Author Archives: sara

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.

invaded

For a short week that started out with a vacation day (which was mostly spent driving downstate and cleaning the house), it has been distasteful in many ways. For starters, I should have listened to Susan Miller when she warned that if I chose to make any changes to my appearance – such as buying new clothes, etc – I should keep the receipts or wait til July. Unfortunately, I chose to color my hair, not much I can do about the strange coppery stripey shade (which I am grimly calling “Mercury Retrograde”) until I can set 20 minutes aside to recolor. Or should I wait til July to do that, too? I’m not sure it can get much worse.

I had to give a presentation yesterday and public speaking is definitely not my forte. When I was younger, I had massive phobias about it, and was terrorized at the thought. In this job, though, I have to put my big girl pants on and get it done, and to my surprise, when I put my mind to it, I can definitely do it, and do a passable job. I just don’t like it. It’s distasteful to me. Projecting an outward image, pushing my energy out to a big group of people, letting them feed off it, is draining and unpleasant for me. It makes me feel scrutinized and invaded and uncomfortable.

This morning, less than 24 hours after giving that big presentation, I had an appraiser come to the house and was reminded again of the uncomfortable feeling of being invaded. She was perfectly nice, even when Emmett jumped onto her shoulder, as he is wont to do with me. I was horrified – he is a wingnut. I locked him in the bathroom and he yowled and violently rattled the door the entire time she was here. He sounded like a tempest in a teapot and his brother Sarge stretched out on the hallway rug and stuffed his paws under the door to either soothe him or mock him, not sure which.

I am a crazy cat lady, I told her, trying for a laugh, and she merely politely agreed and went on with her clipboard. Again, a very nice person but who wants someone looking in your rooms and closets and putting a dollar value on your fortress of solitude? Talk about feeling like you’ve just had your pockets turned out.

I guess just another day and a half and I can call this week done and spend the weekend recovering and paying attention to all of the little details in my life that make me happy and recharge me. Go for a run, work in the yard, encourage Miss L’s marimo to divide so I can make one of these, drink some wine, and read some Travis McGee.

solstice

Downstate, the solstice is just another day; up north, however, the solstice is a day of importance.

Long live the light.

more birthday

Despite having a bit of a meditative birthday overall, I still managed to rake in some pretty nice birthday awesomeness. Love can, after all, take the form of cool shit to cackle over. GB got me a dream of an antique brass birdcage, on it’s own beautiful stand, it’s just gorgeous and just dying to host a long trailing vine or a starry flowering plant…if Emmett can be persuaded that he shouldn’t a) swing on it and b) try to fit into it. I got money from my folks and a gift card from my bestie, all of which, especially now that I am financially independent and on a budget, allows me to splurge happily on the new Coldplay album and some new cute running clothes.

And from my work colleagues, cake pops from Starbucks (salted caramel!) and a beautiful rose-mauve orchid; and a field trip.

The Matthaei Botanical Gardens of the University of Michigan are just a hop, skip, and a jump from our office, and, in addition to the usual spectacular gardens, plants and flowers (including bonsai, above) there is a once-in-a-lifetime botanical event occurring. The century plant, an Agave that has been in the collection since the 1930’s, began the process of flowering this spring. Over the course of the last couple of months, it has shot up a 25-foot stalk that forced the conservatory to remove a pane of glass from it’s ceiling to allow it to grow out the roof! At its most rapid pace, it was growing 6-7 inches a day before it began sending out side stems and buds, and slowed its upward rate. The century plant will bloom once, set seed, and die, and the fact that it is doing this at over 80 years old is pretty remarkable.

So, with a sack of Greek takeout – grape leaves, pita, salads, and fattoush – we set out for a lunchtime field trip, a picnic under warm and windy, cloud-gathering spring skies, and a peek at the century plant. Although my colleague promised me that it would burst into flower the moment I stepped my magical birthday ass into the conservatory, it’s not blooming yet, so hopefully I can get back again for another photograph when that occurs.

All in all, a pretty nice birthday, and a lucky girl.

star signs and scrolls, the moon and my birthday.

