A(nother) Year of Reading

Kitchen Island as a To-Do List

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

We moved into a house a few years ago that needed a kitchen redo. The kitchen redo gave us a large island. When we first saw it, we said, “Wow, we’d better be careful not to start piling things on that island. It will hold a lot of stuff!”

Now, a couple years later, I am looking at our island from the kitchen table and it is piled with stuff. A lot of stuff. A mess doesn’t bother me if I can clean it in under 15 minutes when I hear company is coming, and these piles on the island can definitely be picked up in less than 15 minutes.

Looking at it, I realize it is a kind of to-do list. A few things that need taken to work. A few books I want to read. some paperwork that needs taken care of, a gift that needs wrapped.

I grew up in a house that had nothing out of place. My parents could not go to sleep if there was a dirty spoon left in the sink. It was nice to live in a space that never had a mess but as an adult, that is big expectation. So for years, the guilt of a little mess was a lot. But I’ve come to be okay with it. In my house, there are ALWAYS things to pick up. I am always in the middle of a few projects and you can tell what they are when you walk in the door.

But it cleans up nicely and it is never overwhelming. Finding the balance between perfection and an overwhelming mess is a constant but looking at the island, it seems to be that I’ve figured it out. It is a good balance:-)

Slice of Life: Some Good News (for once)

The headline caught my eye, “Eastern monarch butterfly population nearly doubles in 2025.”

Fantastic…but 2 x 0 still = 0. I haven’t seen a monarch in my yard for several years now.

And when you dig into the article, you find that the doubling is calculated by the acreage of butterflies overwintering in Central Mexico. They are currently taking up 4.4 acres, up from 2.2 acres the year before. 4 acres is about 19,000 square yards. A football field is is 6,400 square yards. Butterflies are taking up about 3 football fields-worth of forest. Oof.

But this was supposed to be good news, so let’s focus on the doubling, and what we can all do to keep the doubling going:

Plant milkweed. Even if it doesn’t fit into your carefully planned landscaping, plant some anyway. (And get your neighbors to buy into the idea, if you can.) Milkweed is the ONLY host plant for monarch eggs and caterpillars.
Don’t use herbicides or pesticides. It won’t kill you to have some diversity in your lawn, and if you care so much about not having a few unplanned visitors in your flower beds, get out the weeding fork. (This one’s a harder sell, but get your neighbors to buy into the idea, if you can.)

That’s it. Two things. But if you want to feel like you’re doing SOMETHING to help these beautiful creatures double again, there you go. Local friends, Wild Birds Unlimited has a native plant sale going on. You can get swamp milkweed plants for $5.00. Everyone else, check out your local native plant nurseries, get out your trowel, and do your part.

Here’s the article. I wanted to get my two cents in before you clicked over. 🙂

Slice of Life: I Love

I follow Andrea Gibson’s substack “Things That Don’t Suck” and I saved her recent post “A List of Things I Love” but made sure I didn’t read it for awhile before I started my own list. I actually kind of forgot about it until yesterday, when I was scrolling for a minute on IG and ran across @harrybakerpoet’s list of things that bring me joy (part two here). So here’s my mostly unedited free-association list of Things I Love.

I love.
I love making lists.
I love crossing things I’ve done off my to-do lists.
I love adding things to my to-do lists simply so I can cross them off.
I love grocery lists.
I love trying not to backtrack in the grocery store as I work through the grocery list.
I love recipes.
I love prepping the pans and gathering all the ingredients before I start the mixing and making.
I love making rules for myself, like, you have to stretch before you have your morning tea.
I love when I almost break my own rules but I don’t let myself.
I love the randomness of my garden.
I love welcoming back each perennial as they appear in spring. (“Well, hello, Bluebells! Welcome back!”)
I love knowing individual trees around the city — Grandmother Oak on Selby, the enormous gingkoes at the topiary park, the white-blooming redbud on Park Avenue, the yellow magnolia at the corner of the strip mall parking lot.
I love getting everything ready to visit the tax lady. (Not really. I’m trying to convince myself.)
I love homemade caramels and sauerkraut cooked with beer.
I love fresh uncooked green beans (same with sweetcorn), and cherry tomatoes warm off the vine.
I love Cheetos and I love Lays with homemade sour cream and dry onion soup mix dip.
I love the idea that most of the cells in my body (except the ones in my brain) are not the same ones I started out with.
I love wearing my dad’s stick-out ears and holding fabric and needles with my mom’s knobby fingers.
I love that once, when my students met my brother, they asked if we were twins.
I love having two desks; three if you count the standing table in my “studio;” four if you count the sewing machine table; five if you count the kitchen table; six if you count my lap.
I love the sound and feel of writing on paper with pencil (the same not-made-anymore-so-you-better-last kind of mechanical pencil I’ve been using for decades).
And I love making lists.

Loving my Reading Week

So, I seem to have gotten past my reading slump and have found lots of joy in my reading this week. I do not typically read more than one book at a time but I do have an audio going (sometimes) at the same time I am reading a book. I am not a great listener, so I am limited in my choices in audio–usually nonfiction, self-help, memoir, etc. It is hard for me to choose fiction when choosing an audio book.

