Author Archives: sara

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About sara

i live in michigan with my teenage daughter, my partner, and our three cats. i am a paralegal, legal manager and corporate governance specialist, and when i'm not reading contracts or maintaining the dusty archives of our arcane corporate history like some weirdly specific librarian, i enjoy knitting, books, running slowly, making candles, and bird-watching. i started blogging way back when I was an expat living in australia and in recent years have tried to be more diligent about keeping this space up to date and as a creative outlet for the things in my life that inspire me and balance my 9-5.

pins of the week – september end edition

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It’s been quite awhile since I’ve done a pin post so allow me to share what’s been catching my eye here in southeast Michigan in these final days of September.

It’s been hot and dry here for the past few weeks and I’m more than ready for this kind of weather. Although maybe not too quickly, because the kiddo’s senior pictures are scheduled for mid-to-late October and she and I are both on pins and needles hoping that the weather holds. We want cool temps, peak color, with no rainstorms to strip all the leaves. After that it can do what it will.

My knitting projects are even more scattered than usual. I haven’t finished anything in ages and while I’d like to keep going on something – ANYTHING – to have a finished object, I have to start two new projects. It’s time for me to start my annual contribution to the Mittens for Detroit charity. But even though I pinned the two ideas above (I thought the duck mittens would be really cute for children and I obviously love the stripy pair (and they’d be warm too), I won’t have time to do anything other than a basic pair. I also have to cast on for a baby hat for a work friend, whose wife is expecting and due around the holidays. I’ve waited too long here and am in a lot of knitting hot water.

I really like this outfit although I’d wear it with my Sambas. And I never understand how women can tuck sweaters in – even a half tuck. And it’s been too hot. But everything else I like.

I don’t know if my wild feminine has revealed itself, but I like the concept of putting the ‘people pleasing maiden’ to rest.

One of the major projects that Brandon and I have to tackle in my 1962 Colonial is a kitchen remodel, but thinking about what that will entail (especially with a teenager and three cats and working from home 2 days a week) usually makes me think “hey, this too-small, outdated, not-ideal kitchen is JUST FINE!” But the day is coming and when it does, I am GOING to have a wide windowsill for plants. (Not those little angel figurines, though.) I love plants and I have one cat (Emmett I am looking at you) who is a plant murderer and will chew anything that is lower than six feet off the ground or that he is able to climb to. So my little collection of Thanksgiving cacti, Pothos, Hoya, snake plants and Pilea peperomioides are scrunched up on the mantel and high up on shelves and in less than ideal spots for their growth and display. Someday I will have a nice wide kitchen windowsill and I will have a nice little collection of plants there to bask in the sunshine.

So that’s about it for this morning. I have to get out for a quick run and then I’m off to help the kiddo’s marching band at one of their competitions this afternoon (pray for them; it will be 80 today and blazing sun, in full uniforms. These kids are absolute troopers).

Until next time. xoxo

excerpts, redacted, from emails regarding current events.

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Excerpt from newsletter from xxxx (redacted) Family Institute, received on September 11 at 5:09 PM:

“When the World Feels Like It is Breaking. Everyone is talking about the death of Charlie Kirk, and everything related to it. And if we’re all talking about it, it means it matters. People are angry. They want their voices to be heard. They’re trying to make sense of horrors that feel senseless. Minds are spinning with painful images, and uncertainty about what’s next…I am noticing hopelessness creeping in. Use ‘I’ statements…model forgiveness…May you find strength to hold your children, courage to hold your grief, and hope to keep showing up.“

My response, sent September 11 at 6:27 PM:

“Dear xxxx (redacted) Family Institute: I will unsubscribe to your mailing list, but I also felt that it was important for you to understand why I am unsubscribing. Here is an “I” statement for you: I find it incredibly troubling that you would send out this message in response to the death of a man who advocated – nay, reveled in – so much gun violence, racism and misogyny, yet not in response to the multitude of school shootings that have occurred. One even occurred yesterday and yet that merits no mention from you – although the death of a single individual did. And not just any individual – an individual who openly stated that gun deaths were a price worth paying to protect the 2nd Amendment (obviously not meaning his own – other people’s – schoolchildren being fine – everyone besides MAGA folks), a man who suggested -and continued to suggest up to the moment of his death – that transgender individuals were responsible for a majority of mass shootings and “gang violence” responsible for more, that children should be witness to public executions, that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a “huge mistake”, who called MLK Jr. “awful”, that being gay was an “error”, etc, etc…among a plethora of other statements of hatred and bigotry.

