The Late Arrival

Nearly one year into COVID quarantine, and we’re still in darkness. I still believe hoping in darkness : that unseen good things thrive, grow and bloom in the darkest of places.   Today felt like another dark day in a long stretch of dark days, so I decided to intentionally eat my feelings on days like these as I have done for roughly ten of the eleven months of lockdown.   Pioneer Woman’s BestEver Lasagna fit the bill for the day’s emotional eating. I set out meats for defrosting as my daughter and husband set out for shopping at the local hardware store and Target.   They got back home as the meat sauce simmered; and after settling in with her newfound Target treasures, my daughter offered to pitch in with lasagna assembly.   This, in of itself, is any parent’s reason to rejoice, but when you are the parent of an artistic kid with specific and precise aesthetic expectations, an offer to help with lasagna assembly is less help and more annoyance.   B...

It was weeks ago or it ten years ago when I saw a man die. He died on Twitter. He died on Facebook. He died on the nightly news. He died on Instagram. He died again and again and again. I shook my head and sighed deeply in exhaustion. Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that Botham Jean , Freddie Gray , Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor were killed? A few days ago that Ernest Lacy , Dontre Hamilton , Daniel Bell were killed?  Maybe it was just a few weeks ago and not nearly 120 years ago that my second great grandfather French, his stepson Pete and nephew Will were lynched . Days, months and years blur together while only the names have changed and the only constant is black bodies.  I file the images and the names and the stories safely away from emotion, yet close enough to vibrate into my daily reality. That reality is the one where I want to go out into the our local hinterlands to buy smoke bombs because they bring me joy; but, instead I know that law enforcement is on high a...

The waiting is the hardest part. Every day you see one more card. You take it on faith. You take it to the heart. The waiting is the hardest part. So what do the lyrics to one of my favorite Tom Petty songs have to do with yesterday’s sermon? The sermon on this First Sunday After Christmas centered on people in the Bible who were celebrating Jesus’ birthday even though they weren’t circled around the manger when He was born on that December 25 silent night. (Yes, I know He wasn’t born on December 25. I’m just checking to see if you’re still with me here) Here’s the story in a nutshell Simeon was a guy who was close to God. I’m thinking Simeon prayed daily and in one of those prayers, God told him that Jesus was coming, and even though Simeon was really old, he’d get to see baby Jesus before he died. Sure enough, the Baby is born, His parents take him to temple, Simeon actually holds the Baby and sings a big ol’ long song of praise and thanksgiving. The End. But maybe ...

We don't deserve dogs.   I need this tee-shirt. This simple meme really says more about us than it does about Man's Best Friend. Just read the daily news, scan Facebook or Twitter timelines or watch the nightly news, it's clear: we can be awful to each other, to the environment, to animals. Given time and opportunity, we can be pretty much awful to anything. Rather than leave it at people are awful beings, I think its time to go further than saying we don't deserve dogs to  What we need to learn from dogs . 1.     Savor the awkward and the smelly, and roll around in it.   I'm pretty sure Mister Charley has no idea when he and/or his breath is stinky. Beauty thing is that he does not care a whit. He's here, he's stinky, he's sleepy and he ain't going anywhere. And guess what? His comfort in all of the above makes me forget about all of the above, and before you know it, this happens. It was a smelly time, my f...

Well, I'm a new kid, I'm just comin' up. A lot a rappers think that I can't tear it up, but I'mma show 'em, and ignore 'em... I was lost in the middle of throwback bliss perhaps induced by a menthol bubble bath when my daughter, who was in the basement doing her workout during this too-brief minute of sillyness and relaxation, came upstairs and threw a wrench in it all: MOM, THE BASEMENT TOILET IS OVERFLOWING!!! My head and body's towel-wrap along with my rapping was interrupted. I sprang out of my makeshift sauna down the stairs to find that, sure enough, our basement toilet was springing like Old Faithful. Then a funny thing happened. The rapping in my head stopped, and the water seemed to gurgle in slow-motion. The water was going to keep on doing what it was going to do and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was helpless, and it felt okay. You know what? Get all the towels out of the linen cabinet and we're just gonna soak ...

This is ridiculously adorable. And funny.  Go ahead and watch; it'll only take a minute. I cried laughing the first time I saw that little fluffy dog refusing to enter the house because he needed someone to open a door that only he could see. I watched it again and laughed just as hard. Then I looped it a third time for good measure, but that's when something eerily familiar resonated with me. Doggone if that little dog and his invisible closed door didn't remind me of me.  I think we've all stood on the outside, looking in and waiting for someone to open doors that existed only in our minds. For me, the 'right time' was my door. I kept waiting for the time when we'd be more financially stable, or for the time when stress would resolve itself and then -- then I could get out of a miserable job situation and into peace of mind.  I waited outside of that closed door only to finally realize the right time wasn't even a real obst...

"What'll you have?" "Beer's good." The fizz tickled. An hours-old "It's definitely you , not me " declaration and a final exit's relief echoes in my head. A job is life's filler. Not the other way 'round. Fizzes, tickles...taste like freedom.

On a rare childless night, my husband was out running an errand, leaving me in solitude save for the Animal Planet's drone about people and their preposterous pets. A man somewhere in the British Isles who was a falconer and a classical guitarist was featured. He strummed exquisitely as the camera panned from his fingers to a majestic golden eagle perched just above his right shoulder. As the guitar playing faded, a voiceover narrated the eagle’s story. The bird, once a resident at a zoo, had been stolen and then hidden in a closet of the thieves who spirited him away. The eagle was kept in this closet until he was rescued and adopted by the falconer. Upon rescue, the eagle was alive, but had plucked himself nearly bald -- in fits of madness, I guess -- when he realized the fruitlessness of his escape attempts. The falconer nursed the eagle back to health and after a few months, the bird's plumage returned. The next step in rehabilitation was teaching the eagle flight a...

