Drift Away....

Hello routine.

We have had exactly one week of a school routine, and I’m blissfully back to my usual routine in the best way possible. There are many days that I am unsure if I am doing life correctly-I mean, learning to let go was like the most important thing I learned from my divorce, surely? (Actually, not surely, because I learned so, so many things, but that was a big one.)

Like it or not, though, routine is my friend and I’m delighted to have it back.

Routine has meant the return of my podcast routine. Podcasts are my favorite (after books, of course) because you can listen while you do something else-this actually keeps me so much more focused. I listen to my podcasts in the morning while I do the workout, in the afternoon when I walk, while I clean, and most luxuriously, in the bathtub with a glass of wine.

My podcast routine is one of those things that I’m super proud of in my most nerdy way. So, I thought I would share.

Mornings are for news. New podcasts almost always drop at 6 AM, and I get up at 5 (that hour is for morning devotions, mediation, and coffee). I start my workout at 6 (after waking the girls up) and so my morning podcasts are Up First and The Daily.

(Side note-so far mornings have been fabulous now that we all three are back on the same schedule. The girls get up and fix their breakfasts and get ready for school with minimal fuss. I didn’t realize at all how much of a difference all of us being awake and asleep at the same times would make.)

My week breaks out like this:

Sunday- The Bible Binge
Monday- The Lazy Genius
Tuesday- Pantsuit Politics
Ten Things to Tell You
Wednesday- The Popcast
Thursday- NPR Politics
Friday- Pantsuit Politics
Saturday- On Being
The One You Feed

Somewhere in the middle of the week I usually find time for Pop Culture Happy Hour and The Diane Rehm Show. Every night I listen to The Skimm.

Weekends are for the book podcasts. My current favorites are What Should I Read Next?, SSR, and From the Front Porch. And I usually find time for Every Little Thing, Oprah’s Super Soul Conversations, The Next Right Thing, and Throughline- and I’m currently binging when I can the series on Mitch McConnell on Embedded.

I’m still making my way though 80s All Over, which is the two guys talking about all the '80s movies. Unfortunately, they had to cry uncle and give up in mid-1985, but I’m still on November 1980, so I’m good for a while. (I love listening to this because they talk about extremely obscure movies and as a movie geek nothing really thrills me more than movies that most people overlook.)

My music playlists make up my entire day at work (at last count, I have 150 playlists). I try as hard as I can to mix it up so that my co-workers don’t have to listen to the same songs over and over. (I do listen to the same morning playlist every day though, so they do have to listen to "September," which is my most favorite song of all time, every single day.)

It’s amazing to me how much my head has quieted since school started and we have a normal rhythm again. Once when I had a reading with Heather, she said that she had a vision of my brain as a bunch of spiders running in all directions and I was desperately trying to corral them. I wish my brain wasn’t spiders, but I totally understood what she was saying-I’m constantly trying to get everything into its place, like if I just can situate everything perfectly life will make sense. I’m well aware that can’t actually happen, but my routine just gives me such space to breathe and loosen up a bit. The girls and I are enjoying this season of not being so busy, of going to games and watching our friends play, of having evenings free to take walks together and to watch ‘80s and ‘90s television shows and just be.

A season of quiet is the reset that we needed.

525,600 Minutes...

It’s planner season. Which is just my favorite time of year.

Fall is coming, with its glorious pumpkins and cooler weather and football.

I keep reminding myself of that as we round this last corner of summer. The girls have their school schedules, so the past few days have been full of texting friends to find out who we know in each class (and worry when there is no one in a certain class that we seem to know). We walked through the high school to each of Betsy’s classes (I dream about being in the high school a lot and walking all over those hallways was a bit surreal to me). School supplies are ready to go, planners are brand new and full of promise.

This year we are taking a break from participating in any fall sports, which we have never done before. Felicity will still dance, but we are purposely taking a break from any structured sport. This came about after much soul searching on my part, and also on the girls’. We sat down and talked about what we really love about playing sports (being with friends and being a part of a team) and what we don’t like about playing sports (nerves about playing in front of people).

