This morning I experimented with a new bread recipe that came in two steps, the first a starter to make the night before, and then the balance to make the next morning. I was trying to replicate a Tuscan loaf I bought locally that was so, so good. This does not resemble it at all, but I must say, is so, so much better. Given … Continue reading Sunday Almanac: Trying Something New
And B is for bicycle wreck, which is how last week started. The skin on my legs is variegated in the most gorgeous technicolor hues right now, and there’ve been surprise areas of new mottling every day. Funny I didn’t feel all those pop-up bruises from the first instant I hit the pavement. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say, … Continue reading Sunday Almanac: A Is for Anniversary
My SIL down in Charleston got me interested in this pepper-ish website months ago, and I bit. We don’t have any growing space at our new place beyond the ornamental beds around our immediate house—the greenspaces in this neighborhood are all ‘common’ areas maintained as lawn by the HOA, and that suits us just fine. No more mowing. But that means any fresh veg we … Continue reading Labor Day Almanac: Summer of Peppers
Memories that pop up in social feeds can be cruel, but as often they’re so beautiful. Once in a while, images surface as reminders Chef David and I somehow found time to do things together, a lot of things, in the chapter that was life in Vermont. But leisure time seems so elusive somehow in this chapter. We’ve been in our new house for a … Continue reading Reflection: Piloting Through Chapter and Verse
And because of its distinctly non-human condition, it sure can’t tell stories like we can. Recently I was tasked with composing an essay all about it for work. If you’re interested, go here and check it out. Continue reading Reflection: AI =/= Human
The last two things I remember about the day I left Knoxville forever were gripping fear and a cameo of my ex-husband’s backside as he stood before the kitchen sink with the tap open. He was washing his hands (metaphorically too, I suppose) while the morning sunlight filtered through the stained-glass window framing him; I hoped with all my might he was bawling, but I … Continue reading Reflection: I Have Stories to Tell
The mountains erupted out of the gaping landscape with impossible might, etched against saturated blue sky with equal parts gravitas and elegance. One wished to capture and hold them, but the scenery never sat quietly for its portrait, and instead wiggled and squirmed disobediently, this moment stirring the heart to rapture, and that, an austere and unforgiving reminder of life’s transience. A sunbeam piercing through … Continue reading Morning Miniature 7.2.23
What is it about permanence that is so alluring on the one hand, and so vexing on the other. When my kiddo was tiny, he developed an appetite for drawing and coloring with permanent markers because they were forbidden. If his tiny fingers found their way around a Sharpie, in short order I’d have to pry it loose and then replace it with a less-desirable … Continue reading Reflection: The Places That Mark Us Indelibly
But it has been a bad season for pollen, even the locals say so. And even though we’re now locals too, we’re still too green (or yellow, as the case may be) to know what qualifies as “bad” for spring pollen in coastal North Carolina. Evidently this does. Our new home has a screened porch adjacent to the open interior living space on the first … Continue reading Sunday Almanac: Life’s Been Pretty Good Lately
Every elementary school in this metropolis reeked by May of stale lunch, chewed-up pencils, and a fatigue that hung heavily, everywhere; on the staff it also betrayed itself in their careworn expressions. The dismissal queue came a little earlier every day while teachers crowed deadline reminders over the din of desks jostled out of place, casualties of children headed for the door with an urgency … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature 3.12.23
Carolina Thinklings 