My Best Days

A Walk in the Woods
One morning we set out in search of Fall but instead found something much grander. In the woods, we crunch through  leaves and scare a flock of crows that have made their new home near the brook.  Less people are walking now so they aren’t ready for us to crash through the dryness toward them.

Skating and Scenery
Saturday afternoons growing up we’d pack our roller skates and kites into the back of my dad’s truck and pray for the wind to blow over our tightly packed suburban landscape. With no fields to fly kites or safe roads to skate on he’d drive us to the local public elementary school to get out and play.   During the week my sister and I were sequestered at our (much more spacious) small Christian school several miles away.  So

Talking to Myself
I’m famous for browsing without purchasing: picking up items from a store, walking around with them for the duration of my arc around the displays and then replacing each item one by one before I leave. I put down the spatula I don’t need, the pan I can’t afford and the candle that is on clearance but not the right color. I talk myself out of it. Maybe it’s a good thing when it comes to buying (or not buying) things from Williams Sonoma. But sometimes I talk myself out of doing things I need to. Because right now I’m sitting in Starbucks and just hit “send” on an email that I didn’t want to send. I needed to addr

Learning to PULL
Raise your hand if you’ve ever taken a spin class. Now raise it if you’ll ever do it again. I’ve been taking indoor cycling classes on and off for about 9 years. Off for my pregnancies (and that one time I pretty much got banned from one) and then on again in between.  The first time I endured an hour in a dark, close spin room I wondered one thing: How did they get their feet to go so FAST? I mean, they don’t go that fast all the time, but when the instructor calls for a sprint, we all pump our legs as fast as we possibly can but I could never keep up.

The Rule of Love
I drive the speed limit. And I don’t like opening a package of crackers in the supermarket to feed my kids.  There is something in me that needs to pay for them first. I’m a rule follower. I think it was bred into me.  Which is why my three years of breaking all the rules were so out of character for me.  At least for my personality. I’d begun to press against the rules that I’d been raised with and in my blindness, seeing no immediate consequences, I questioned the validity of the rules. Don’t drink. Don’t flirt with men who aren’t my husband.