Betsy is an anxious soul, just like her mother. The amount of anxiety that she feels about being in front of people is easily overwhelming to her. I completely and totally understand because I am the same way. I have no idea if we are choosing the correct path here, because after all, she will only be young once, but I also know that, as much as she loves being a part of the team, the relief at the idea of just being a spectator was palpable when presented as an option.

It’s taken me four years now to fully grasp how life has changed-in the beginning I was constantly concerned that life not change for the girls, that they understand that they could still do all the things and I would just somehow make it work. After all, I have help-my parents always step in if for any reason I can’t be somewhere, and I am blessed with a flexible job with great hours.

Slowly, however, I have realized that it’s not just about ferrying the girls to all the things. It’s about being clear about the things that take our time away from each other. The girls are gone every other weekend during the school year, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it has meant that all of the things that they want to do at home need to be done in that time frame.

I have friends who count down summers, who count down Saturdays-and when you share your parenting with someone, those summers and Saturdays are even more precious. So, for us, this fall is going to be about watching our friends and cheering them on and resting in a state of calm.

I would be lying if I didn’t say that I’m worried-I am worried that Betsy will feel left out of the fun of being on a team, that I’m teaching her to let her anxiety get the best of her. I honestly don’t know. As I tell the girls just about every single day, I don’t have all the answers. I’m making this up as we go.

I do know that the girls and I love nothing more than nights when I say we don’t have anything to do tonight. It’s our favorite. So I’m just going to hope that having more nights like that is exactly what we need.

What Remains Behind...

I’m struggling to decide if I’m a fan of summer 2019.

On the one hand, I had a wonderful vacation, the girls have enjoyed several cousins’ weekends, I truly do enjoy slowing down our pace and letting the girls stay up late and sleep in and all the things.

On the other hand, summer always undoes me a bit. Grateful as I am that Nick chose to leave, the fact is the world crashed in summer 2015 and even four years later I cart around a certain melancholy in the summer.

I do better with a schedule, but summer lends itself to upheaval-the girls are gone for a week at a time, so life careens from absolute stillness to absolute crazy. I love having my girls at home, but I have recognized this year that I have a period of readjustment when they come home from their dad’s-I have known for such a while that the girls had to readjust to being at home, to get back into our rhythm- but it was eye opening for me to realize that I have to adapt to their being home as well.

When the girls are gone there is such stillness I almost cannot convey it. There are nights that seem somewhat never ending, when I have finished my book and listened to all of the podcasts. My depression, which is always lying there, reared up just a bit this summer, not enough to undo me completely, but enough to exhaust my resources.

(I hate talking about my depression. With all that is in me, I hate it, because I am endlessly blessed and I always feel like it makes me seem unaware of how lucky I am to be living this life. But I also know that my depression is just a part of my health, just like any other health issue that someone would have to deal with. It’s a tricky balance for me.)

I have spent far too many nights this summer mindlessly scrolling through my phone because I can’t find the energy to do anything else.

Anyway, anyway…I have loved a few things in the past month that I need to tell you about.

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood

Oh my goodness. I loved this. I almost want to say it’s my favorite Tarantino movie ever, but I do love Pulp Fiction and it holds a really special place in my heart, so it has to go just under that. In any case, though, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is so good, and I can’t say more than that because it would spoil it. I have so many feelings about this though, and all of them good.

The River by Peter Heller

Again, I can’t exactly say a lot about why I liked this book because that would spoil things. But it was an interesting, fast paced read that left me feeling all the things.

Come From Away

This musical was just what I needed to see in the midst of this summer of angst. A story of a small community coming together to help the passengers who were stranded on planes after September 11, it is all the reasons that I adore Canada-quirky, nice, and lovely. Such a life-affirming piece of theatre.