When I was on the brink of adolescence, which happened later in those pre-historic days than it seems to happen now, I spent a lot of pocket money at the Printed Word, our local bookstore. There were wire racks of paperbacks lining the walls, and a long center row of lighted magazine racks. It had its own dry, papery smell. There was an old-fashioned cash register behind a heavy glass-topped counter, and next to that cash register was usually a box of cigarette-sized colored paper horoscope scrolls, tightly encased in plastic sleeves.

For a time, I rushed to get a scroll weekly, and pored over it with great intensity. It was an amazing mystery, a magic significance akin to the secrets of tarot cards or prophetic dreams. For a couple of dollars, you could understand all kinds of hidden things about yourself and your destiny and the world and stars around you. Your lucky days, your lucky numbers. Who might have a crush on you. I mean, that’s a lot of awesome insight for a bargain price.

I haven’t thought much about horoscopes or star signs until a couple of months ago. I had a crazy weekend of strange tumultuous emotions and changes in my friendships and relationships and I happened to see a reference on Instagram to the lunar eclipse. I Googled it and it was almost alarming at how it seemed to be describing what I was going through.

I haven’t fallen back into checking my horoscope daily, but I did find a couple of great websites that I’ve curiously referred back to occasionally to review the movements of the skies. I love Mystic Mamma and Susan Miller. And since it’s my birthday month and today is actually my birthday, I’ve been checking in more regularly to see what’s afoot in my sign.

So again, I’m finding all sorts of interesting information. Mercury is in retrograde so that nagging feeling I’ve had of being a ship in the Horse Latitudes makes sense. I’m looking back a lot lately, getting ready to close out matters and process them and make the most of understanding them so I can, I hope, move on and take those lessons forward. I’ve had feelings about them that I thought I were over. I’ve had fears and anxieties lingering, old things that I thought I had resolved, but which apparently still need to be thought about and dealt with. The full moon is in Sagittarius so in conjunction with taking this period of retrograde emotional hibernation, I am going to ponder the new path forward and focus on how I can best make that happen. It’s apparently rare to have a full moon on your birthday (plus or minus a day) so I am considering that as a great sign for my day and taking the time to meditate on all of these things so I can move on to the next phase in early July.

At the ripe age of 41, I’ve realized that not everything goes how I’ve planned it, but the important, vital things in life revolve around the joy you take in yourself and your surroundings, and your own ability to see the silver linings. It’s about the beauty you see and the love and friendship you exchange with the people who share your journey, be they your close family or your friends and colleagues or the people you simply pass through space with. It’s about taking responsibility for your actions and your decisions and your own emotional well-being and knowing that everything has a significance and a resonance. Make it count. Happy Birthday to me.

For a day that started out so peacefully, with breakfast on the patio with Miss L, yesterday ended up kind of a big deal around here.

One of the downfalls of being a small framed person is a distinct lack of upper body strength, which translates into the embarrassing problem of not being able to pull the starter on a lawn mower with any degree of success. One of the side effects of the overall life transition that has been occurring around here lately is an increased responsibility for yard work and the mower issue was very frustrating for me. I pondered alternatives that all seemed to point to splashing out for a new mower (not something I wanted to spend the money on at this point) until I had a big AH-HAH moment. A little Internet research + quick trip to Home Depot + a strawberry lemonade to keep Miss L happy with this extremely boring-for-her errand + $100 = solution.

I had remembered my mom using one of these when I was a kid, only it wasn’t a nice shiny new one with sharp blades, it was an old rusty antique one that I think had been salvaged out of the shed behind our circa-1800’s farm house. Who knew they still make them?

It’s definitely a different solution than a gas mower. It’s quiet, I can use it whenever I want. It isn’t a perfect cut and there needs to be some weed-whacking afterwards, and raking. It jams up with twigs and sticks, which was extremely annoying around our old shedding tulip tree. But I really enjoyed it. It’s a great workout and maybe after using it all summer I will have the arm and shoulder muscles to pull the starter on the other mower. It’s a convenient, cheap, green alternative and my lawn got mowed yesterday. Problem solved.

