Tag: writing

  • thankful

    Arapaho National Forest

    I am aware that most of the time in writing at least, I am the bringer of doom-and-gloom.

    Today, though, I am grateful.

    I have a gratitude practice that I do most days in my journal app. I just don’t publish it because most of the time it has things that I wouldn’t necessarily want the world to know.

    Here’s today’s gratitude list:

    1. I am grateful for Jared.
    2. I am grateful for my marriage to Jared.
    3. I am grateful for Porter.
    4. I am grateful for Liam.
    5. I am grateful for Oliver.
    6. I am grateful for Abby.
    7. I am grateful for Trixie.
    8. I am grateful for Mow.
    9. I am grateful for Nancy.
    10. I am grateful for Bess.
    11. I am grateful for my side of the family.
    12. I am grateful for Jared’s side of the family.
    13. I am grateful Jared has a good job.
    14. I am grateful our kids are getting stellar education.
    15. I am grateful Porter has a safe place to live in Athens.
    16. I am grateful Liam got into UGA.
    17. I am grateful Oliver had such a good time doing the play, “Oliver” at school.
    18. I am grateful that all three of our children are healthy.
    19. I am grateful that we have a home.
    20. I am grateful that we have a nice home.
    21. I am grateful that we have reliable transportation.
    22. I am grateful that Jared and the boys helped me clean up our house yesterday.
    23. I am grateful we are all physically able to clean and do household chores.
    24. I am grateful we have enough to eat.
    25. I am grateful for good friends.
    26. I am grateful for our church family.
    27. I am grateful to be a photographer.
    28. I am grateful to like to write.
    29. I am grateful to be learning to leave the past in the past.
    30. I am grateful we can pay our bills.
    31. I am grateful that I am learning to like living in Carrollton more.
    32. I am grateful Porter and Liam have their driver’s licenses.
    33. I am grateful Porter and Liam are good drivers.
    34. I am grateful to be having Costco deli Mac and cheese for lunch today.
    35. I am grateful to be alive.
    36. I am grateful to be 46 years old.
    37. I am grateful to have learned a lot about caring for my mental health over my adult lifetime.
    38. I am grateful for healing.
    39. I am grateful for time alone to think.
    40. I am grateful to have been married to Jared for 20 years.
    41. I am grateful for good choices.
    42. I am grateful for a good night’s sleep.
    43. I am grateful that my whole family has enough clothes to wear.
    44. I am grateful for my education.
    45. I am grateful for appreciating history: my own, my family’s, and the broader world.
    46. I am grateful I was a religious studies major.
    47. I am grateful it’s not too late.
    48. I am grateful for my life.
    49. I am grateful for love.
    50. I am grateful that today is a good day.

    And with that, I am going to focus on today, today.

    I wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving.

  • protein bar in the bed kind of morning

    I don’t take photos like this very often. But as I draft this post it is 11:18 AM and I am eating my favorite kind of Kirkland protein bar in the bed. Because it is that kind of morning.

    And as it happens, I went to bed in the most awfully despondent kind of mood last night. The kind where I become uber dramatic and morose about the future; I will not repeat what was said.

    It was the kind of morning where I did not set an alarm; Jared woke me up long after he’d woken the boys up, to get me to take my morning medicines. He knew he had to do this because if he did not, I might or might not actually take said medications (note: it was my thyroid meds so the likelihood of me taking them was high. But still).

    And because Jared loves me and spoils me rotten, for breakfast because he knew comfort foods were in order, he brought me a baggie of Cheez-It’s and my favorite Kirkland Chocolate and Peanut Butter Protein Bar.

    And I promptly fell back asleep until after 10 AM.

    Because it’s difficult to maintain hope right now.

    But, I do have two goals for today:

    1. finish the stitching on my newest jute bag’s liner
    2. Get my jewelry collection back in order, because it is in the kind of embarrassing state that does not reflect my feelings about it.

    That’s true, actually, about our house and my body, too; both are in the kind of embarrassing state that does not reflect my feelings about either of them.

    Jared told me, as he frequently does, to “be kind to yourself” before he left.