As we round this next bend into fall, which is my favorite time of year, I am a bit anxiously looking toward pumpkins and football and the soothing routine of the school year. Eventually summer 2019 will turn into a fond memory, as every summer eventually does, as the echo of summers past have become for me. What remains is always the good.

"Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower, we will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.” – William Wordsworth

Vacation All I Ever Wanted...

Goodness. It’s been a couple of weeks because vacation, and then recovering from vacation. But it’s Friday, and I’m listening to my Friday playlist which makes me nothing but happy, and I’m anticipating my girls coming home tomorrow, and so all is just about right with the world.

On this vacation we ziplined through the Smoky Mountains, white water rafted, and indoor sky dived. We learned about Civil War history and Martin Luther King Jr. and my dear Margaret Mitchell. All of it the most fun. Sharing all of these with my girls is just such a blast. I am forever grateful to my parents and my sister and her family for allowing us to tag along.


I love being brave on vacation. I love that April seeks out such cool adventures and I love testing my limits.

Betsy and Mallory were my babies once upon a time. There were days I wanted to cry as my arms ached from holding one on each arm. I am so grateful that I was allowed that time with them, even as tired as I remember it made me, keeping two babies every day who were close enough in age to be twins. The reward is their close friendship with each other, of course, and also their close relationship with me. So, so blessed.

I’m sure that to many people the idea of driving around in a 15 passenger van with your entire family does not exactly sound like a relaxing vacation, but to me, I love us all being together. I love not being the only adult-something I completely took for granted in my prior life. I love that I just go where April tells me and Jeremy drives me and I love to a really ridiculous degree that we are all cramped together. They are my people and they know me at my absolute worst and they love me anyway.

On Dating...

So…dating. Or not dating, which is more accurate.

This past week and a half the girls’ have been with their dad, enjoying the lake. And I have been all on my own, as completely usual. Which is fine. I promise.

And my therapist suggested that I take some time to consider this-when exactly am I going to want to date?

It is not completely accurate to say that I haven’t dated at all in the past 4 years. In fact, I had a really lovely relationship with someone, but the timing was not right. At all. And so it goes.

For all intents and purposes, though, I really haven’t dated in a serious, this-is-a-relationship way-in the way that I would choose to date someone, should they appear. I’m not now and I have never been a casual kind of person-I’m loquacious and intense and just a lot.

I try as hard as I can to just accept this as my reality-I don’t want to casually date someone, and that is how relationships begin, and if I can’t begin a relationship then here we are. There’s really not much more to it than that.

There is, of course. There is so much here to dig through I can’t begin to start sorting it all out, and so I am left with my strict, Type A routine and pretending that it doesn’t exist. But the point of the blog is to be honest about this process-to write down all the bits and pieces to who I am becoming and how I got to this point and where I’m going from here.

So, here’s the thing: being left behind hurts. It sucks. It messes with your head and your heart and your self-esteem. You think, am I a terrible judge of character? Can my heart be trusted to even remotely try this again? Why does this seem so easy for most people?

I have no real experience in these areas. I have nothing to go on other than how it went with Nick, and what I read. And just to give you an example, last week I read an article in the New York Times specifically stating how millennials are dating less and waiting longer to get married, thinking that this would be full of helpful insight (even if, with my 1978 birthday, I don’t exactly qualify as a millennial-it seemed close enough.) This is what I got- “Dr. Fisher found that among a representative sample, 34 percent of singles had sex with someone before the first date. She calls it ‘the sex interview.’” I’m sorry, what?


Importantly, I am not pining away, I am really, truly very contented and happy with my life as it is. And I am an eternal optimist-I truly believe that someday this person will come along. Somewhere there is a person out there who I am not too much for, who would find all of my quirks and idiosyncrasies endearing- I just haven’t the foggiest idea how to meet him, or when I’ll be ready, or any of the things. But I will get there. Someday.


"The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers do not finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along."
-Rumi

How to Not Be Perfect (but Still Be Unendingly Happy)...

