; I forgive him.
And what has morphed since then is a feeling of pity for the smallness that is his outlook on life and relationships.
Opportunists sell themselves short on what capacity for human connection they may be capable of in their lifetimes. I’ve known more than one in my lifetime.
And just because certain vocations reward opportunism and narcissistic traits, success in those fields does not mean those people have any greater happiness because of their success.
In this particular case, I’m pretty darn sure that this person goes around punishing himself on the regular. A universal truth is that professional success does not mirror life satisfaction. In fact, my theory is that it is possible to use professional endeavors to mete out self-flagellation in real-time in ways that only those who have known us — really known us — recognize immediately.
And so, I actually do stand by that decision to forgive. I am choosing to move on with life. There actually isn’t a lot that would make my already happy and full life much happier. His lost access to me has been a precious gift I didn’t realize I needed.
Writing is far more fulfilling, and I have three lifetimes’ worth of material. I’m only just getting started.
And in this case, I am the smarter person, I am the stronger person, and I get the better sleep at night, I am certain.
Jared and I are at Gallery Row, and Jared is engrossed in this work project he has been working on for at least a solid two weeks straight, and for once he was thrilled to call our date a “working date,” despite the fact that most of the time when I want to bring my laptop to Gallery Row to write, Jared says he doesn’t need his laptop; that he is happy to work off his phone.
Which, to understand that, Jared has a Google Pixel Fold, so he does actually have massive phone screen real estate when he wants to and needs it. And, arguably, he is one of the few people in this world who does, actually need it more often than not.
I am up to page 160 in “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott, the chapter called “Letters.”
The book is sort of quaint even if it is still applicable to a writer’s life; it is a little window into what being a writer in 1994 would have been like. It’s hard to remember that life really was like this in my early high school days. She talks about writing on her word processor. She talks about distractions like someone calling you on the phone, or random regular procrastination-like distractions. I would like to see how she would update this book to account for social media and texting and the level of arguably world-changing distractions we have in 2026.
I just finished the chapter on finding a writing partner and I like that idea and I do run what I write by Jared, but Jared isn’t really that invested in the work; he is invested in making sure I am happy. So his advice is mostly placating and “uh-huh, Sweetie, that is nice.”
I do actually have an ideal writing partner whose opinion on my work I would deeply respect, but that person is unavailalbe for a variety of reasons and likely not interested in the gig. So, I go at it alone other than Jared’s cursory glances at whatever I’ve written. I’ve suggested the prospect previously to the individual in question to crickets. Rejection is hard.
The truth is, I write to process my world. That’s the whole reason I write. The idea of writing fiction is wholly unappealing; I don’t really do well on letting things go in my history, obviously; either.
And the truth really is stranger than fiction, I’ve found, personally.
But sitting here in Gallery Row on a Saturday night instead of our usual Friday night, I am finding that I really am settling into being a boring, settled, middle-aged wife. And, I like it.
Last night was our semi-monthly Costco run and we might as well have been sitting at an upscale restaurant than that Brookhaven Costco, with me savoring that strawberry-vanilla swirl decadent ice cream under the flourescent lights and the umbrella over our table. The thing is, at age 46 I do lament so much of what happened in my high school and college years. It is easy from this vantage point to sit here and think “What in the world was I thinking?” in reference to a lot of different experiences and relationships and things I did willingly.
But, if I hadn’t actually participated in those relationships and experiences, would I have recognized the safety Jared represented in 2003? I’m really not sure I would have.
Jared had to tame me. I was really like a wild animal, with quaint belief systems and thoughts about how the world and relationshps should be.
Jared says he plays a long game. Sometimes he alters that to say he plays a “long, long game.”I don’t know that he could have predicted taming me would take 23 years of knowing me, though.
Jared would say he hasn’t tamed me at all. I don’t think he thinks I have mellowed with age.
