I spent the first 8 days of June preparing our family for a trip to Disney World, days 8-18 IN Disney World, days 19-26 unpacking, reorganizing, and shopping to keep our family fed in two different locations while I was in a third; and days 26-+1 presenting/playing at convention. Since I returned, I have been…
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Claiming Space
Stream of Consciousness
I’m writing this on a Thursday night (though it won’t post until morning), sitting on my deck by myself on a lovely evening in May. If any of you have ever had four kids, three of them teenagers, you know what my May is like. Currently we have soccer, baseball, horseback, color guard, drumline auditions,…
Read MoreEscapism and that amazing new version of “Emma”
I doubt anyone will be shocked if I say I’ve always been a pretty serious person. I love movies and books and music that make me cry—that dig deep and explore human connection and emotion—that connect us to the REAL. But the last two years have been hard, and as I’ve already blogged a couple…
Read Morethe thick of it
One of my mantras over the past sixteen years of motherhood has been “This is the season of life I am in right now.” It’s a simple mantra—a recognition that what I’m experiencing is not permanent. (As an aside: sixteen years? How did that happen?) When things started to reopen this spring, I felt suffocated…
Read MoreTime for a Reset
It’s time for a reset. 2021 has been–well, a whirlwind. The long, choking oppression of the pandemic is lifting, and we’re busier than ever: soccer, baseball, color guard, 4H, scouts, marching band, concerts (hallelujah!), even church choir. Committee meetings. Oh, and there was that minor detail of a book release this spring. Pitching, promotion, recording…
Read MoreRethinking Priorities
It is time to choose next year’s classes for my three middle- and high-schoolers. Going through this process this year made me realize how much the upheaval of the last year has actually benefited me as a parent–strengthened and sensitized me, reshaped and reordered my priorities. I was a straight-A student, and as such, parenthood…
Read MoreThe State of an Author-Composer’s World
Do you ever have that feeling that there’s just too much going on? No, of course not, she says (wink-wink). This summer hit me like a Mack truck, and the grace in it was that I was so focused on two weeks in July–my week at NPM in Cincinnati and our trip to Colorado last week–that I…
Read MoreMy “Week Off”
I was supposed to take this week, the last week of summer school, as a week off writing. I’ve finished my novel revision, and that was my reward: scrapbooking, some time sitting outside in the quiet, a shopping trip, maybe even a couple hours in front of the TV. Well, I have deadlines, so forget…
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Kisses In The Outfield (Photo Friday)
Monday night, when the coach dismissed the boys from their last (praise God!) baseball game of the season, he followed it up with, “Let’s get together for a parents-vs-kids game on Wednesday!” I clamped down on the biggest “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” ever heard in the history of humankind. (Yes, I too can do idiotic superlatives that bear…
Read MoreLearning To Say No…to Me.
“I need to learn to say ‘no’ more.” Those words, spoken by a friend of mine this past January, were like a tiny pebble in a small creek. They resonated, but I already knew, or thought I knew, what I wanted to focus on in 2017, and the word “no” wasn’t it. But as the…
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Kathleen M. Basi 