I can only hope that your organizational priorities also include supporting children and families who feel broken living in a society that is showing the undeniable taint of the violent propaganda, hatred, and unfettered access to firearms espoused by people such as Charlie Kirk, who has merited – for some perplexing reason – such a place of honor in this newsletter.

Yours sincerely,

etc.etc.” 

late summer, chicago, and quick catch up

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Despite returning from band camp mid-August, I haven’t yet fully unpacked the last bits of sandy gear still stowed in the garage. I was back to work for a week before heading off to Chicago, my favorite city (sorry Detroit, you are a close second). We stayed in a South Loop loft with a view of an Al Capone hangout and a slice of the river and watched “Murder She Wrote” reruns. We visited the Gilded Age Driehaus Museum and the Art Institute for the Gustave Caillebotte exhibit and hosted a happy hour for some of Brandon’s college friends. The highlight was joining the Gallagher family reunion with 50,000 other Oasis fans on a windy, cool evening at Soldier Field. 

Then after we got home, we had a few days to do laundry and soothe the cats’ mad feelings and catch up at our respective jobs, and we welcomed Brandon’s family to stay for a few days.

My kiddo’s last year of high school has now started and it will be an autumn of marching band and football games and band competitions and “lasts”. The weather has taken a cool turn so the afternoons are honeyed and the evenings downright crisp. I’m sure we’ll have at least one more return to summer weather  before it’s all said and done. 

Watching: La Vuelta (last of the cycling Grand Tours for 2025)

Reading: I’m in between books right now after finishing two excellent reads – “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” by Stephen Graham Jones and “Silver Nitrate” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. 

Making: a custom bag charm by request (my kiddo wearing hers around is great advertising), a pair of vanilla socks that I started during band camp, and if you can believe it I still have to finish the Perfect Knit T-shirt which I said I’d do in July.

Wearing: shorter hair after getting 6 inches chopped off; my Adidas sambas, boyfriend jeans, loving my Katie Kime monogrammed Oxford, and a new pink Teddie sweater from J. Crew. 

friendly reminder to have the day you voted for!

it’s august

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No schmaltzy title quote about August – let’s cut right to the chase – it’s August!!

July was long. It’s Tour de France month around here and being a good fan of professional grand tour cycling is a time commitment. For three weeks in July, Brandon and I watch four to five hours of stage racing every night except for rest days, and then usually another hour or so in the mornings listening to podcasts and reading news about the cyclists, the teams, and the stages. It’s fun to be that obsessive about something but by the time the peloton rolls into Paris we are ready for the podiums; we shed our tears and reclaim our lives and free time. (But not before we saw my favorite cyclist Wout van Aert take a blistering victory in a shockingly thrilling stage 21 on Montmartre!)

In spite of our commitment to the Tour, we also spent time at our pool club, ran a 5k, went to a couple of local parades, annoyed the neighborhood with fireworks, and spent a lot of time indoors because our neighbors did a complete overhaul of their yard, paving, and landscaping that took two months and involved seemingly every possible variety of heavy machinery.  They luckily escaped to one of their other homes during the construction, which saw our street clogged with construction vehicles for the aforementioned two months, but as we are humbler types, we simply had to crank up the air conditioning for white noise and become friends with the workers (who were all really nice fellows). Then our air conditioner wheezed to a halt and one of Brandon’s friends Frankensteined a new motor for it that has been happily cranking away keeping us cool ever since and we’ll replace the whole old unit in the fall. 

Looking ahead, August will be a busy month. The kiddo is wading into her senior year activities and every once in awhile I realize that the clock is ticking down on her childhood. I am then seized with such a wave of complex emotions that I can’t begin to process without sinking to the floor in a fetal position, so I push it off and like Scarlett O’Hara, tell myself that I will think about it tomorrow. In the meantime, she asked me to chaperone her final marching band camp and God help me I agreed so for a week later this month I will be overseeing a cabin of band campers in a remote location without cell service in the forests of western Michigan. 