And I wonder what 24-year old me would think of the past 22 years. My small social circle is entirely different. I have become a near-hermit after being a social butterfly in my early 20s. To be completely honest, it is a near-miracle that I survived my early 20s, on so many fronts.
It is a miracle for different reasons that I survived my 30s and early 40s, bringing two children to adulthood.
I think I have tamed quite a lot over the last 20 years, though. And encounters with a past individual and experiences involving that person over the last couple of years have made me grateful I was able to retreat to Jared’s safety at home, after exploring attempts at closure in one situation.
And I did get that closure, even if it didn’t look exactly like I thought it would.
I’m pretty sure it looks exactly like Jared thought it would though. He was never going to tell me what to do but he knew that person wouldn’t respect boundaries. I’m still grateful for the experiences anyway.
Now that I’m eight months out from last contact with that individual, it feels like a story I couldn’t have written as fiction any better. I’m really not sure why some people have self-destruct modes, or why some people’s self-destruct modes look wildly like incredible success on the outside.
But, I got an inner look to that person’s self-destruction in slow motion in an up-front seat during a couple of very abbreviated sessions, and I came away from the experiences feeling like why yes, karma is real, and the universe is one giant balancing act and equalizer.
And I am grateful the past played out the way it did, even the recent past.
The quiet after mass-blocks on all the drama-causing individuals from my past is rather jarring, though, and the room it leaves in my brain is like a vacuum that I am struggling to fill with anything other the ghosts of their stories.
The thing is, which ghosts to tell? In what order? There are so very many of them. Sometimes those ghosts wake me up in the night, prompting me to fold myself deeper into Jared. Sometimes they invade a sunny afternoon, prompting me to lose hours to doomscrolling because distraction is better than facing that there are stories begging to be told.
And then, because there are blocks and mutual decisions for forever silence between me and these people, I find there are things to say and I have no one to talk to but the ghosts. And Jared. And thankfully, Jared has yet to get tired of me saying these things.
But I say them to Jared in an effort to escape putting them into writing for the world, too. Because some of what I have floating around in my heart feels too big to capture. Too dangerous. Some of what I feel like saying feels like I might lose my very soul if I capture the truth of what I really think and feel in writing….the rage, the heartbreak, the sorrow, and yes, even the love that exists to this day.
Even if Jared says a more accurate term for the word “love” is to substitute more appropriately “trauma-bond.” I say it is overly-simplistic to reduce years’ worth of relationship dynamics to simple “trauma-bonds.” Life is not that neat, unfortunately. Life is not that simple even when entire relationships were built upon emotional manipulation by a suicidal individual who I was not equipped to help at age 15, and actual sexual assault in a dorm room at age 19, and actual captivity in the blackness of the night at age 21.
And even so, the universe is an equalizer. I see that in the ghosts I’ve blocked, and I see it in other ways in my daily life still present.
So, I try to be more present in my marriage on a daily basis. Periodically as I write this I glance up at this man I have known of for a couple of weeks’ shy of 23 years, and I love that I think I have mellowed and he is not so sure. I love that we have three children, two of whom are now adults now. I love that we are raising three very driven individuals who have goals and aspirations and dreams just like we have had.
I love that even though we will have no one at the high school in the Fall, we will still go to band practice on Thursday nights. I love that our youngest will want that.
I love that I have goals myself now, after so many years of feeling like literal wastes of space aside from the identity of mother.
I love that routine is in reach, it is taking its rudimentary forms even before life changes in ways it will never retreat back to, when both our big boys go off to college in the Fall.
And, I truly never thought I would be one of those women who, in my late 40s, finds herself thinking that she would never go backwards in life to experience younger days. But instead, I find myself excited about the future, excited about the current state of my marriage, and excited to spend more time getting to know my children as big kids and adults.
But, the ghosts are there. And there are stories to tell. And even if they are trauma loops, they are my trauma loops, and in processing them maybe there are kernels of wisdom; warnings for other women to maybe learn from so that we can all heal a little more than we are today.
