Jan 1 – I heard the shout, crouched beside a seedling with my loppers, and looked up to see everyone scrambling out of the way, the orange Monarch rumbling backward down the hill through the trees, a wobbling ton of crushing steel that finally met a tree it couldn’t conquer and shuddered to a stop.

Jan 2 – When Molly sounded the alarm, I was both concerned and proud that she had reached out to us after Emily was admitted with a lingering infection after her appendectomy.

Jan 3 – Overhand, underhand, I wound the tattered swap shop garland off our moldy porch lights, untied Spot’s holiday bow, and declared Christmas over.

Jan 4 – Only a faint hum lingered inside the house, a reminder of the all-night hissing refrigerator and its roaring companion, our tireless heat pump.

Jan 5 – Each photo — here the way Evie cranes her neck to look over her shoulder, here one of Stuart cocooned under my granny square on a chilly afternoon on the front porch after telling us he sold the contentious house to our evil neighbors, here one of what I did to Debbee’s imperial pumpkin custard recipe using Seminole pumpkins that I grew — eventually finds its place in our monthly online narrative.

Jan 6 – With a satisfying “whump,” I dropped a sizeable rail in place and straightened to see Giovanna, sun-dappled and staring at a large dead cedar leaning against an oak.

Jan 7 – She came to me through the woods, not as tall or exuberant as that first time years ago, and I greeted her with the reverence she deserved, crouching low to stroke her wide shoulders, letting her sniff my breath of noodles and cream, before straightening to throw a stick — not too far — a nice round piece of a bough that would fit her mouth.

Jan 8 – We press our lips together at the door, a movement well-rehearsed, and I return to my seat in the sun to watch for the car, a flash of blue turning left towards the airport.

Jan 9 – In front of my laptop, three seed catalogs, a garden map, and three order sheets, I pulled up the browser, created accounts, and filled shopping carts with the promise of good eating in 2020.

Jan 10 – It was just cold enough that my nose refused to stop bleeding while Susan pretended not to notice.

Jan 11 – Slipping the wooden step ladder onto my left forearm, I wore it to the next tree like the Queen’s hand bag, working my way up our property line with a bag of cotton strips torn from an old, blue sheet.

Jan 12 – Renewed beneath a grizzly beard, Jim showed us his room of bright windows, with the red and blue walls, hardwood floor, and his college drafting table.

Jan 13 – Shelly was sure I’d been given her plate by mistake, Amy shrugged — neither able to conjure the image of a Chili Relleno — but the crew-cut waiter assured me the mound of vegetables with the white sour cream drizzle was what I had ordered.

Jan 14 – Having averted my gaze, I slunk back into the hallway outside the senior center locker room and stared at the patterns in the rubber mat beneath my new, tightly-laced walking shoes.

Jan 15 – Her pupils, flat discs which caught no light, shot their dark beam across my midriff, addressing Shelley as we walked — an indication that we might not become friends.

Jan 16 – On January 15, I went out on a limb, betting a handful of seed against the hard freeze of a typical southern winter.

Jan 17 – The beagle looked concerned about something in the woods behind us, and after Shaine’s stories about rabid raccoons and non-hibernating bears, I also began straining at my tether.

Jan 18 – When I asked my mother if she had given thought, in her 50’s, to who, if any of her children, might take her into their care should she ever need it, she said, “I just kind of hang loose with Jesus. I let God decide what to do with me, and I just mosey along.”

Jan 19 – When I got to the line, we set down the dead tree, Bob looking behind himself to see the pin and me, too, then, nudging my end a little to the left, I pulled my hat down over my ears and smiled.

Jan 20 – Sunlight shone off the gulls, the sky above the river below the tailrace full of swooping, squealing action.

Jan 21 – Fat-breasted Robins wrestle worms from the pea-green moss beneath our bare-limbed crepe myrtle on a day so cold I’m pinned behind a cracked window, while their call to action—as urgent as the spin of tanker tires and lumber loads—fails to lure me outside.

Jan 22 – Reading in bed another inescapably brilliant short story, I’m delighted, inspired, and discouraged.

Jan 23 – I could see how badly they wanted this, their sprouts eager and blushing, as I pushed the bulbs into their soft, new bed.

Jan 24 – Listening to the blended hiss of water and vent air I imagine the feel of razor on skin, the hot water running down my back, soap dripping, eyes shut, and dutifully peel off my clothes.