Saving the best for last…

As I mowed and trimmed our crazy rosebush, Mommy duck was angrier than usual, hissing and fanning out her tail every time I came even remotely close to her. Usually she just keeps quiet unless I’m sticking my face right near her nest. However, mid-afternoon I learned the reason for her increased agitation.

WE HAVE DUCKLINGS!

The eggs hatched yesterday and by evening, there were at least five little fluff ducklings rolling around the nest and poking their little beaks out from under her sheltering wings. I tried to get closer to take more pictures, but it just made them so upset, it wasn’t worth it. She would hiss and like good little babies, they would freeze where they were. I haven’t been out this morning to check on them, but hopefully they had a good first night and will stick around for a little while before decamping to a water source. Well done Mommy duck!!

The perfect Saturday ended with Miss L. and I enjoying burgers on the grill, a fire in the backyard, and smores. Emmett was furious at being left out and climbed up into the kitchen window precariously to add to the conversation with the occasional indignant yowl (he must have a Siamese back in the family tree somewhere). Life, my friends, does not get much better than that.

live authentic part II

I felt bad after my very cynical ‘live authentic’ post and guilty that perhaps I’d oversimplified things. It’s easy to do that in a blog post. You’re sort of shooting for this mixture of insouciance and humor and poignancy and you frequently let one element outweigh the others and miss the mark.

I thought about it a lot today and came to the conclusion that for me, living authentic isn’t about trying to make my life look or seem easy or beautiful, it’s about trying to isolate and identify the beauty and happiness lurking inside my everyday life and feel gratitude. There’s a tail-wagging-the-dog difference and to me, that difference is the actual element of authenticity. When you’re able to look at your life holistically, the good and the bad, and yet value and appreciate the quicksilver moments of elegance and happiness and loveliness, you are living authentically. At the age of nearly-41, I feel like I’ve only recently discovered this and will likely spend the rest of my life working on it. But it’s good work to do.

I have all the moments that I described in my last post and no, they aren’t the moments that get photographed. I don’t shoot selfies of my overfed tummy or unshaven legs or circles under my eyes when I’ve gotten insufficient sleep. I shoot selfies when I feel beautiful. I don’t take pictures of the endless dead seedling trays I’ve baked or over or under-watered, I take pictures of my beautiful flowers and herbs when they are at their peak and I am proud of them. I don’t take pictures of endless streams of traffic instead of walks in the woods and I don’t brag about the runs that are failures of fatigue and laziness and bathroom issues or shin splints, I feel exuberant about the ones where I feel like I could run and run and run and never get tired. And the ‘living authentic’ part is realizing that all of those elements exist all the time and ebb and flow and they all make up your day or your week and you choose what to be happy and proud of, and what you want to project to the world. I think this is the silver linings playbook, to capture a thought from one of my favorite reads of 2013.

Today I went to work and I had too much to do and I felt that bitterness of not being able to putter around and do exactly what I wanted to do in the comfort and solitude of my own home. And yet I had the kind of day where the relationships I’ve forged with the people I work with made me change my mind. I helped people, I accomplished things and they gave back in return. I had a CAD engineer excitedly consult with me about setting up a possible webcam for Mommy duck. I had my small cadre of teammates set up an outing for next week so I can take them to my favorite botanical gardens to see an 80-year old agave cactus bloom, something I never thought anyone around me would be remotely interested in. I had people in my office all day for one reason or another, laughing and talking and asking questions and making plans and working on strategy and developing ideas together. I had a beautiful lunchtime run in the sunshine and came back with a sunburned nose. I had dinner with my daughter and we lay in the hammock while we ate our ice cream and my shorts were too tight, and we watched the pine branches overhead, very green against the blue sky. Mommy duck went away and came home and the fish swam in his tank while the cats stared, hypnotized. I took the trash out and saw a pale moon shadow in the sky, waiting for the gloaming. All of these things happened and then I felt sad for my harsh and negative commentary about what is in actuality a very nice and sweet pair of words. For the time being, I’ve found a nice place in the world and I am lucky to share even the most tedious bits of my existence with good people and the gratitude that I feel and project is now for me the most authentic way to live.

live authentic

I loved this post on A Side of Sweet about what I informally think of as “the new YOLO” – the hashtag “live authentic” which at first glance can seem very positive and motivating and inspirational but, as Kelly’s post points out, can really just be annoying as all hell and make those of us who are actually forced to work for a living doing distinctly unbeautiful things feel a bit, shall we say, inadequate.