So this week I started Let’s Call Her Barbie by Renée Rosen on audio. I thought it was a nonfiction book, but turns out it is historical fiction and I am loving it. It is the story of how Barbie came to be and includes many of the real people involved in her creation. I am only a few hours in but love thinking back to this. It’s a good audio. I love the creative process being slowed down for me as the reader–I always appreciate a good story about the creative process! And knowing how it turns into such a success while reading makes it more fun. I also love reading the backstory of a toy I loved growing up. And there is something about this work being done in a time when women didn’t have a ton of rights–women involved in the creation and then Barbie, the toy, having an impact on girls and their dreams. Seems timely to me to remember that everyone’s work impacts change–there are so many ways to impact our world for the better.

The other book I am reading and enjoying is One of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon. I have loved Yoon’s young adult books so decided this was a good pick. I was hooked right away. I like a lot about this book and am anxious to spend some time reading this weekend.

Finally, I picked up Whale Eyes by Brian Rea today and was so happy when I flipped through it to see the unique format-the visuals, the colors, etc. I nearly squealed when Bryan at Cover to Cover showed me the design under the dust jacket because I love when that is a smidge surprising. Not sure when I’ll get to this one but I think it will be soon.

And I got a notice from Bookshop today that Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins should be delivered today!

Hope you are having a good reading week!

Poetry Friday: Wordle-imericks

I wrote a post last week about a random Wordle Poem rule I made up for myself. Sometimes I write a Wordle poem using my word choices, but I ALWAYS write a haiku (a Wordle-ku) if I get the answer in three guesses. (I rarely get the answer in three.)

I made up a new rule yesterday. If I get the answer in five, I will write a limerick. Or, as the case may be, a Wordle-imerick. (I often get the answer in five. Maybe this should be a suggestion, rather than a rule…)

3/12 party, laugh, mange, manga, mango

The party was held in Durango.
For a laugh, we danced a wild tango.
So wild we caught mange,
wrote a manga quite strange,
then went to the store for a mango.

(I didn’t say they’d always make sense. But I did get better.)

3/13 chair, champ, chalk, chase (yes, I broke the rule and used a four-word win)

There once was a child in a chair.
Said child had some gum in his hair.
He wasn’t a champ.
Chalk him up as a scamp
chased down with a threat and a glare.

3/19 glory, stare, shark, snark, spark

The ocean — a vast blue-green glory.
I stare at its unfolding story.
The fin of a shark,
and its sharp toothy snark
spark panic before beaches get gory.

They’re slightly addictive, but I’ll stop there. I have two more recent solved-it-in-fives that I’ll Wordle-imerick (it’s also a verb) safely out of sight in my notebook.

Rose has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Imagine the Possibilities. (Love that blog title!)

NCAA Bracket

I prefer March Book Madness to March Madness but I do enjoy filling out brackets to see how I do. I know pretty much nothing about college basketball although I have had years where I watch neary every game in the tournament and those years, I do get to know a lot about teams, players, coaches, etc.

My husband takes the NCAA bracket choices VERY seriously. Data, Numbers, Decisions. etc. It might be his favorite time of year.

I fill out the bracket because it makes watching the games far more fun. And I’m not competitive so I could care less if I win and if I discover I love a team that is winning with some upsets, I would rather they win than get more points on my own bracket. But I have won once or twice(much to everyone’s surpise–especially my own!)

I like to have fun with it. And I did have a little fun with filling them out this year. So, for non-sports fans, I thought I’d share some new things I am trying this year. I filled out 4 brackets. 2 for a charity I care about and 2 with groups of people I know. For the last 2, I decided I needed to have some fun, so I tried 2 things. I filled out Round 1 games of the one bracket by comparing mascots. It took a little more time than I thought, looking up each mascot and choosing the one I liked best. It was kind of fun getting to learn about some of the more unique mascots (as well as some that need a redo..).

For my last bracket, for Round 1 games, I picked the team that had the most letters in common with my first name. When there was a tie, I just picked based on the order of the letters, etc. You’ll not be surprised to know that in that bracket, I have Florida for the win.

Feel free to use any of my strategies for your own bracket (you have until noon today I think). I have no expectation of winning but having the brackets does make watching the tournament a bit more fun. I enjoy the games and the upsets and the stories of the players etc. And this year, these were some fun ways to go about the brackets even though my husband (who takes this very seriously) was not as amused as I was.

Slice of Life: Praise Song to Early Spring

I’m listening to Margaret Renkl read her book, THE COMFORT OF CROWS: A BACKYARD YEAR. Some days it’s the only thing that keeps my head from exploding.

Every couple of essays, she tucks in a praise song. Now it’s my turn. Here’s my Praise Song to Early Spring.

I live in one of the top 10 gloomiest cities in the country. When the skies are clear, and the blue makes me just want to drink up every drop of it, going for a walk is the best therapy I could wish for.

The trees are bursting with the same joy I feel. They are sure of what they need to do, and they are going about their work without an ounce of self-consciousness. Why on earth should we NOT just fling our reds and yellows toward that juicy blue sky with everything we’ve got?

