It’s 7 a.m. on June 1. The house is quiet. The sun is rising over the trees, shining its golden spotlights on the green grass still heavy with dew. I have a decision to make. Should I sit at my desk, working on the project with a looming deadline while the house is still quiet, before the kids get up and start bustling around? Or should I lace up my shoes and go for a run, before the sun hits its peak and warms up the atmosphere to the point...
Making New Memories
I have a memory from my childhood that plays in my head like I’m watching a sitcom on TV. My dad, my brother and I are in the kitchen of our house in Decatur, cleaning up after lunch. Dad was washing, I was drying, and Locke was putting things up. All of a sudden, in the midst of our normal, everyday banter, Locke said, “We’re as funny as the Cosbys.” I know, I know. That observation did not age well. But keep in mind, it was 1987. Our Thursday...
The Summer of No Tomatoes
Have you ever experienced one of those times when something that’s really small, not a big deal at all in the overall scheme of life, just sets you off? That happened to me, around the middle of July, when I faced the realization head-on that I wasn’t going to get any tomatoes from my garden. We’d marched through one disappointment after the other like troopers: school closures, canceled vacation, a soccer season cut short (and by short I mean...
Pilates in the Pandemic
During the school year, I try to fit a couple of workouts into my weekly schedule. Now, I’m not an exercise fanatic, by any means. I’m not hitting the gym pumping iron. It’s more like running a couple of miles with the geriatric dog, or doing a workout video (at my own pace) in the living room. My favorite is Jillian Michael’s yoga, a weird sort of cardio/yoga workout routine. A couple of years ago I expanded on that, adding Tony Horton’s P90X3...
Spring Isn’t Cancelled
East Wilkes Girls Soccer season — cancelled Spring Cal Ripkin baseball season — cancelled Scout meetings — cancelled Envirothon — cancelled Youth Group — cancelled June vacation — cancelled — postponed to June 2021 What’s not cancelled?Spring. I don’t think of my family as one that’s “over scheduled.” But our March/April/May calendar was definitely a busy one. It was full of things we were looking...
Making Room for More Books
Last week I cleaned up my office. The uninitiated might walk into that room today and still say it looks like a mess. But if you had seen it two days ago, you’d know I made a dent in the piles of work/books/papers that stack up and accumulate over time. One of the biggest jobs in cleaning my office is working on my bookshelf. When I got married, I had one bookshelf. It got full, and Bill bought two more. Now those are full, and over time, books...