I’ve been having COVID dreams lately. This didn’t happen to me for the first six or seven months. I often laid awake feeling great anxiety, but I didn’t dream about it. But I am now. The first time, I dreamed that the church choir I lead all got together on Wednesday night as usual, no…
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COVID dreams
Taking On The Emotional Baggage Of My Children
When I stopped blogging frequently a few years ago, it was for two reasons. The first was that it took a lot of time, and I couldn’t justify it any longer. The kids were getting older, having more activities, and more directly professional commitments needed to take priority in what time I had for writing.…
Read MoreThe fulfillment of dreams and the start of the next adventure
I have been writing fiction since I was in the second or third grade. I began by writing fan fiction in the back of the school bus with my second cousin. I wrote about Annie. She wrote about E.T. We wrote poetry, too. Mine was bad. I started writing original stories not long after that.…
Read MorePandemics, Special Ed, and Rolling With the Punches
Generally, I would say I’m pretty good at rolling with the punches. Fifteen-plus years of parenthood has taught me to make good plans. It’s also taught me to be flexible, because plans usually get shredded. But simply having one allows me to know the parameters and priorities, which, when plans do get shredded, leaves me…
Read MoreThe Irony of Introversion in a Time of Pandemic
Saturday night, after taking our kids to church and nearly exploding with rage at their sullen attitudes, my husband and I decided we needed to get away from the kids for a couple hours, so we went on a date to Menard’s. (Sidebar 1: this is a sign of the times: you need a date…
Read MoreWalking Beans, Pulling Crabgrass…Just the thing to make everyone want to click through
When I was in middle school, my parents started a new endeavor on the farm. We’d always raised corn and soybeans (and hogs, cattle and chickens), but now Dad started growing seed beans. In other words, he grew the seeds that farmers would plant next year. This meant the grain that was harvested had to…
Read MoreIn Which I Wrestle With Race
Originally posted on Intentional Catholic:
Photo by Matheus Viana on Pexels.com I was so clueless. I went to a park to meet a friend and her son, my godchild, to social-distance celebrate a birthday. She was upset, and I didn’t immediately realize why. She had to lead me almost all the way there. I have…
I Am From…
The “I Am From” poems were a big thing a couple years ago, but this popped up as a distance learning assignment from for my daughter this week. And I thought, Hey, I never had time when these were all the rage. I don’t really have time now, either, but I need a break and…
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The Freak-Out and the Grand Pause
I realized recently that we’re all going through a universal set of stages as we cope with this abrupt departure from “normal” life. First there’s the freak-out. The overbuying food and toilet paper, the lying awake at night envisioning scenarios in which your child with a disability is the one who will be denied a…
Read MoreShelter “in place” (my life in pictures)
In the month we’ve been on a stay-at-home order, I’ve realized a couple things. First of all, everyone goes through a freak-out before settling into a new reality. I have seen it happen in many of my online friends and, more to the point, I’ve been painfully aware of it in myself. I tried to…
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