What Makes Self-Care Actually Work

I’m exhausted these days.  Parenting littles, homeschooling a four year old, general house responsibilities.  I need a break.  Friends say I need more self-care.  What actually counts as self-care anyway?  I wondered how often I had thrown around the term like an NFL ref throwing penalty flags. Pedicure? Self-care. Dropping $150 at TJMaxx? Self-care. Netflix […]

Three Phrases That Save My Marriage

This summer marks eight years that my husband and I have been married.  Eight years, three houses, two moves back and forth to Toledo (that’s another story), three pregnancies, two kids, one new car, countless home improvement projects, and approximately one zillion conversations.  Here are three phrases we use that save our marriage daily.  (Notice […]

When You Feel Stuck In First Gear

Motherhood has slowed my pace immensely.  My dad used to joke that I only knew how to burn the candle at both ends.  But after the birth of my second daughter, I realized there would be days in the future for racing and sprinting.  But these days are for first gear.  Keeping pace with our […]

Letter To My Littles

I often wonder how history will tell the story of these days.  You are so little, I doubt you will remember the details.  My mother used to talk about the Challenger space shuttle explosion of 1986 and how that impacted her as a young mom.  I have no memory of that, but I have a […]

What Can You Do?

It’s a helpless feeling.  Feeling like there’s nothing you can do.  Maybe that’s why we spend so much time online, looking at the intangible because we have nothing tangible to put our hands on.  Maybe that’s why we get so passionate and even virulent in our comments in the virtual world, because we feel so […]

On Being Uprooted…

It was finally cooler outside this morning, so after breakfast I dressed in gardening clothes.  The flowerbeds in the front of our house had been…well…dirtbeds all spring, minus one rogue tulip that we never planted.  We have a fair amount of houseplants, and some nice greenery around the backyard deck, but we are not green […]