In the meantime, this weekend I have a lot of free time – Brandon is at Jazzfest in Ohio with his childhood friends. The kiddo and I have the last college tour on Monday, and before then I want to buy new porch flowers as my wave petunias crapped out mid-July, and break my week of non-running. I did great in July  with running and then this last week just felt totally fatigued and unmotivated. Last night the kiddo went to bed early (she’s working a lot of hours outside at the garden nursery this summer) and I whooped it up on my bachelorette Friday night. I watched “Mr. & Mrs. Murder” on Hulu and ate a thin crust pizza and went to bed late and left my socks on the living room floor and did ZERO KNITTING even though I have two projects that I’d planned on finishing in July. 

I’m almost looking forward to having some band camp stories to tell later this month. I’m told the food is good but in my head this is how I picture myself. 

Be well and we’ll talk soon. 

maker space: some recent projects

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The days are long and bright here in Michigan, with the big western sky full of light in the shifting clouds until after 9pm. It’s my usual season of languid ennui that has not fully come to fruition yet. I love taking a bit of time off in July and just going summer-feral, but I’ve had to keep my nose to the grindstone instead. So I’ve been trying to grab all the time I can in between to read, run, and be inspired with making and crafting.

I have a few finished projects that I’ve been saving up to show you. First – like many of us I had several terra cotta pots in the garage and when I saw this Pinterest tutorial I was smitten. I think they turned out pretty well! Two quick observations- one, the supplies were a little pricey – the mesh stencils alone were about $20, and I needed to purchase all the craft paints (white, brown, and black) and spray sealer. The upside is that I have supplies leftover to make many more of these if I want to, or find different projects I can use them for. I do think that I may need some different sealer, because once they were planted with flowers and soil, they have started to discolor a bit. I don’t mind it and think it adds to the vintage look, but hopefully they last.

I have also been making loads of simple earrings and bag charms. I’m not much of a jewelry person but I do love a minimalist earring. I also have a deep and nostalgic love for seed beads so I’ve been trying my hand at several different variations. I’ve ended up with so many new supplies that I actually opened a little Etsy shop to get rid of some of my finished objects (a girl only needs so many earrings). —-> see Etsy icon on my sidebar.

It’s a win-win because I can test my designs first and modify until they turn out well – in terms of aesthetics and durability. I just keep, repurpose, or give away the projects that don’t turn out quite well enough to list. It’s more work than it looks, an Etsy shop, and my photography skills are definitely in need of improvement. A better camera is on my wish list (which will also come in handy for my daughter’s senior year in high school)! These (below left) my favorite recent finished objects. I modeled them after a pair I saw while out shopping with my daughter and used Miyuki seed beads in the “Art Deco” color.

I did a beaded anklet for my daughter, which she liked until the hemp cord stretched out and the cheap beads I used (remnants from my old original bead box) began to lose their paint. She is a great tester – her job at a plant nursery really puts my designs through the wringer (particularly when she has to water her most-loathed plant nemesis, the roses). So I tweaked and modified and in my search for better beads, I found some that are made from recycled wooden skateboard decks! She likes the vibe and I was able to modify the sizing and the adjustability to accommodate for the relax in the hemp.

Lastly, knitting away. I am not much of a garment knitter but I am DETERMINED to finish this Perfect Knit Tshirt by Originally Lovely for Lion Brand Yarn. I had to rip it back once already because a mid-project try-on revealed that it was just too big. And I believe this yarn (Lion Coboo) will grow. It was a setback but I’ve just separated for sleeves and am going gangbusters on the body so with any luck, a July finish? (Don’t bet on it.)

I hope you are finding time to be inspired and creative and try your hand at some new things if you are so inclined!

on summers past

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One of my favorite bosses (my last boss, in fact) loves summer and used to encourage us to make the most of it. “Michigan summers are fleeting,” she would say, “so you have to get out there and make a point to enjoy it while it lasts.” While this is undeniably true, and I loved her for saying it, for many years, summer was just a big problem. Honestly, summertime is just hell when you work, you can’t stay home and need reliable child care – it’s a no-win situation. For years when my daughter was young, and I was a divorced working mom, once school was out, summers were patchwork of expensive camps that I always had high hopes for, but ultimately ended up just being a place to park her while I worked. These were the days before “work from home” was any kind of a thing and clock watchers abounded in my corporate environment- you walk in a few minutes late one too many times, or try to sneak out early, and someone would notice.