Because what happens when one of those perpetrators goes on to wild success and no justice? What happens when I get confirmation that yes, even wealth does not buy morality or a heart or respect? What happens when I find out for sure that it has not bought that individual love or freedom?
What happens when another perpetrator goes on to near destitution and deep drinking and psychological problems? What if this person was someone you were sure you were going to marry, when they were your high school sweetheart and life was quaint and there were no real problems?
But….then…..there were no real problems for me aside from scoliosis and teenage angst and recent family tragedies. This person had to go work in a strip club on school nights, in the kitchen in Atlanta because his mother thought it was the best money he could make as an 18 year old.
What happens when I learn that maybe trusting my brain was never the problem? What if I just stop and realize that we’ve all done the best we could?
And the last two years, finding closure in myself with the wealthy individual, has taught me that some people just seek out drama and that person seeking out that drama isn’t always me. Some people are magnets for it.
And I know what is wrong with that person, too, because his childhood and coming of age was equally tragic, if more privileged: tragic for entirely different reasons.
And so, I do the best I can. And I look up at Jared occasionally, immersed in his coding project for work that has made him so invested in his work lately and energized, and I am grateful. I am grateful for my life, I am grateful for our children, I am grateful for our home, I am grateful that I imported this man from Nebraska who had never so much as stepped foot on Georgian soil before he came to see me for the first time in September of 2003. I am grateful that I got homesick in 2007 and came running back and I am grateful that my children have each gotten a stellar education.
I am grateful that we are weird people, that we have strange inside philosophical family jokes that probably make no sense to other people, I am grateful that our children like philosophy like we do, even if Jared and I do lean more easily into the theology-related philosophy than our children naturally do.
I am grateful that I can rant about my past, I can write, I can talk, I can cry. I can also say, “Sweetheart, I am spiraling,” and Jared will bring me back to the present in some way or other or encourage it as best I can let him at the time.
And so: there are nights like tonight, where we find ourselves at Gallery Row: each of us writing for entirely different reasons, each of us equally satisfied. I find no answers, I avoid talking to the ghosts another night, and all is well with the world.
In late April, I brought in someone to help me start cleaning up our house. To say the boys’ rooms were problematic was an understatement. It wasn’t their fault: We have five pets, and I hadn’t gotten in to help them declutter or clean much in probably three years.
Over the course of three visits, my helper and I tamed the mess entirely.
The first visit, we tackled Porter’s room. I’d already packed up a good bit of things that he’ll want to save, so a lot of our project was rearranging books and actual de-furring every item and surface. And, getting rid of a lot of trash, too.
But with her first visit, I gained momentum to keep going on my own. I cleaned up the mess in the dining room. I tackled boxes in our bedroom. I re-arranged our bedroom.
The second visit was Oliver’s room (which was not in as bad shape as the others because he has a cat that lives in his room so his room had to be cleaned at least a little), and also the bathrooms in the house.
The momentum continued after her visit; I kept up maintenance cleaning and managed to make the kitchen desk shelving (and desk and kitchen table themselves) presentable and useable.
The third visit was Liam’s room and all the floors in the house, and some dusting.
And, all of a sudden…..I have a sanctuary baseline to work with to maintain.
We have a four-bedroom, single-story house with all luxury vinyl plank and tile flooring throughout. And two and a half bathrooms, one of which has a tile and grout shower and a garden jetted tub.
It’s a big house. Big by my standards, anyway.
So, here’s my new summer schedule….. I worked it out and the actual work each day should not be more than an hour and a half on the heaviest work days. The schedule will change in the Fall both because the big boys will be off at their colleges and my schedule will change too:
The Weekly Schedule
Sunday: Church & Rest & Maybe Swimming
Morning: Zero chores. Head to church and Costco.