    So that’s today’s goal. Even if today is starting at 11:28 AM.

  • bet my back is more messed up than yours

    I referred to it a little on the 12th but last week, on the 12th, I had a check-up with my orthopedic PA.

    I’m not really sure why I even go. It’s not like there’s more surgery I will ever let them do to me, even if my neck discs are seriously degenerating.

    The photo above is my back as it looked on x-ray on Wednesday, November 12. 

    It’s pretty crazy. 

    And that whole top curve wasn’t there when I was a teenager or young adult. I assume that is what 4 pregnancies (yes, there were 4 even though there are only 3 boys) and years upon years of laying-in-the-bed-depressed depression will do to me with my brand of scoliosis.

    The only real comment the orthopedic PA made was that indeed, there is significant degeneration in the discs in my neck. Such that actually, there was a blank space where there should have been a disc at the base of my neck in front, actually. 

    That’s probably why my neck hurts when I transition from standing or sitting to lying down in the bed. 

    And maybe I should feign terror at the utter basic breakdown that is my spine, that is my body.

    But to be honest, it’s just my normal. I’ve dealt with this since I was 6 years old, way back in the back brace days.

    At least I’ve spent the vast majority of my life without the large lumbar hump that was on the left side of my back as a kid.

    My orthopedic PA says she doesn’t measure degrees. She says she’ll know when she should refer me to her surgeon, and he’ll measure degrees then. She knows– rightly– that people obsess over degrees of curvature when– also rightly– degrees don’t necessarily mean a damn thing, especially when there’s rotation or some other such craziness going on.

    She didn’t say this time, though, that she’d never see me needing surgery again.

    Not sure I would do it though. I’d have to be in an awful– a very awful– amount of pain to agree to give up the mobility I have in my upper back and neck, and that’s what would happen with more fusions.

    I’ve had probably 2% of progression in the last two years. She says that’s pretty stable for my particular situation. So much so, that she won’t worry about x-rays when I come back next year.

    I did get another referral for physical therapy. I still know a lot of the exercises I was taught last year but I haven’t been super reliable about it since I got depressed and had very bad mental health in the Spring and summer. And of course, I did have a whole hysterectomy in May.

    All you people with normal bodies, it must be nice.

    When I look at this photo of my x-ray though, it makes complete sense as to why I have mental health issues AND why I have been the object of not-nice men.

    Easy to prey on the already weakened.

    As my oldest would say, “It is what it is.”

  • laundry day is probably going to be four days long

    The title says it all.

    On Sunday evening, October 19, I threw in a load of laundry. I knew I’d be busy on dedicated laundry day, Monday the 20th, so I was trying to get ahead so my whole routine wouldn’t be blown to smithereens.

    I was fooling myself. Not because the premise of the idea wasn’t good, but because Monday the 20th threw me into a whirlwind of emotions I can only tangentially talk about at the moment. Mostly self-destructive despair and self-loathing.

    I think I actually did a load of laundry on the 20th, or I actually switched the laundry, early that morning.

    And, maybe three loads of laundry have gotten done since then. Maybe four.

    Monday is still laundry day. But, I am starting laundry day today, on Saturday, so that maybe laundry day will be done by Tuesday or early Wednesday– we have that much laundry. If I finish it on Monday, all the better but I am not holding my breath.

    Dana K. White from A Slob Comes Clean was the first person who I listened to about laundry day. My aunt said years ago she tried to tell me once it would be easier to just have a laundry day when the boys were little, but I have no memory of that.

    But, Dana says that a first laundry day, in no way, is likely to be only one day if you have an actual family you are doing laundry for.

    And in my experience, she’s 100% right.

    So, here I am, it’s 12:46 PM on Saturday November 8, 2025, and I am started Monday’s the 10th’s laundry day at 11:30 this morning.

    Because I was doing pretty good before the 20th. And I feel pretty good this morning, aside from feeling like my routine is gone to crap.