Early spring gives away glimpses of secret lives if you’re paying close attention. Like Margaret says,

To pay close attention to the natural world is to exist in medias res. Life is an unfolding that responds to the cues of seasonal change, but for our purposes it is also suspended in an everlasting present. We can see some of the creatures we share our world with, or at least some evidence of their nearness, but we cannot know the full arc of their story. Every encounter in the outdoors is an episode with a cliffhanger ending.

The quote above is as true about the humans with whom we share our world as it is about our more-than-human neighbors. There’s a cemetery at the far end of our street, and it’s a quiet place to walk, say names, wonder at dates, and give thanks for life — all of it, surging so gloriously outside of us in early spring, and surging inside of us for as long as we’re given. Spring reminds me to not waste a single moment of this gift.

Slice of Life-Not a Crafter

I am not a crafter. But I do like to craft. I have never found anything that I like to craft enough to keep at it or to get much better at it. Sure, a little crochet and a little weaving for a bit but nothing long term.

I’ve been trying to pay attention to times in the day where I feel calm and relaxed. I read a post the other day on paying attention to when in the day there is delight. And oddly enough, I noticed this feeling the other day when I was finishing up a craft project my daughter was working on.

In our new business, there is some prep into set up each week. We like to put out new materials, tools and props for children who come to our space. My wonderful, artistic daughter offered to make a few things that we need for some upcoming events. I watched for a while but couldn’t do much to contribute. However, I was able to help by putting the top coat on all of the wood pieces she painted. And while I was doing this, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the process. It was a clear coat so not much to it but I enjoyed the process.

I notice this often as I prep things for children (like collage paper that needed cut this week) or as I bake cookies (which I don’t do often enough).

I’ve learned and I am always reminded (as I was a few times this week) that I don’t have to be a crafter in order to create and enjoy the creative process. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll stick to something but for now I enjoy these small projects.

Slice of Life: It’s Time

I glanced at the clock on my way down to the basement.

8:11

The message couldn’t have been clearer: the Universe was validating my decision to donate my classroom poetry collection.

It’s not a small thing to let those books go. They represent a key element of my identity as a teacher. A key element of my identity, period. But this is my fourth year of retirement, and because I retired as an online teacher, it’s been five years since children held those books in their hands every week on Poetry Friday. Five years since children chose a poem by themselves or with a partner, practiced the poem, and read it aloud to the class. It’s time for these books to be back in the hands of children. They’re not doing any good on a shelf in the basement.

As I pulled books down off the shelves to box up, I had to remove lots of sticky notes that had been left behind to mark favorite poems, chosen poems, instructions on how the poem would be performed. I remembered all of the timid voices that grew confident over the course of the year. I remembered strong readers generously coaching less able readers. I remembered the whole class supporting special needs students who could only manage a few words at a time but who got the same enthusiastic finger snaps for their effort. I remembered the looks on the faces of children who found poems that spoke deeply to their cultural or linguistic identity — Black kids finding Langston Hughes, Spanish speakers finding poems in two languages, sports kids finding soccer, basketball, and football poems, sassy kids finding sassy poems, nature kids finding nature poems. I remembered the quiet new kid who knocked us all off our feet with his bold and funny performance on his first Friday in the class. He showed us more about who he really was in those few minutes than he had all the rest of the days he’d spent in the classroom with us. He was well and truly a part of our community after that day. I remembered so many moments in the second half of the year when a student would ask to perform a poem they themselves had written. Yes, yes, YES!

Half a shelf of books remain with me: the first copy of a book eventually replaced three times because of its popularity (we loved calling out, “Who has A BAD CASE OF THE GIGGLES??”), books by poets who are personal friends, books that have poems that still speak to me as an adult reader/poet.

There are seven boxes of poetry books ready to go to the school library where the bulk of the rest of my classroom collection of books now lives — a library that was a desert when my friend began working there, but through which she has transformed the entire school. My poetry books will go to her library and to the classroom libraries throughout her school where they will be read and loved once again.

Slice of Life: Wordle-ing

I used to start each Wordle game with the same word (adieu) to check for vowels. I also used to care deeply about my streak. Dialing back the time I spend on my phone, mostly thanks to the hellscape known as the news, has cured me of the need to Wordle every single day.

I’ve also learned from Molly the joy of starting every day with a different word, a set-the-tone word, or a hopeful word, or a just plain random word. Last Friday, I opened the blind on the east window in my office, the one to the right of my desk, and was greeted with yet another gorgeous sunrise.

First try: OPENS, and I get the P yellow and the E green. Hmm…let’s try P as the first letter and a blend…PL would work. Then the E, and let’s check another vowel…PLEA…can’t be please, that’s too long. How about PLEAD?

Whelp, the P is correct as the first letter, and I still have E in the middle spot. What other vowels could I use? PIE…what starts with PIE? I know the Wordle puzzle makers often like to try to trick us with two of the same letter, so what starts with PIE and ends with E? PIECE?

YES! I got it in three. I don’t always write a Wordle poem, but if I solve it in three tries, a haiku is mandatory.

battered heart opens
pleads for a brief respite
piece of joy arrives