Jan 25 – I swivel the roller dial and listen for a few minutes, inexplicably comforted by the voices coming through the plastic grid of my new thrift store radio clock.

Jan 26 – We closed our eyes as instructed, one hundred of us, and I felt myself expanding, rising, filling the cavernous barn with each heartbeat, boundaries forgotten.

Jan 27 – The documents in their clear plastic case have the aroma of stale ice cubes, and I wonder what the kids will smell when they open our frozen last wills and testaments.

Jan 28 – Listening for a change in the engine, I hear only the artificial white noise designed to alert pedestrians of our approach.

Jan 29 – I opened the window and leaned towards the screen, gasping, and reached back to stir the chipotles crisping in our cast iron pan.

Jan 30 – The bitter beans simmered but did not burst while trucks roared up and down the hill to the stump dump.

The feeling of time slipping past, the winter of repose evaporating to leave a solid residue of hard work that could have been avoided had I only applied myself mildly during these cold, sunny days, made panic rise like phlegm in my chest.

Jan 31 – He sighed and leaned aside as if to spit, then adjusted his keyboard and plugged back into the nightmare on those giant dual screens.

On that day, I won’t be stuck, aimless, mediocre. I’ll tap in. I’ll be a magnificent conduit, a jovial funnel of insight and inspiration.

Everyone will want to read me.

You will find me in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, The Sun, and The New York Times.

From behind my subway newspaper I’ll hear them whisper, “Did you read that article in the Times? I love how she writes!” They’ll give me my own clever column. I’ll make deadline with ease, words ever-flowing, a burbling spring. One day.

Birds – September 3, 2020

Sometimes my life flaps on ahead like a turkey taking flight, clumsily erratic, yet out of reach. Some days I soar like a deft hawk, lord of it all, shining and aloft. I strike through every line on my list, make every call, walk, write, and ace my kitchen-counter list, leaving no crumbs behind.

Today I hope to at least peck along, dulling my beak on stones and dirt, pounding a steady all-day beat. I hope to clean and process two pounds of mushrooms, make salsa, pepper sauce, pimento cheese, and Tuno salad, mow that damned ditch, and push out a solid first draft for my next blog post.

Today I will peck until I soar.

Off the Rails – October 20, 2020

I’ve lost my center, fallen off my horse in this gallop to the polls. Maybe this is what true madness feels like: jangled nerves, indecision, confusion, apathy, lethargy, and angst.

This is not a house of cards built of sand, this is a writhing mass of snakes masquerading as walls atop broken glass.

Two Days – November 1, 2020

Two days until Election Day and we are suspended. These past four years have torn open the dark underbelly of my country. We are more than fractured; we are oozing bile, bleeding from old, old wounds. The United States of America was never great.

We are a muscle of greed and violence, taking what we can, stepping on those below us. My anger is guilt, exposed. My pretty life is bound in generations of inequality.

When I ask my mother if she listens to the news, she says that she hears it but understands little. Today I will take her lead, ignore the headlines, and harvest peanuts.

The Wait – November 5, 2020

The world is watching us, clicking their tongues, nervous about the implications of our once-great democracy crumbling into third-world tyranny.

I drove into Pittsboro on Election Day and was tailgated by an enraged driver, pounding her steering wheel and firing spastic hand gestures. I left her at the circle and joined an unusual amount of traffic, all hurrying with furious urgency. I breathed in relief when I made it to the post office — heart beating with real fear — and took the back way home.

Blood and Birdsong – Thanksgiving, 2020

You get up to pee and decide to stay up even though it’s only 5:22. After picking out the big dipper from behind murky clouds, you turn on the porch party lights and roll back in your rocker. Fred and Reda’s heat pump shuts off, a car whooshes down the Moncure Pittsboro Road, and you hear the desultory plop of last night’s rain leaving your metal roof.

This is as empty-headed as you get – this listening in the dark, pen in hand, coffee thick in your mouth, straining to hear the next word, ignoring the day’s directives jangling at the edge, light creeping towards your hammock, splashing a little white tear in the grey cotton sky.

You hear gunshots in the woods and wonder if Hal will get his deer, fill his tag, drag a gutted carcass home to hang outside the house. Seven shots, ten, fifteen — it sounds more like duck hunting but there is no pond back there. You wait for the sound of sirens. A rabbit sprints out from underneath your plywood porch and disappears around the pole barn.