When I was younger, I wanted to have 4 girls. I talked about them all the time-I even had all of their names put on my birthday cake when I turned 14. (I was completely normal like that.) Their names were Bradleigh Elizabeth, Anastasia Rebecca, Jessica Kate, and Tyme Aryn.

My girls and my nieces consider themselves those four girls.

As they should, of course.

These four girls are every single thing that I hoped for as a 14-year-old. They love to sing and put on plays and play games-they never tell me that something is too dorky, they are absolutely the friends that I would have wanted when I was their age.

We spent this entire past weekend at my sister’s house in Kent, doing nothing in particular, but everything. We played miniature golf (I won) and bowled (my sister won). We played at the park. We went to the library for a Star Wars day (Kent has fabulous libraries, I am most jealous). We ate Swenson’s and Chick-fil-a (the girls and I had never had Chick-fil-a and we very much enjoyed it). We went to Chuck E. Cheese, even though it is not my sister’s favorite. We went to the drive-in movie theater.

When I was growing up, I adored all of my cousins. They were all older than me and my sister, and two of them lived in Indiana, and I thought they hung the moon. I’m quite envious of my girls very close relationship with my nieces.

When we got ready to leave, April said for everyone to say what their favorite part of the weekend was. Betsy said Star Wars. Felicity and Mallory said miniature golf. And Natalie just pointed, and we had no idea what she meant, and finally she whispered, “The girls.” Meaning that her favorite part was just my girls being there. It was terribly sweet.

Things I’m loving this week:

Toy Story 4

First off, I do love to go to the drive-in movie theater. We saw Toy Story 4 and we watched Aladdin again, and I love being in my own vehicle, able to turn the volume up, leave my phone on, and talk to Mallory and Betsy basically the entire time. Drive-ins are the bomb.

I love Disney and Pixar and all the bits and pieces that go into Toy Story movies, so it is not shocking at all that I enjoyed this. I did think that it was a different story than the others-the two main storylines dealt with the existential question of what it means to be alive, and when your care for others crosses the line into narcissism. Heavy stuff for a kid’s movie. Some of it I completely agreed with, and some of it I have a lot of feelings about.

Dear Evan Hansen

I have been anxiously awaiting this musical, but also a bit fearful of it hitting a bit too close to home, and it did, but not for the reasons I anticipated. The buzz on this is huge, and rightly so, because it’s an amazing piece of theater. I have decided that we are having a moment right now, a moment in which we are beginning to think it’s okay to own our idiosyncrasies, no matter how overwhelming they may seem, or how insignificant they might feel in the grand scheme of things. The story here is profound, and it hit triggers for me that I did not expect.

There is a storyline here involving Evan Hansen’s mom, about her guilt over being a divorced parent and over how that has perhaps contributed to Evan’s anxieties. As the mother of a precious, beautiful, amazing daughter who struggles a good deal with anxiety, this hit me harder than I’m sure it was meant to.

I still feel so much guilt over being divorced. I don’t for one moment want to believe that I have caused or created any kind of anxiety in my daughter. It’s all complicated and sometimes I can’t believe that it’s four years later and I’m still dealing with my own insecurities over what it means to be someone’s ex-wife. What I have learned lately is to take these moments that hit on all of my triggers and give it some space to just sit and be with that feeling, to just let myself feel sad or scared or whatever it is. And then to give myself some grace-to remember that I am not perfect, and that just as I did not have a perfect marriage, I do not have a perfect life after marriage. And that’s okay and no one is expecting me to have all of the answers.

I remind myself that these 4 girls that I dreamed of having came to me in a way other than me being mother to all four of them. And yet they are all four my dear girls, all with such different personalities and attitudes and I cherish each of them. Life comes differently than you imagined sometimes, and it turns out even better than you had hoped. That might sound like a Hallmark card, but it’s true.

This crazy life I lead is not the perfect life I imagined that I once had. But it’s ten times better.

Echo Chamber...

