Hello, friends! How are you holding up … in nature? The cicadas have arrived in Nashville to make everything weird. After hibernating for the past 13 years—plotting—they’re now darting around looking for mates. Their screaming is constant and there are Biblical swarms of them to duck from as you go about your daily tasks, like taking a walk or opening...

Let’s chat. Moms, whether you are one, you have one, you want to be one, or you lost one, motherhood is the most complicated relationship in existence. There’s a bond that never goes away, and that instinctive need… don’t you wish it could put it somewhere else sometimes? The love I have for my mother is never ending in depth, sometimes all consuming,...

It’s been entirely too long since our last perfect layer cake.  You know, the kind that’s moist, sturdy, sweet and spiced with generous lines of nearly too much cream cheese frosting between cake layers?  Yes, that sort of perfect cake. I had mistakenly thought that a classic carrot cake would scratch any itch I had for a spiced layer cake but, I’m...

Friends, HI! Good morning and good Sunday! I’m in the in-between. I’ve moved most everything save for a mattress, two nightstands, my good olive oil, flaky sea salt and a frying pan out of the Houston apartment and on to the big house in Bellville.  Somehow though, the big orange cat and I are still staying at the apartment, languishing a bit, in...

Hello friends, it is I, your Trader Joe’s evangelist back with a pamphlet and a fake 100 dollar bill that is actually a tract (religious trauma, anyone?). I do not have the latest and greatest TJ’s products this time around, but I do have its practical application – meals. First, let me start by acknowledging that Trader Joe’s is not a grocery store....

Hello friends! How are things in your world? As I think I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m a full-time middle school teacher, and right now, it is state testing time. I feel for my students: they are tired, they are bored, they are READY FOR SUMMER. That said, every teacher I know is out here fighting for their life right now, praying to make it...