Sugar and Spice

 So many times I have started to come back here, yet for one reason (excuse) or another I haven't. The last time I was here in April 2020, the world had only just started to feel surreal. Fast forward 30-something months and it feels like we are just starting to improve. I guess I haven't felt inspired to write much because we were not living the best of days; yet still, as the song goes, they are the days we will never forget. Since we last met, a major hurricane ravaged our hometown in August 2020, leaving many literally homeless (including my parents). The girls and I lived communally with friends in Baton Rouge where they attended school until our electricity was restored. Our home was mostly spared. My parents lived with us for several months while they rebuilt. My work since that day has been almost exclusively on assisting homeowners with their claims. I brought to trial the first two hurricane cases in Calcasieu Parish and we won both.  Also since we were last here, Aly

Today is quarantine day something. We are past the one-month mark. I need not mention life is strange; though, we are fortunate for good health and good weather. We are fortunate for the ability to work from home and school from home. We made a fun-ish Spring Break with backyard camping and indoor baking and bird-watching at the beach. We have all learned that we really yearn for fresh air and to touch nature every day and to sweat and work to physical exhaustion when possible. It is almost beginning to sound trite to discuss the “good” to be found in all of this. First, I fear it sounds like I am discounting the gravity of the pandemic. Second, I think many are mentioning it for the “likes” and will quickly return to the breakneck life waiting just beyond our masks. I may be one of those people. I do not have anything new to add to the discussion. For the most part, I don’t even want to have discussions anymore. But I did want to write, for myself now and to look back on late

Posting an old one I found in Drafts... School’s winding down and I think I may be more excited than the girls. It’s not that I do not love the monotonous routine of packing snacks and hard-lined bed times, but I need a break. I need to sleep into the 6-o’clock hour. I need to go for a run in the morning before it’s 100 degrees. I need to not have to ask 100 questions about whether homework’s done, clothes laid out, lunches chosen, etc. etc. I need a break. But I have to limit my complaints today because today, in itself, was a sort of break. I took the day off to chaperone field day and hang out with the girls after noon dismissal. I did all their chauffeuring myself today, which usually takes place while I’m at work. After allergy shots, orthodontist, gymnastics, and dance, I’m thoroughly beat (not to mention grateful for those in my life who help me raise these girls - it truly does take a village). However, in the midst of our running today we found ourselves with a few minut

I started this blog on Tuesday but ran out of time to finish it (or so I thought). Seems like the ending was not written yet and so I had to wait. Over the weekend, the girls found a butterfly (moth?) with a wounded wing. They came peeling into the kitchen looking for plastic ware they could poke holes in for a habitat. They gently placed the broken butterfly in the dish, gave it a flower (to eat?) and a paper towel soaked in water (to drink). I’m not sure about the flag, but knowing them I’m sure it was for add some pizazz. Little sister checked on her patient faithfully each day and even wrote notes to the neighbor-girl and put them in her mailbox with updates (“are [sic] butterfly is doing good;” “gave her some water to drink”).  On Tuesday morning, as I was leaving for work I did a check for myself and came to realization that our patient had died. I took the photo you see and immediately started having a deep, internal philosophical debate about whether to toss th

I am 17-days away from doing one of the craziest, grab-life-by-the-horns, may-be-having-a-midlife-crisis, I'll be 40 in two and a half months things I've ever done. I'm traveling all the way to the Southern California desert by myself to meet 7 other women whom I have never met and with whom I will be sharing a tent for two-nights while we take turns running through the day and night through the trails in the Los Coyotes Reservation. What was I thinking? (Reference back to the upcoming anniversary of my birth 4-decades ago). I'm terrified. My training has not been what I wanted. I've seriously considered dropping out. There is a very nice alternate who I am sure would be happy to take my place. I've got a list of reasons a mile long why I should NOT go and do this thing. The list does not even include the half-joking reasons some of my friends have offered (this second list includes, among other things, coyotes, mountain lions, and human trafficking rings

Mother's Day 2019 was perfectly boring. It was an overcast, eat too much after church, take a nap, and go to the library kind of afternoon and I could not have asked for anything more. Mother's Day always brings with it bittersweet memories of the two little loves that allow me to celebrate this occasion. As kids do, they are getting big. I did not get one Mother's Day gift that had a hand print on it. It was a tinge sad. Like Mother's Day, the nearing end of school also makes me wax nostalgic. How could they be so old? Am I doing all the things to make them healthy, successful and most of all happy? I have been reading and thinking a lot about Grace lately. In the context of mothering, I need a lot of it; yet, until lately I'm not sure I had a real understanding of it (or as much of an understanding as one can have of something like Grace). Anyone who really knows me knows that I am a doer, a pleaser, an achiever, and a ball of anxious worry hidden behind