I’m a victim of my own nostalgia so it’s easy for me to think that an ideal summer is like my childhood memory of summer. Long days fighting boredom with imagination, books, and neighborhood friends, sleeping in front of a box fan and eating snacks and microwave pizzas and watching too much television before being shooed outside to ride bikes and drink out of the hose and come home only when the fireflies starting their slow blink in the backyards. It should be sparklers and the excitement of a big summer movie and a summer road trip, Otter Pops and bug bites. Nowadays, if you’re a kid with working parents, you have “day camps” to look forward to, most of which cost thousands of dollars, and many of which don’t even have hours that match up with a 9-5 job (unless you purchase additional pre-care or after-care). 

Last night, while I was cooking dinner, those patchwork summers pre-Covid came back to me – how did we make it through? Nowadays, flex work is much more of a thing and if I need to, I can work from home. What I would have given for that flexibility ten years ago! I remember those days but they seem like they happened to someone else. Mornings waking up so early to make sure her bags and lunches were packed, dropping her off, many times with strangers, long commutes to work, white-knuckle gripping the steering wheel after work to make sure I could pick her up by 6pm – even the additional after care would close at 6 and then there would be additional charges and the horrible feeling of walking in to see your kid one of the last two or three to go home, looking as tired and bedraggled as I felt. Then home with her to cook dinner, clean up the dishes, baths and bedtime, only to have to wake up and do it all over again.

And I was lucky – enormously lucky. I had a great job with a great team. I had reliable transportation and could afford child care. What about all the families and single working parents who can’t? I stood there thinking about it and feeling immense gratitude that those days are over, and feeling anger at the same time that the US won’t do better (I almost wrote “incapable” but that is not accurate- we’re fully capable, we just don’t). Could I have done something differently? Or better? What options do people have? And what will it be like for her in the future, if she ever decides to become a parent? Will she struggle with the same guilt and self doubt? I would drag myself naked over gravel to keep that from happening (and no one needs to see that).

As I’m musing over these somber things, she comes padding into the kitchen, almost seventeen, four inches taller than me, all long tan legs and longer glossy hair. If I were to ask her, she would probably just shrug and laugh at some of the silly memories of Girl Scout camp or Camp Invention or the Nature Camp and ask when dinner will be ready. Her bare feet are planted firmly in the present and I can take her lead on that. All we have is the summer we are in and to circle back around, it’s fleeting. So maybe I need to make some plans for Otter Pops, fireflies, and sparklers.

recent pins – girl detective edition

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Happy Friday! It’s sunny here in Michigan today but chilly, thanks to a northeast wind sweeping across Lake Huron out of Canada. We had to cover up our baby plants last night. We’ve had a couple of nice days, but I think we’re all more than ready for sustained warmer weather.

This week’s edition of recent pins is dedicated to a book genre I loved as a kid – the girl detective! A few of my favorites: Trixie Belden (I own the complete series), Nancy Drew (of course), Kay Tracey, and Meg Duncan. I think it’s interesting that the format for many of these stories included motherless (or fatherless) women (Trixie being the exception). Meg’s mother had passed, and her father had an ‘important government job’ and was frequently away from home. We know that Nancy’s mother had also passed, and her influential attorney father Carson Drew, while a strong figure in her life, relied heavily on his housekeeper Hannah and left Nancy to her own devices frequently. Kay Tracey had lost her father, and lived with her mother and her older brother Bill. Trixie, by comparison, was more relatable for the average reader – she was 13, had to do chores, had a family structure, and yet STILL managed to get into hijinks and mysterious, creepy situations. She was tomboyish and frequently felt less attractive than her chums Honey and Diana, which felt familiar to me. She rode the bus, wore jeans, hated math and sewing, wanted her own horse – no Mustang or roadster, no titian hair, no handsome boyfriend like Nancy or Kay.

