Ha!
A Sweet Summer Bucket List
Sweet Emotions
1. Swim in a lake. The best one in the Quiet Corner of Connecticut is Mashapaug Lake at Bigelow Hollow, where the water is clean, silky, and deep. Hint: if you swim out to the sandbar and around the point, Bacon Rock is a half-submerged, striped rock to jump from.
2. Grab a handful of candy at Sweet Emotions Candy in Storrs, CT. Hint: If you answer the trivia question correctly, you earn a free candy prize.
3. Step into the year 1790 at… Continue reading
Heights, Woods, and Bravery
Cables connect an ariel obstacle course at The Adventure Park at Storrs
I attended the opening ceremony of The Adventure Park at Storrs last week, and as people traversed cable pathways in the trees overhead, I peered up through the rain to watch them and contemplate my own bravery. I’m not scared of heights, but I appreciate them.
Only one safety clip at a time can release. Ingenious.
Beyond just the concept of aerial pathways and ziplines through the forest, which is already pretty spectacular, three things about the… Continue reading
Silliness
Smurf
Oh, my gosh. Do you remember how much of life used to be devoted to combating silliness? I can still hear the multitude of grownups minding us to sit still, quit that giggling, mind yer manners, or cut that out, and in every case I nearly keeled over from laughing inside. School, church, the dinner table, grocery store aisles, and the back of the car were all prime for silliness and the squelching of it.
Then I had kids of my own, and silliness abounded again.… Continue reading
Both of Us, Night and Day
I can spend an hour at night laboring over the composition an email or a blog post only to wake up the next morning and find it’s weirdly uppity or just plain pointless. Because of this, I have a hard and fast rule about never sending any emails that might actually matter at night. What’s strange is that I can’t uncoil myself from the snare of writing the insidious late night drafts, even knowing I’m needlessly embroiled. It’s like I’m processing, letting my illogical, instinctual side out… Continue reading
Q. Should I Keep Writing?
A. Yes. You should. I know the first draft is awful, and even as you’re writing it, you can see you’ll have to cut most of it, but go forward anyway. Get to the end.
Q. But why, why? It’s so bad! It doesn’t even make sense.
A. That’s just what first drafts are. They’re painful and ugly. They wander down dead ends and come out smelling like old fish.
Q. I thought I liked my main character, but now,… Continue reading
The 6 Stages of Thanksgiving: Race, Stuffage, Shock, Acceptance/Nap, Take-Out, Heave Ho
By now, the Stages of Thanksgiving should not be a surprise. After all, we’ve been through the holiday before. But lest you feel alone in your befuddlement, your sense of what-just-hit-me?, let me let me elucidate a little cycle that’s just played out in our home and share a spark of hope.
Manchester Road Race, 2012, pre-race line up
1. Race
The Race stage includes anything you did to show up where you belonged, whole and alive: plane travel, roadtrip, and pull-out couch included. You made it!… Continue reading