I wish my life was all about PeonyWatch2014, naps with beautiful yogaesque cats, communing with ducks, walks in the woods and going for long runs wearing perfectly coordinated Nike outfits while I “live authentically”. And I DO get to do some of that, sometimes (okay, I don’t have any perfectly coordinated outfits of any kind, much less for running). But more often than not, my version of living authentically is sitting in traffic or in my office thinking, talking, or writing about widgets, packing lunches, wishing my house wasn’t so cluttered, wishing I had time for a nap or a run, missing my kid, checking my finances, wondering what to read next, wishing I had time to weed the garden, feeling tired, feeling hungry, feeling fat, wondering if it’s almost time to eat, wondering if it’s almost time to go home, wondering if we need more wine, negotiating who does bedtime reading or lunch packing, going to bed at 8PM with the intention of reading but instead exhaustedly watching a rerun of the Real Housewives of Somewhere while berating myself for not cleaning the litterbox and feeling annoyed with the cats for breaking something or dragging a shoe upstairs to chew on (really). And then getting up the next day to do it all over again.

i can’t believe i wrote three long paragraphs about a duck.

Mommy duck is hanging tough on the nest and if the Internetz is correct about gestation, we have a couple more weeks until we have some baby fluffballs rolling around the garden. The debate continues over what to do then – should we get a wading pool and keep it filled next to the rosebush? Should we trust Mommy duck to know where to take her babies to water? I fret. Even the closest small body of water, which is a big pond in front of a local office building, requires crossing a very busy main street. Ugh. The stress of being an innkeeper is more than I’d imagined.

Also, she is leaving the nest earlier every night and staying away longer, and not covering her eggs as carefully. I feel like the anxious mother of a curfew-breaking teenager, waiting for her to come home every night. I am always relieved to see her waddling up the walk. She looks around suspiciously, lingers to make sure she isn’t being watched (I feel her gimlet eye roving over me from where I’m peeking out of the drapes) and then, when she is somewhat satisfied that no one has tracked her, she rushes back onto the nest.

I’m not sure if this means she is verging on abandoning her eggs for the wild single duck life in the local pond, or whether she just has more confidence in her surroundings and can leave for longer periods of time without fear. As one of my Instagram peeps said, let’s just hope she knows what she is doing.

room at the inn

we have a strange relationship with animals over here lately. they sort of come into and out of our lives in weird ways and although my motto has been ‘there’s always room at the inn’, there are limits. it started with a cricket that i found in my office last fall; he came home in my bestie’s cellphone box and lived on our top shelf in a little terrarium for five months. Five! he ate lettuce leaves and raw oatmeal, and apple slices, and even now i occasonally think i can hear his rusty chirping, which filled up several long dark weeks of winter nights in a very delightful way. not at all annoying.

after the cricket, of course we gained mommy duck, who is still hanging tough in the corner of our garden in her queendom of mulch and pinfeathers. she is grouchy over the constant comings and goings (she lives by our front door) but i think secretly she is sort of enjoying it all too.

everybody is welcome. sort of.

so last night, GB heard a loud scratching in the wall, and he informed me about it when i was sleepy and i promptly forgot. the situation apparently escalated quickly while i was stacking zzz’s. this morning, before i was even properly awake, he was standing in the bedroom door advising me that he was about to knock a hole in the dining room wall to release the scratchy thing.

‘ok,’ i said groggily, and then, after processing this for a few minutes, and hearing him noisily assembling his drills and moving the furniture around, i realized that i should probably wake up. i trust him where these things are concerned, but it seemed like a large undertaking that i should probably be present for.