Finally, the barking guns stop. I hear the roosters roar, then an angry squirrel and the first wren. This is a holiday in rural North Carolina. They start with blood and birdsong.

Lucky Me – November 30, 2020

Wearing my new mask, the black triple-ply with the sable-soft ear loops, I open the Post Office door with the index finger of my left hand. My mailbox key is in my right — my clean hand, just like in Africa — and I am pleased with myself for adapting to the pandemic so easily.

I find a yellow slip and have to stand in line and when the manager steps up to the second window and says, “Picking up?” I leave the line, making sure my eyes convey the proper blend of elation and humility at my good fortune.

While I wait, I look at stamp posters — so many colorful images! — and think about how, now that Papa Biden is in charge, we probably won’t lose our right to stand in line at the Post Office, smizing (eyes-only smiling) with the locals.

I’ve been filling notebooks since I learned to write in grade school, the activity itself a dear and trusted friend. I don’t know if I would have survived the existential threats to our health care system and our democracy without someplace to jot down my fears and observations.

I step onto our new blogging platform, pale knuckled from a week of standing in the wings while our good friend, Steph, of Warm Reptile Designs, worked her behind-the-scenes magic. Should you need a web designer or someone to help you stay up to date, look her up. Steph delivered everything I asked for while fielding my uninformed questions with the patience of a saint.

Bob and I discussed at length the future of our digital world and decided to move only a portion of Troutsfarm to SiteGround. The old site was an unwieldy patchwork created across two decades using a variety of software, much of it unsupported. Rather than keep 228 monthly photo essays out there on the web, we’ll turn our most cherished photos into coffee table books. In the same way that restaurants are resurrecting as caterers, we are re-imagining our photo albums.

And then there’s the camera. My brother, John, a professional photographer, was smart to point us in the direction of the Sony 6100 series. He liked that it was mirrorless because that made it small and lightweight, quick and quiet, and capable of taking in a lot of light. To keep us from floundering, Bob purchased a 362-page guide to help us navigate the menu settings.

For this post, I’ll take a walk around the garden, beginning with the ground cherries, or pohas as they call them on Maui. Their flavor is unique, a buttery cross between strawberry and vanilla with overtones of pineapple, or, as our friend, Rose, described them, “If buttered popcorn were a fruit.”

I see the edamame pods are growing fatter every day. When they’re ready, we’ll boil them in salted water and suck the buttery beans from their fuzzy pods. Yes, we have a butter fixation. I think back to last year’s August edamame feast with Haruka and Jason, about how we ate until we couldn’t eat any more and left food on the table.

I zoom in on the picture and am astonished by the detail. What a fantastic camera!

On to the squash, which is dutifully climbing a makeshift trellis, but has a long way to go. We started three varieties from seed this year and Kabocha, pictured below, comes highly-heralded by our friend, Linda Watson, of Cook for Good. Linda wrote about discovering Kabocha here.

I also have high hopes for our brown turkey figs which should start coming ripe in late August. Bob is not a big fig fan, but I love them and so do most of our friends.

And our coveted persimmons. More hand-wringing here. Our yard is lousy with squirrels, or “rats on acid” according to Bob. A mockingbird pair have made a nest in the Asian pear adjacent to the persimmons, and every time a squirrel climbs the tree to pinch another green pear, the mocking birds swoop down and attack. It’s funny to watch, but when we began seeing unripe persimmons on the ground, we started chasing the squirrels, too.

Last year we harvested three Asian pears and no persimmons. Three years ago, the new trees yielded a bowl of fruit while still in their pots. Last year, we planted them in the ground and they were too mired in transition to bear fruit. This year we wait with fingers crossed.

There, that wasn’t so bad. I defined my deliverable — a hybrid between essay and photo album — and got started. It feels good to be posting on a secure site (the old site was not secure) and with that dark tunnel of transition behind me.

I’ve been fighting writers block for weeks.

When Bob and I first tucked into the primal adventure of our lives, I anticipated an unprecedented flow of words. They would spill freely, unhampered by social distractions just like the times we had left the country and reinvented our lives. I pictured me and Bob in a sampan, bumping our way down a river clogged with Covid refugees, an island of two navigating a foreign landscape.

Writing would be as easy as falling off a log. All I had to do was pick up my Pilot G2 gel pen and float to the fertile gulf. I would delve deep, spending hours on my back porch rocker with my legs stretched out, scribbling furiously, capturing dialogue and irony, blithely blasting through the log jams.