Despite their different backgrounds and characters, these were all strong female role models in an age before we were regularly told “you can do and be anything you want”. The covers of these books are artwork in and of themselves – the illustrators usually did Trixie dirty but the Nancy and Kay Tracey covers are beautiful and dramatic. I’d love to have a few framed and hanging in my office.

For the most part, these books were written by ghostwriters under pseudonyms, sometimes several authors contributing to one pseudonym. This is an interesting article about Nancy’s creators (and if you’re interested, there’s a great book out there called ‘Girl Sleuth’ by Melanie Rehak). Trixie’s creators are harder to pin down. Julie Campbell wrote the first six books, and after that, Western House Publishing created the ‘Kathryn Kenny‘ pseudonym to continue the series. Kathryn Kenny was multiple authors, both male and female, and although I loved the entire original series, there are subtle changes in voice and characterizations as the books progressed.

I would have gone crazy for this cake at a certain age (umm, like 51)!

I liked paper dolls as a kid, even when I was too old to play with them. I vividly remember a rainy day, requesting my mom to make Trixie and Honey paper dolls for me and she complied, with an outfit or two each. I wish I’d saved them. I would have loved these.

And would it be immature or weird for a 50-something woman to carry a suitcase decoupaged with Nancy Drew covers and images? Nah, I don’t think so either.

I hope everyone has a great weekend and remember:

so let’s go where we’re happy

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It’s been awhile since we’ve had a proper catch-up, so on this early Saturday morning, in bed with a cat, coffee, and a head cold, I’ll do just that.

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We flew to Raleigh last weekend for a several-days-long birthday bash for Brandon’s dad. Relatives flew or drove in from all over the country. We had a splurgy dinner at the Angus Barn, a Raleigh steakhouse staple. Brandon and I split the tomahawk and a bottle of Shiraz and we ended up taking more than half the steak back to our hotel. (Brandon ate it over the next 2 mornings with eggs from the breakfast buffet! Until I finally told him that I thought our refrigerator was not keeping it cold enough to try for a third day and he reminisced about the Simpsons episode where Homer is determined to eat the entire sub sandwich despite it going slowly bad.) We enjoyed a rooftop evening at the ZincHouse Winery eating appetizers courtesy of his sister (this winery lets you bring in your own food! brilliant) and pizza from their food trucks and watching the ‘speed weddings’ in their gazebo. We walked in the historic Oakwood Cemetery and of course that brought to mind the song that inspired the title of this post (see end) which is still stuck in my head. We cautiously crept into the office to use the restroom, and the bespectacled young woman sitting in the sifting light from high many-paned windows with plants and stacks of headstone samples was delighted that we were Michiganders. She whipped out a map and with a green felt-tip pen, showed us where we could find a bit of home; at her advice, we found the grave of Ouida Estelle Emery Hood, who detested Raleigh so much that her husband buried her there in 50 barrels of Michigan soil.

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My socializing is a little hit or miss, and I don’t usually look forward to traveling, but I know for many years when I look back on this spring, I won’t remember the little details. I won’t remember the commutes, the office days, what I ate for lunch or what outfits I wore, but I will remember ambling through the cemetery among the quiet Confederate dead, bright planes of southern sunshine, hearing the mockingbirds and smelling the lush honeysuckle tumbling over the iron fences.

Back home in Michigan, the spring is still launching. We bounce between cold snaps and hot days and the pollen has fallen like a smothering yellow veil (no doubt contributing to my sinus issues). The kiddo and I went to the re-release of one of my favorite movies (which she now also loves) – the 2005 ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and it was even more beautiful on the big screen. Otherwise, she is busy this spring of her junior year with soccer (I wish I could share her varsity soccer picture – she looks like a gorgeous young Valkyrie) and the SATs and starting up her summer plant nursery job and did anyone else know that Detroit has a women’s professional football team? I didn’t. But tonight she and her EMT cadet class are serving as medical support there, so I’ll be driving her and (I suppose) watching my first game.

I hope you are all well. I need to go eat something and take some sinus meds and if I feel better before the football game, I would like to check out opening day of our Farmer’s Market – I’m looking for some local honey, which I’ve heard can help with seasonal allergies. Take good care of yourselves and each other. xo

spring makes me tired.