‘it sounds BIG,’ he said, and after knocking around a bit to determine where the beastie was trapped, he drilled a hole and sort of punched it out neatly. after a lot of bright spotlight type flashlights and drilling noises and moving of furniture and stud locators and tapping around scientifically…he put a bucket in front of the hole and we stood with baited breath. it sort of felt like that television special where geraldo rivera broke into al capone’s vault, remember that? (i always felt real bad for geraldo about that one.) i tried not to think of the tana french novel i had recently read about a murder victim who drives himself crazy believing something is trapped in the wall of his house…anyway.

the beastie, which really did sound like a twenty pound raccoon or small bear inside the wall, nosed its way out very quickly, all things considered. behold; tiny little chipmunk. i recognized him from when i caught him sitting in the plastic bin of birdseed in the garage last week, stuffing his face. unfortunately, the intricate ‘cookie tin bucket’ trap that GB rigged had a tiny gap, and he went slipping out and zinging around the dining room before GB could catch him and clap the bucket down again. he transferred him to a jar with some cracked corn for a photo opp. the stupid piggish thing couldn’t stop eating the corn long enough to smile and wave at the camera. he was released into his natural habitat and promptly returned to hang out for awhile underneath the birdfeeder.

miss l. slept through the whole thing and when i showed her the pictures, she couldn’t believe it.

‘I CAN’T BELIEVE I SLEPT THROUGH THE WHOLE THING,’ she said, and her next question was where on earth she was going to eat breakfast if the chipmunk was now living in the dining room.

heirlooms

after a few days of drops for my eye infections, sprays for my nose, and allergy pills for the general misery of everything else, i am somewhat recovered and able to get back to running and do some work outside. it is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow (haha) that i have always regarded the outdoors as a healthy place to be, feeling virtuous whenever i get my vitamin D or go for a run or a long walk, and to be brought to my knees, figuratively, by doing something healthy seems simply unfair.

anyway.

my tomatoes have been such a disappointment over the past couple of years that i decided to get serious and go straight to a local greenhouse that grows and sells heirloom tomato varieties that are specifically chosen for michigan’s climate. michigan heirlooms has an awesome website with a listing of all the plants they sell, great descriptions and pictures, so i picked cherokee purple and paul robeson. my original bestie k. ordered some varieties too, so yesterday i packed miss l. up in the car and we drove out to fetch all of them.

i’d just showered after a run, my hair was pinned up, i filled up my water bottle, and miss l. was grumbling a bit about having to leave her swingset. i thought it was a quick drive but my nav kept taking me deeper on country lanes. after informing me “THIS IS WHY I DIDN’T WANT TO GO TO THE TOMATO FARM”, miss l. fell asleep in the back and the sky was jewel blue and the roadsides were full of tall slim trees and marshy bits where ducks and their babies swam and turtles sunned themselves. i was somewhat annoyed at having to be in the car for so long on a lovely day, and remembered that when i was little, driving was entertainment for our family. my mom and dad would load us up into the old brown buick and we would find country roads to drive down and look for bunnies. then my imagination took a darker turn and i started thinking about a stephen king story about a woman and her child taking their Ford Pinto to an old country repair station far from civilization and being trapped in the driveway in their baking, broken-down car by a rabid St. Bernard. luckily, i thought, i have a very reliable vehicle and a working cell phone and just an extremely overactive imagination. even after a year of taking aggressive steps to manage my various anxieties and worryability, i still have moments where i have to shut myself down, even over ridiculous things like a nice drive on a country lane on a sunny day.

and when we got to michigan heirlooms, of course there weren’t any rabid St. Bernards, just friendly chickens.

and a really lovely little cottage industry greenhouse run by an extremely helpful and good-natured family who, when they found a problem with my second paul robeson, gave me a jd’s special c-tex plant to substitute. which i was assured would be a superior tomato.

Six Ten

of this be sure: you do not find a happy life, you make it.