I would build an easel of my knees and sketch a fantastic world. I would capture the glories of spring in watercolor pencil, nuanced with brushstrokes of global angst. I would be the Edward Scissorhands of Art, flinging finished work to the lawn as my fingers rushed to start another.

But that surge in creativity has not been forthcoming. Instead, my words repeat in dull loops, rolling beneath my feet, refusing to carry me anywhere. My sketch pad sits patiently on a dusty shelf.

Granted, it is April and we have planned a tight garden, every square inch of that old swimming pool measured and groomed. I’ve been shuffling compost and mulch around the yard in our wheelbarrow, have made that grey plastic tub the epicenter of my world. No time for art.

But, who am I kidding? Were it any other time of year, I would be squandering these extra hours polishing the copper-bottom pots, cleaning out cupboards, and squirting canned air on my crumb-infested keyboard.

On cold mornings perfect for writing, I zest lemons and bake pound cake. I flip pancakes and chop onions instead of fleshing out my stack of first drafts. In the evenings, after reading mountains of corona-virus news, I labor over The New York Times crossword before turning off my browser to play solitaire with a stiff, new deck.

Like many, I’m suffering from cognitive dissonance, unable to reconcile my sinfully simple day-to-day routine with the sour news of death. When I close my eyes, I imagine that I’m sitting at a table with Bob on a Mediterranean veranda. We touch glasses, our eyes shining, and turn our faces seaward to await the mushroom cloud.

And so I eat lemon pound cake while the planet wobbles, and I find myself choking on the unfairness and the uncertainty, the loss of stability, life, and livelihood. I can’t ignore the sight of our social systems folding in on themselves like a house of cards.

I want desperately to write of something else, to try and capture the light of hope. I’d like to believe world governments and their people will rebuild a more equitable world on the ashes of this pandemic. In my dreams, people who have been forced to cook for themselves will retain the habit, the gardens they have dug will remain weed-free, and government will fix our healthcare fiasco. In my dreams.

On most mornings, I write in my royal blue Challenge Manuscript Book, number five in a series of six. I filled the first one with stories of daily life in Belize in 1997, writing with the help of a kerosene lamp. Some mornings I download flotsam, dream captures, and mental purges to a small paperback notebook that I bought for a dollar.

Caught between thoughts, my pen in mid-air, I look around the room. Although our mattress and underwear are new, very little else in our bedroom is. The bed tables, dressers, even the towering corn plant are opportunistic finds or rescues. A worn Nepalese carpet lies at the foot of our bed, a gift from Bob’s high school friend, Fran Yarbro. I try in vain to picture the silk threads when they were new. I get down on my knees and count five saber-wielding huntsmen leaning forward on their rearing steeds, nine scrambling forest creatures, and one open-mouthed tiger.

Bob and I walk pad across this carpet many times each day without giving much thought to Fran. Sitting here I take the opportunity to picture them, she and her husband Sergei, sitting across the table from us, wine glasses in hand, animated, so obviously in love. It wasn’t long after that day that they perished on the slopes of Mt. Everest doing what they loved most.

I can almost remember helping Bob assemble our bookshelf many years ago. We bought most of the Kurt Vonnegut novels new, but they are well worn now from repeated readings. Ditto for Daniel Quinn. The other books are thrift store finds and gifts. There is a copy of Dead Eye Dick, signed by the author that Nick Meyers gave us before he died. A few books away from it is a 1956 printing of Rob Roy that Bob’s mother was reading when he was born and which inspired his name. And we have a 1951 copy of Marguerite Henry’s Album of Horses, my name penciled on the flyleaf in loopy grade school sprawl.

Our sheets, line-dried in yesterday’s perfect sun, were also previously owned. I stalk the sheet rack at Pittsboro’s PTA Thrift Store for 100% cotton, Pima or Egyptian. When I discover one with the right degree of softness, I drape it over my arm and walk to the counter and, gushing with pride, and invite the clerk to run her hand over the sturdy fabric.

When I learned that my brother John, and his wife, Darla, were coming to visit, I stripped the guest room bed and hung everything in the sun. And then I made a loaf of bread, the dough so irresistibly plump I could not stop kneading. I harvested okra, figs, cherry tomatoes, squash, and peppers, thinking with each pluck how wonderful it would be to have my family here. About the walks we would take, and about how, together, we would roast chestnuts and make them into soup with sherry, onions, and squash.

