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Pico y Placa
I wake up early in Colombia. I’m not totally sure why, as the sun doesn’t come up any earlier than it did back home and the city isn’t that much louder than DC. But every morning, around 5 am, my eyes pop open and I am awake. It’s okay, this waking-up-early thing. I have always woken up early (though not quite as early as 5) so it’s not totally bizarre for me to be up before everyone else. Anyway, a few weeks into our time here in Colombia, I found myself awake in the wee hours of the morning, yet again. I figured I’d get up and make something special…
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The Power of Yet
The thing about moving to another country is that everything seems hard – going to the grocery store, trying to talk to the guy in the elevator, paying for something in cash – and it’s doubly hard with kids in tow. We’ve been in Colombia for about a month now, and while some things have gotten easier, every single day I’m pretty exhausted by the time dinner rolls around. Of course, I have plenty to be grateful for, but also…it’s just a lot. Take school. The kids are going to a bilingual school, so many of the parents speak English, and yet the text threads that I’m on for each…
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I’m a Widow. You’d Think I’d Be Better at Doing Hard Things. I’m Not.
I’m about to do something really hard. And I’m a tiny bit nervous. Okay, I’m more than a tiny bit nervous. If I’m being honest, I’m legitimately anxious about this next step. It’s a big, hard step. And doing hard things is scary. It’s not like I’ve never done hard things. I lived with a mentally ill mother who died by suicide. And then I got married and had three kids and then my husband died. And then I dealt with everything that widowhood brings. And I survived it. I even found love again. Which was wonderful…and also, it was sometimes scary. Any big changes can be scary, I know…
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Happy Birthday, Grandpa Tom
Some people say that I’m the most optimistic person that they know. But that’s not really true. That award should go to my dad. I mean, sure, he can get all fired up over some story he reads in the news or some call in a Texas football game. He can be grumpy or frustrated. He has other emotions. And yet, my dad exudes a kind of optimism that is contagious. Even when he’s grumpy, he is so joyfully grumpy. “Aren’t we lucky?” he often said to me as a kid, often in circumstances when I felt bored, annoyed or something that amounted to less than lucky. “Aren’t we lucky…
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Widowhood is Stressful. This Survey Proves It.
It wasn’t until after Shawn died that I realized my hair had been falling out. The bald spots on my head were growing, once again. Because that’s what every newly widowed 38-year-old wants….to be bald! It was like the universe or God or something was just adding yet another “fuck you” to the list of things that could go wrong in my life. Wasn’t it bad enough that my husband had just died? Now I had to contend with a bald spot that was spreading? Stress causes me to lose my hair. (Luckily, it’s mostly in the back of my head, but sometimes the spots can get really big.) This,…
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Along the Coastline
The music was loud and the wind whipped through the car as we drove north. Chris and I had dropped our kids at overnight camp in Maine and had a weekend to ourselves. The scenery, especially as we neared the border, was spectacular. We were in Eastport (“Easternmost city in the United States!“) and it seemed that all that was ahead of us was the sea and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. “Shawn always said Nova Scotia was the most beautiful place in the world,” I said to Chris. “He wanted to take me there. But I can’t imagine it being more beautiful than this.” “Well,…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