Afternoon (3:00 PM onwards): Make beds, pet care (which involves changing puppy pads and scooping cat litter), two loads of laundry, unload/load dishwasher, scan for fur balls & five-minute pickup, swipe toilets, wipe down all counters, boys to maybe swimming.
Monday: Sheets & Swim (Oliver goes swimming on Monday afternoons)
Daytime Block: Make beds, pet care, four loads of laundry (sheets), unload/load dishwasher, scan for fur balls & five-minute pickup, swipe toilets, wipe down all counters.
Weekly Task: Quick dusting of main areas.
Floor Task: Steam mop primary bath and bedroom.
Afternoon: Swimming with Oliver.
Tuesday: Volunteer & Bathrooms
Morning: Volunteer time
Daytime Block: Make beds, pet care, two loads of laundry, unload/load dishwasher, scan for fur balls & five-minute pickup, swipe toilets, wipe down all counters.
Weekly Task: Clean bathrooms.
Weekly Task: Mow one yard segment (our grass is not in one section— there are 5 distinct sections of grass).
Floor Task: Steam mop kitchen and laundry room and powder room.
Wednesday: Volunteer & Bare Minimum
Morning: Volunteer time
Daytime Block: Make beds, pet care, two loads of laundry, unload/load dishwasher, scan for fur balls & five-minute pickup, swipe toilets, wipe down counters.
Weekly Task: None. Rest and recover from the drive.
Thursday: Catch-All Floors
Daytime Block: Make beds, pet care, two loads of laundry, unload/load dishwasher, scan for fur balls & five-minute pickup, swipe toilets, wipe down counters.
Weekly Task: Swiffer/sweep all floors.
Floor Task: Steam mop living room, dining room, and hallway.
Friday: Projects & Swim
Daytime Block: Make beds, pet care, two loads of laundry, unload/load dishwasher, scan for fur balls & five-minute pickup, swipe toilets, wipe down counters.
Weekly Task: Project Day (this is where I will do things like clean out a closet or unpack a box in storage in the attic or under the house).
Floor Task: Steam mop boys’ bedrooms.
Afternoon: Jared takes youngest swimming.
Evening: Date night.
Saturday: Yard & Flex
Daytime Block: Make beds, pet care, two loads of laundry, unload/load dishwasher, scan for fur balls & five-minute pickup, swipe toilets, wipe down counters.
Weekly Task: Mow one yard segment.
And having the schedule worked out like that, I feel free to create the kind of daily rhythm I struggled to establish and maintain when the boys were younger. I’m not 100% sure that two loads of laundry per day will be necessary, even, but if I don’t keep it in the schedule I won’t stay on top of the laundry and then there will be a dozen loads to do in one day.
I’m finding that I loved raising my boys, and I love even more now that two are successfully out of high school and the third is solidly in middle school. Motherhood has not been easy or come naturally to me and I am realizing I have been mostly in survival mode for nearly twenty years.
Now that there is room to breathe and no toys underfoot, my psyche is relaxing quite a bit. And I love chatting and spending time with my big boys now that no one is little. I was not the baby-person in the household; most people know that person was solidly Jared.
I realize that house cleaning is not rocket science; I was learning to tend to my house as a young child. It’s not lack of knowledge or even lack of discipline; it’s that somewhere over the last twenty years of life and motherhood, I lost my bearings.
And I’m under no illusion: it will take work to maintain this momentum, and I deal with mental illness and there will be days I just cannot.
It’s strange though, to go from feeling hopeless about the state of our house in April to all of a sudden feeling like I could have guests over right now if I wanted to.
There would be more photos, but the beds are not made because it is sheets day.
I’ve long since struggled with waking in the morning, but with this schedule and a sense of hope and feeling of gratitude about my life, I managed to wake up at 5:00 this morning and have my quiet time before everyone else was up. That is the magic part of the day for me, and my days don’t feel complete when I oversleep out of depression or exhaustion.