Later, after putting the bed back together, I entered the guest room to place a few pieces of dark chocolate on a scuffed night table and noticed how the whole room smelled of crisp fall sunlight and golden breezes.

I don’t think you have to sit still underneath a fig tree for forty-nine days to reach nirvana. I also don’t think you can buy it. Enlightenment, for me at least, is about manifesting my values, and I am fortunate that I can do that. My nirvana is time to think my thoughts, family visits, home-grown food, thrift store scores, heirlooms, treasured books, and line-dried sheets.

Poetry usually leaves me hungrier than when I began. I need complete thoughts. My brain is not wired to appreciate unfinished sentences. Poems are as frustrating to me as someone who leaves you dangling in conversation. “I thought I’d go grocery shopping but the cat wanted out, so.” Or, “I ran into so-and-so today and…(segue to a text on their phone)” “What?” “What?!” “So, what?” I want to say.

But, after reading The Complete Short Stories of Truman Capote, I could plainly see the poetry in his prose and it occurred to me for the hundredth time that good writing often either comes from or resembles poetry. Consider the following Capote gems:

Ottilie was used to boldly smiling at men; but now her smile was fragmentary, it clung to her lips like cake crumbs. – from House of Flowers

The coach was a relic with a decaying interior of ancient red-plush seats, bald in spots, and peeling iodine-colored woodwork. – from A Tree of Night

It was a furnished room in the East Sixties between Second and Third Avenues. Large enough for a daybed and a splintery old bureau with a mirror like a cataracted eye, it had one window, which looked out on a vast vacant lot (you could hear the tough afternoon voices of desperate running boys) and in the distance, like an exclamation point for the skyline, there was the black smokestack of a factory. – from Master Misery

If only I could write like this! I have a few friends, poets who write beautiful prose, Jenn and Mary, to name two. Time to bite the bullet, I thought. Time to give poetry another chance. I asked Mary where I should begin and she suggested I begin by reading (rather than trying to write) poetry. Good poetry. And she lent me her collection of poems that caught her ear for one reason or another. Among them I found examples of stellar writing like this:

Oh flawed species,
who has fashioned spears from saplings,
notched points of flint, sliced
the coral flesh of the salmon,
pounded tapa from the inner bark of the mulberry.

With heavy brains balanced on slender stalks of spine, we have gazed
through ground glass, listening
for the music still humming,
from the violent birth of the universe.
Ellen Bass

And this:

This is a place where lakes are brimmed glasses all
sitting on the same water table, where one hillcrest
has first cousins and second and third, where filled silos
stand like shiny blue Indian totems of fertility and future.
Mary Barnard

Inspired, I wrote the following, not realizing it was a poem until the words were splayed across my screen:

AT SOME POINT

At some point, you stop trying to keep up with technology.
At some point, maybe, you stop trying to curb your appetite.
You stop trying to zip your lip.
You stop trying to give up coffee, or wine, or cigarettes.
At some point, you stop caring what the neighbors think.
At some point, you stop caring for your body as if it were a finely-tuned machine.
You stop flossing, exercising, and getting outside every day.
At some point you stop looking for the good in others.
And for the good in yourself.
At some point you get lazy and you stop trying.
Maybe never. Maybe tomorrow.

At some point, I might add, I will appreciate poetry. Maybe today.

A few wheelbarrow loads later, one bed done and one halfway beautified, I think, just one more, and my back groans. I’m in a race with time to get the mulch deployed as quickly as possible. If I’m quick about it, the weeds won’t get the upper hand and the summer will be easy. This is the time of year for pushing through, mind over matter. It’s the season of ibuprofen, liniment, and extra yoga.

I see why the tourists who stayed with us in Belize and Nicaragua said they couldn’t live there because they had to have their seasons. At the time, we didn’t get it. Bob and I chewed on it a lot and decided they were only talking about one season, spring. We figured they loved spring because it followed winter, that abysmal stretch of cold, dead months so familiar to northerners. Now, after the winter we just had, I see their point.

I have to admit, spring in North Carolina is glorious. It’s sleeping with the windows open time. Everything’s coming to life in the yard, peonies popping. Birds going ape shit, singing their hearts out. Especially the whacked out mocking birds, who evidently are the last to find mates and settle down. If they would just shut up for a few minutes, or at least stop repeating themselves and pretend to listen, the she-birds would flock to their sides.