Back in the day, so long ago it feels like a different lifetime, I wrote short stories- some that were truly just all my own creation, but the vast majority of which were Roswell fan fiction. Which is sort of embarrassing to admit-I mean, fan fiction alone has a bad reputation, but add Roswell in there and it’s sort of like admitting that you’re a complete geek. (I am a complete geek.)

Roswell was a show on the WB, back in the day when the WB had Dawson’s Creek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer in its rotation; heck, back when the WB was the WB and not the CW. I was in college when those shows came on the scene, so too old to just swallow the characters whole as potential role models (that role had been filled by 90210 and Saved by the Bell). But young enough to watch them all in a non-ironic way. I fell in love with most of those late 90s dramas-Felicity, Dawson, Buffy being my favorites, Popular and 7th Heaven being the filler.

But Roswell came along at just the right time-I was a sophomore in college, right in the middle of this time in my life when I was reading so many books, learning so many new things, and, most importantly, writing like my life depended on it. Stories came pouring out of me and I had no where to put them. Somehow I stumbled upon a Roswell fan site, looking for spoilers if I remember correctly, and came upon this notion of fan fiction. I had no idea what that was, and it just so happens that I read a couple of really wonderful stories on whatever site that was-fan fiction is a tricky thing, and some of it is retched awful, truly. But in that first blush with it, I found Persephone’s Footfalls, which, in the world of Roswell fan fiction, is like stumbling upon Great Expectations-it is widely acknowledged as the best fan fiction that this tiny show ever offered up to the world.

(Written by Elizabeth, who remains one of my favorite authors of all time despite the fact that I know nothing about her except her name, she wrote the very best of Roswell fan fiction. This particular story was a retelling of the myth of Persephone and Hades using the human character of Maria and the alien character of Michael, and while that could have turned out awful, in her hands it became an exploration of falling in love with the enemy, of what it means to be “other,” and of what it means to be a family. It is one of the best stories I have ever read.)

It didn’t take too terribly long for my writing to find a home in the Roswell world. I loved writing these stories, because the characters were already established, and so I could play with the constructs as much as I wanted to, I could write POV pieces that explored ideas that I needed to play out in my own head-it was an early form of therapy for me. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and was rewarded for these efforts by something of a following in this Roswell world. I loved that-I write so much better than I speak, and this was a way to meet new people and not trip all over my tongue.

And then the bottom fell out. Roswell, you see, had been a tiny show. It was developed by Jason Katims, who had been a writer on My So-Called Life. Initially the show had been promoted as a My So-Called Life with aliens-all of the alien stuff was just sort of a large metaphor for being an outsider. That story telling is what drew me to the show. But because it was a science fiction show, there was a hunger for more special effects and “alien” storylines among a lot of its fans. When it just barely survived cancellation that first season, the writers began to amp up all of the more “out of this world” aspects to the storylines, to the point that the show became almost unrecognizable. With that shift in tone, the fan base for Roswell stories, and particularly the large, angsty teen drama that I liked to write-the fan base just collapsed for that.

It was just at the same time that my stories completely stopped generating any traction that I got engaged. My life shifted away into planning my new, adult life, and writing along with it. Until the blog came along, I didn’t write at all for about nine years.

Sometimes the blog feels the same to me-like sometimes I’m just sending these words out into the void and they don’t really have any life beyond that. But writing is my happy place, my passion, my joy inside of every single day. Words don’t come in the form of stories anymore, and for a long while I beat my head against that and tried to force them, but I have finally made my peace with the fact that they aren’t going to come out in that way any longer.

Words come to me in snippets, in long essays that exist, I know, as still just a form of therapy that sometimes I hope that other people can relate to. That’s all any of this is. But I do cherish having a place to keep my words, a home of my making to hold them and remind me years later of all the changes inside of me in the past eight years that I have been blogging.

So, I’m going to keep right on blogging like it’s 2011, and sending these words out into the void, if only to hear the echo of my own voice.