Woman sweeping, with cat. 2020 (photocredit: Steve) It’s well past the kids’ bedtime at this point, and I’m parked at the kitchen counter waiting for P to do her math homework. Soccer days are usually like this when we arrive home late, thanks to our regular ritual of stopping for vanilla cones at McDonald's. Still, I...
I have now arrived at what has become my favorite activity during the week. For about an hour, I get to sit outside in my lawn chair underneath a colorful open sky in what has lately become a cool Florida breeze all. At the same time, B and P partake in the joys of dribbling,...
P is drawing a picture of a thunderstorm in her composition notebook right now. The clouds in her picture are orange, and for the lightning, she is using a black dry erase marker. This is annoying since she has her Crayola markers to use, and dry erase markers are specialized and more expensive, etc. etc....
My parents have a patio that backs up against a small pond, surrounded by a forest preserve along the opposite side from where I'm sitting. It’s pretty, lush, and verdant (green!). The air conditioning unit just kicked on, and it’s drowning out the sounds of distant birds squawking (I haven’t learned my bird calls yet)...
I’d never been so happy to sit and watch Penny play soccer as I was the other day. The rain from earlier in the afternoon brought with it fresh tropical air and a blue-streaked sky, and it was good to sit back and watch the kids do normal kid things. The league has taken great...
We arrived in good spirits (and making good time) in Central Florida on Friday. The sun was blazing, and the sky, clouds, and grass seem to exist in bumped-up saturation compared with Texas. While I grew up here, and eventually became a young adult, I couldn’t wait to leave home. So much so that when...
Today is the last day of projects at my house. The crew replacing many of my windows have been here since 10 am and are now attempting to replace the glass on the sliding glass door where my darling dog, Poppy, left hundreds of tiny scratches. Since the door is open, rather than air condition...
As I work on my re-write of my manuscript, a bunch of things are clicking that hadn't before, which is very encouraging for me! I think I have figured out how to hack into my main characters' made-up souls to make them believable and interesting. Of course, one thing is sketching them out on my...
Today we were supposed to pack ourselves up with our two cats and head back to Florida for the foreseeable future. As it is, some work on my house got delayed, and we’ve been set back another week. I have decided to make lemonade and be happy that I would get the chance to work...
I’ve gotten in a good routine here at my Airbnb without my kids or my dog or my big house to look after, aside from managing some final projects. There is something to be said—a lot to be said— for living a simpler life. While our three-story, 3300 square foot house was beautiful with lots...