The premise of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas is simple enough: furry, green man-beast has a heart that’s two sizes too small. The lack of room therein leaves no room for it/him to love Christmas. So much so that he hates the holiday and steals an entire town’s Christmas presents and decorations, lies about his identity to a toddler all in an effort to ruin an entire town’s Christmas celebration. Photo credit: emmytvlegends.com However, once he has a spirit of Christmas Aha Moment , he realizes the season isn't about all the packages, ribbons and bows. He repents and is forgiven of all aforesaid badness, and ends up loving Christmas and carving the Roast Beast himself in celebration. Photo credit: magazine.uc.edu I love that story. I think a lot of us do. Here's the thing: after honest soul searching, I think I love it because it affords me the high road, especially this year. This year has been The Year of Being an Adult with Adult Challenges. I can easily id...

A little over one year ago for the kid barely in his twenties. A month ago for the forty-nine year old rock star’s girlfriend. Barely a week ago for the twenty-two year-old entrepreneur. Come July, it’ll be seven months for the thirty-some year old mom of little ones not yet in their teens. Sometimes death by suicide makes headlines. Sometimes, the loved ones drowning in its wake are the only ones who know about it. When it’s a headline, count on news anchors to assume a pseudo-sad tone as they report the tragedy with heads cocked to one side, staring through the camera’s lens and into the eyes of whoever is on the other side, and asking Why? …and then moving on to the next news bite for popular consumption. "There are such things as dumb questions, and in suicide’s shadow, Why is the dumbest of question of them all." Answers to Why are never productive. They don’t restart the heart, cause oxygenated blood to course through the body to...

There is no perfect time. There isn't a certain time when things settle down or the pieces all fit together. Things are what they are when they are. The Mallard Duck Couple already knows this, as did all the other Mallard Duck Couples before them, I suppose. I only know this because I watched them as we walked by a narrow stream. Standing in the stream's current was a hip-wadered fly fisherman. Oblivious to water bubbling over rocks, gurgling past driftwood and moving through and around his hip waders, he gracefully cast and re-cast lines creating more ripples on which sunshine could dance. That's when I noticed the Mallard Duck Couple. They weren't faring well in the current as fly-guy was. Beneath the water, their little orange feet were visible, and paddling fast and furiously against it, even as their bodies couldn't help but bob and dance along atop the water to the stream's rhythms. But soon, their feet joined their bodies and gave in to the...

We needed paper plates. Not one thousand paper plates. Just enough to tide us through the days when we don't feel like washing dishes. That would be a quick trip to Walgreen's. From parking, to running in, to checking out, it'd be ten minutes. Tops. Which is perfect, because despite my near constant presence at The Store, capital "T" capital "S," I hate shopping. From making the list, to scavenging for items matching the coupons painstakingly clipped, to throwing the stuff in the cart, to waiting in the checkout line, to lobbing the stuff from the cart onto the conveyor belt, to stuffing it all into the car, to hauling it into the house, only to pack it away where it magically disappears into the cupboards, fridge and freezer: I loathe shopping, and also, especially The Store, capital "T" capital "S." Doesn't help that the place is one square block, and nine times out of ten, if I'm there for even four things, all four th...

It's no secret that I'm no fan of Valentine's Day . Grocery store card aisles bathed in red and pink give me a nervous twitch. Despite that, each year I find myself standing there on Valentine's Day after work skimming through picked-over cards in a panic. Maybe its because they're all picked over, but it seems the only ones I find are the You are the air I breathe and I can't live without you variety. For whom are these cards written anyway? God? And do I really want to tell Jamie via Hallmark that I think of him as little more than a glorified ventilator? Sappy love song lyrics like When we're hungry, love will keep us alive evoke a knee-jerk response of No, when I'm hungry I don't want a big bite of love, I want some food. Then there are lyrics that, in the name of love, write checks that no one's butt can afford to cash like The Fabulous Thunderbirds'   I would walk ten miles on my hands and knees just to come home and kiss y...

A comedian once said that meteorologists have the only job where you can be: evasive: There's probably maybe kind of sort of about a 50% chance of rain ambiguous: We'll have 2 to 12 inches of snow... and wrong: Looks like the storm we've been anticipating just missed us... and still keep your job. I should've been a meteorologist. But this isn't a time for ruing over unfulfilled wishes. The weather guys and girls are predicting a Mini Ice Age. Shouldn't come as a shock. I grew up here, it's just winter in the Midwest. But despite that, I still had my undies in a bundle with the incessant cold-weather-warning harping. In fact, I got depressed. Starting wishing we had deeper pockets so we could flee to someplace warm; and then seriously considered going into debt so we could do it. Finally, I decided that neither wishing nor being buried under a stack of bills were viable options, so I did the next best thing: perused warm-weathe...

Advertisements would have us believe a lot of things. That potty training will be a fun experience for parents and kids alike if we use technology to do it. If you've potty trained a child -- or even a puppy -- there's no app, tablet, laptop or gadget that can make it fun. Yeah. An iPad on a potty chair. Fun for everyone! That we'll have wrinkle-free radiant faces after a few applications of the right lotions and potions. Listen, you can butter up your face in every kind of oil, spackle and even acid, but wrinkles will forever be there. Don't ask how I know that. Yeah. Not. Of course, there's more. Achieving a lean, hard-bodied physique after just sprinkling magic fairy dust on food without exercise or change in diet. Irresistible magnetism to the opposite sex because of wearing the right scent, driving the right car or even drinking the right top shelf vodka. I've decided that Nutella should be added to the list too. No, not because of clai...