Junebug
I never thought of Junebug.She has always been M, but I sometimes wonder what her name would have evolved into as she aged and showcased her personality.Stella quickly became Stella Bella.Leo is still...
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Woods and Wild Animals and Magic: A Trip To Nova Scotia
We ended up in Nova Scotia because it's always sounded so magical and remote, like right out of a pirate tale, The Great North of hunters and woods and wild animals. The kind of place you'd see two...
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The House: Part 06: Reclaimed Wood Kitchen Before and After
This post has been a long time coming! We started the demolition on the kitchen on June 4. And just finished on August 22, after nearly three months of working full time. The kitchen needed the most...
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Baseball and Elevators to the Sky: Stella's Meets New York City
At around 2:20pm we could see Manhattan. I got really excited. I hope to live here someday. - my hitch-hiking journal from 1995So what did you think about New York? I want to live here. -...
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These Two
They are starting to really play together, interacting in the most primal ways, with hand gestures and grunts and facial expressions. Today she set up a fort and he knocked it down and she said good...
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Saying Goodbye To the Jackson Cottage
He poured the foundation slab on Halloween night, 1979, three months after I was born. Two years later, my grandparents were able to call their cottage in the woods complete, though when I asked my...
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The House: Part 07: Outside! Exterior!
I should start by saying that it took two full days of plowing and digging and raking and shoveling in the back yard to even realize we had a beautiful brick patio. TWO DAYS. In the end, the outside...
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The House: Part 08: Upstairs
Finally getting down to the end of the before and after pictures! Only one more post left. :)The first task upstairs, which used to be the upper floor of a duplex, was taking out all of the garbage...
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The House: Part 09: To Our Mandala, Goodbye
We sold our house to the first people that looked at it.Eleven months of grunting and sweating and arguing and guessing our way through the restoration of an old beauty. Forty-one thousand, seven...
View ArticleChristmas Eve III
It's our third Christmas without Margot.Thirty-one Christmas eves before and three after. My life, before her. And after. Time shifted in March 2011. A new beginning by which all events and experiences...
View ArticleTwo Thousand Thirteen
The sort of year I'd like to remember fondly, but I'm still too close to the chaos of what it was. I will remember my sister. I will remember her taking my four year old out dancing until 11pm, as if...
View ArticleLetting Go
My final short essay for Glow In the Woods, writing about Letting Go. You can go here to read it.
View ArticleStarting Somewhere
What if I just kept a journal, somewhat, from time to time. Maybe that would liven this place up again. I don’t know. There are birthdays gone missing. She turned five. M turned three. He turned two....
View ArticleOn Turning Thirty-Five
It’s 9:37am. I slept in, which is arguably the best gift I will receive today. Kari whisked the kiddos out of our bed at the headache time of 6:30am. The curtains were left shut, the fan was turned on...
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Vivian Lucia
It is 64 degrees on Christmas Eve and the sun is on its way down, hoping to clear the horizon before the dinner rush. My five ear old has an ear infection, my two year old has a fever and I'm doped up...
View ArticleFour
I would mostly like a few stiff drinks, some yellow Americans and to shut the curtains and lay with Kari in the dark for the day. That's how I feel four years in.
View ArticleOne Before the Other
It is nearing June and I still have not finished the book I set out to finish in January and the only writing I have done has been some scattered notes on my iPhone at midnight that have all ended up...
View ArticleChristmas Eve, 2015
It's 11:36pm, Christmas Eve. Our home is without heat and the thermostat in the hallway registers 56 degrees. It has been the coldest winter I can remember since moving here in 2005, with nightly...
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Data Porn: 2015 In Numbers, Charts and Graphs
So...each night before nodding off to interrupted sleep, I answered a series of questions about my day. The questions I chose for 2015 mostly fell in line with my goals for the year, which included the...
View ArticleFive Years
Five years doesn't seem possible. Her mark is indelible. There isn't much to say, I suppose, after five years. What else is there to think about, to feel? I used to see the redemption in her death, the...
View ArticleLeroy Benjamin Grubb
Grandpa Grubb is dead. He was my grandfather, my mothers father, my grandmothers husband. I feel their loss more acutely, imagining what it must feel like to see your Father laid bare, to see your...
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Jackson Annual Report: 2016 In Numbers, Charts and Graphs
Following up on my 2015 Annual Report, I was back at it again in 2016. Using the Reporter App, I asked myself a series of questions twice a day and then compiled all of the raw data to summarize my...
View ArticleDiary 001. Auld Lang Syne. Repeat. 10:53pm.
December 9, 2017. 10:53pm. On the purple couch. We went out for pizza before setting up the Christmas tree and decorating it with ornaments and some lights that don’t quite make it around. We decided a...
View ArticleDiary 002: Vivian. 10:08pm.
Vivian punched me four times today. Sometimes she punches me with fire in her eyes and sometimes there is a twinkle and it feels like she just wants to wrestle. I don't know. It's confusing. She is a...
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Nita Marie Grubb
One of my favorite writers is a farmer and writer named Wendell Berry. He lives in the hills of Kentucky with his wife of sixty-four years, where they farm crops and sheep and a host of other...
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