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I’ve never been fond of springtime. It makes me tired. I used to attribute this to a personal psychological glitch but it turns out it’s a real thing. ‘They’ – the ephemeral ‘they’ who are frequently referenced as all-knowing subject matter experts on a variety of topics – say it can be attributed to different factors including hormonal shifts, allergies, and weather changes. I also think for a Michigander who doesn’t like spring all that much, seeing bare, winter-pasty legs out in shorts the minute the temperature hits 50 doesn’t help.

Whatever the reason, I’ve been doing my best to shake off the lethargy and am annoyed at myself that I can’t. I should be doing all sorts of things to prepare for warmer weather, both physically and mentally, and instead I feel like I’m sleepwalking and still stuffing my face with carbs and wanting to go to bed at 8pm. This makes it a challenge when work is still demanding and I’ve been in high functioning burnout for the last six months and the kiddo has 2-3 soccer games a week that keep us up later and I have a bunch of little craft projects and books and whatnot and I still have the usual household work to accomplish. Anyway, thank you for indulging my foray into self-pity and I know I will feel better if I just get outside or get on the treadmill but dang.

This weekend was especially tiring but in a fun way. B & I had a long overdue date night downtown – we played video games at Barcade on Selden, had a very indulgent dinner at Selden Standard (grilled octopus, duck leg confit, charred sweet potato, house made rigatoni with pesto and chile, and a velvety Bordeaux), and sat out on the stoop of a nearby beer garden enjoying the mild spring evening. Then we wandered over to the Masonic Temple Theater for the Jack White show which was epic and face-melting. It was a homecoming show for him and the Detroit crowd showed their native son a lot of love. As a bit of backstory – Jack White paid off the temple’s back tax bill and saved the gorgeous building on the Cass Corridor from foreclosure. He never forgot that during especially lean times in the city, his mom was able to find work there as a theater usher. It’s a beautiful space and in 2022, Jack proposed to his now-wife onstage during an April show at the temple and Brandon was there and I had stayed home because of SPRINGTIME LETHARGY and I never forgave myself for missing that and now you see how all of this comes back around.

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maker space – a long story, full circle

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It was 2002. My post-college job at Big Chemical had – after seven pretty awful years that weren’t wasted because they became integral to who I am now – finally become untenable and I quit in February without any real plan of what came next. I put my furniture in storage and my parents painted the sunny front bedroom in their old farmhouse pale lemon for me. They put my mom’s paintings on the walls and a new quilt on the bed, and my two cats and I moved home.

It was cold, living in northern Michigan. It snowed all that March and April and sometimes I was sad. I tried to keep a routine; in the mornings I walked on the treadmill and then fired up my enormous old Gateway and printed out resumes. The high point was being home with my parents, some of my favorite people. I felt worried sometimes, and anxious. Watching their shows on television with them, eating my mom’s good cooking and tagging along when they went to the little strip mall over the hill, I was never lonely. It had a bait and tackle store, a little card store, and a Ben Franklin.

My parents did their big grocery shop at Ben Franklin and occasionally my mom and I would go next door and peruse the little card shop. One day my mom came home with a little amber bead necklace with a striped fish charm. They were handmade by a girl in town and the card store had a few on display at the counter.

The next time my mom went shopping, I went with her. Ben Franklin had a grocery store and a hardware store and a little crafting section and while my mom did her shopping I wandered over to look. It would be another few years before I taught myself how to knit, and my forays into crochet and embroidery had been interesting but not especially fruitful. That day, though, I saw bags and bags of seed beads, clasps and elastic, and despite my limited budget, I thought about that little amber fish necklace and made a few tentative selections.

I made a few clumsy necklaces but within a few weeks, I had an interview downstate at Widget Central, and soon, was hired and moving again. The cats were packed up and the yellow bedroom turned polite and impersonal and although I didn’t know it then, I was starting what would be a 20+ year adventure. The bead box was forgotten.

i am always looking for a simple beaded earring. Czech glass.
bag charm – protection from gossip and dark intentions

Over the holidays, cleaning out my home office, I came across that forgotten bead box.