    And, this afternoon, there is a maternity session and it is exclusively a Cinelux lens maternity session. I am taking along the Minolta lens just in case I need it, but I don’t anticipate needing it. A former bride approached me about maternity photos several months ago, about the time I was shutting down the business and sold the bulk of my lenses, and I turned them down. But I reached out later and showed her some of the photos with the lenses and told her it wouldn’t be a typical session but that I was willing to do it for free if I could use these lenses and use them for my portfolio, and she agreed. So here we are, and it is a beautiful day with perfect weather, and I get to have a Cinelux session.

    The idea was that if the photos turned out, I might decide to take on limited Cinelux sessions in the future.

    I already used this lens once in a session, a few years ago now. I just chickened out and got complacent with my autofocus lenses.

    I forgot to slow down and enjoy photography.

    And, for the occasion, I downloaded again the UnScripted app, my posing Bible I used for so very long. I am very excited about the poses I found.

    Eight years in, I no longer feel any shame whatsoever in the fact that coming up with natural poses on my own is no, in fact, natural for me.

    But, I found the UnScripted app when it was first barely out of beta, brand new, years ago and it has served me very well. I paid for a lifetime membership around 2020 in fact, when it was dirt cheap– definitely not what it is now. It was probably 1/5 of what it is now — at $499– or else I wouldn’t have paid for it at all.

    Looking back on this week: there were nerves about the potential health scare. There was leftover fallout from meeting with someone I shouldn’t have on October 20. There was fallout from having told that person exactly what I think of them in writing since apparently I am incapable of doing so to their face though at least I can, indeed, face them. But, also: the time change hit me really, really hard, really, really suddenly.

    I do not do well with limited daylight hours. Which is why I use a light therapy lamp to begin with.

  • the plastic project

    ***This post contains an affiliate link.***

    The plastic-on-the-windows project is done. At least done enough, for now.

    Not really to my satisfaction really, but there’s nothing to be done about it.

    Liam’s windows still have shades on them (with sheers over the top just for my own edification really) because his window is the only one really on ground level. 

    To put plastic on Liam’s windows would mean I would have to cover the shades (the plastic goes on the window frame), which means Liam wouldn’t be able to peek behind them to see who was in the driveway, or if there was a weird noise outside. 

    Liam prefers to keep relying on his space heater when it gets really cold. 

    And Oliver just straight up doesn’t want plastic on his windows.

    And the dining room windows are complicated because the sheers are held on by a tension rod between the tops of the frames. So I couldn’t go to the top of the frame with the plastic.

    Porter’s room is a maybe later. But his room is in the middle of house and it’s typically the hottest room in the house anyway naturally. 

    And the kitchen is also a maybe, though that room doesn’t really get cold. 

    And so: the plastic is on the double doors in the living room, and the windows in our bedroom.

    Our bedroom is the coldest room in the house. Our room is above the almost-walk-in crawlspace/basement and I’ve been thinking about going to get some more roll insulation to put in the ceiling of the crawlspace/basement, between the joists. It’s a thought, though I haven’t talked to Jared about it yet.

    At the very least, the styrofoam tubing I shoved in the wider, disjointed gaps at the base of both double doors in the living room, along with the plastic sweeeps we put to block the air last winter, will help, in addition to the plastic on the window portions of the double doors. That was the biggest insulation worry, since I removed the heavy blackout drapes. 

    The goal really wasn’t to bring our energy bills down from what they already are. The goal was to prevent them from skyrocketing despite the very necessary aesthetic changes made to the windows in the house, for my mental health. 

    If anybody is interested in the plastic I bought, you can find it here. 

    It was the cheapest plastics solution I could find, though admittedly I dealt with an awful lot of waste. But the tape, despite the reviews, seem decent enough. And the hair dryer trick (waving the hair dryer briefly over the edges covering the tape) really does shrink wrap the plastic to the frame .

    And one thing I really was not prepared for was the mishaps: The first window I did, I didn’t know that I should keep the hair dryer to the edges by the tape, and I melted two holes that had to be patched. And the patching, while functional, takes away from the aesthetic. I really need to redo that window.

    Similarly, I hadn’t counted on the dogs seeing cats through the sheers outside and going berzerk. Trixie punched a hole in the bottom of the plastic in one of the doors in the living room, that had to be patched.

    At any rate, I am calling the project a success.

    You can read more about me here.