But every penny has its backside, and the downside of spring is this: my writing life takes a huge hit. Spring is a gut punch to anything desk-related.

I did sit at my desk the other day long enough to put together my summer schedule. In an effort to encourage myself to write without adding undue pressure, I changed the word “write” to “Create!” If this doesn’t get my creative juices flowing, nothing will, I thought. Less than a week later, I pitched that schedule out the window.

I had the whole day to myself on Thursday, no social commitments, and could have spent hours crafting some great piece of writing. As it turned out I spent most of the day working outside. We had a long, crappy winter, and now I can finally get outside and pretty up the place. That $165 load of mulch is going to keep me happy for weeks.

After two (or four) wheelbarrow loads, I come inside, fish a couple of stray pieces of bark from my tank top, and wash my hair. I dry it with a clean, sun-kissed towel I just pulled off the line along with our pillows and bed sheets. It’s burrito night, and we are halfway through a good movie. Clean hair, towel, and sheets. I’ve hit the simple pleasure trifecta. Christmas in April, spring is the best!
 
 

Inspired by my idol, I grab my copy of Sheri McGregor’s recently-published collection of essays, Nature’s Healing Spirit – Real Life Essays to Nurture the Soul and head outdoors. Written by an eclectic group of men and women, these essays celebrate the natural world while affirming our place in it. I am proud to be among the book’s authors, tickled pink that Sheri chose to include “My Friend Carl” in her beautiful book.

I soon find myself sitting in the tree house I named Sweetwater, a play place built at the edge of the woods behind our house before we arrived on the scene. Tacked between four sweet gum trees, this platform is perfect for creative introspection, something I need from time to time. A cardinal drowns out the swish of traffic out front and the drone of a propeller plane overhead. I am bathed in the jasmine scent of autumn olive, and can see the last of this season’s dogwood blooms. I settle into my lawn chair and pick a chapter.

Halfway through Kathleen Hayes Phillips’ Loving Stones, it occurs to me that Natures Healing Spirit is the perfect Mother’s Day gift, a lovely read for nature lovers of all ages, from active to house-bound. Each essay opens a portal between the man made world and mother earth, the equivalent of airing out the house on a spring day. Every story a reminder that, no matter what is going on inside, Mother Earth’s comforting arms are waiting just beyond the back door.

I got a taste of tunnel vision in the last quarter of 2017. Up against a self-imposed Christmas deadline, I was able to ignore distractions and finish editing my mother’s memoir. Now that I know it can be done, I’d like to keep that momentum.

To support my writing habit, I plan on submitting two essays for publication a month, double last year’s goal and I’m off to a good start. I’ve submitted two essays already this month, and gotten my guest blog about a Mayan wedding published on Pink Pangea.

A good writer reads, so I’ve doubled the number of books on my reading list. This month I finished reading “The Hidden Life of Trees” and have begun reading Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.” For fun, I’m reading Martha Conway’s “The Underground River.” Martha is Maggie’s sister, and Maggie is married to my cousin Brian. I highly recommend this book, especially if you like the notion of a floating theater, are curious about how slaves found their way to freedom in the 1830’s, or are handy with a sewing machine.

I’ve also started a “Snitch Pad,” a notebook I carry with me for jotting down thoughts and observations. I got this idea from “Steal Like an Artist”, a nifty little book that Shelley lent me. If you are looking for ways to boost your creativity, this book is a must.

As for friends, well, I’m fortunate to have a lot of great friends and oodles of opportunities for fun. But, if I’m going to do more reading and writing, I need to get choosy about what makes it to my calendar. This year, I’m focusing on quality over quantity.

Last, but not least: cookies. My Nana’s pet name for me was Cookie, and she baked the most incredible chocolate chip cookies. Ask any one of my brothers or cousins. To honor both my nickname, and Nana’s legacy, Cookies will be my new go-to potluck and party dish in 2018. No more fretting over what to bring, or how to keep it warm, or cold, or whatever. Cookies are easy, and everyone likes them.

Tunnel vision gets a bad rap, but I see it as a way to achieve my goals. If I can stay on track, my life will be productive, nourishing, and fun, and hopefully distract me from the political shit storm we all seek to weather this year. So happy tunneling, or whatever strategy you’ve chosen to make your new year shine!

My Experience at a Mayan Wedding (or, Why I Travel)

The Underground River

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative