It is quiet and snowy in the Berkshires today, a perfect day for listening to Red House Painters on repeat — something I indulged in too frequently as a moody high-schooler — and beginning design work on my latest project.
Before I begin the design phase of any new website, I like to make a digital [...]

The class was called drawing and painting and when I signed up I imagined something like my high school art class: sketching, pastels, charcoal, pencils, oil paint. The scent of linseed oil and turpentine. But the materials list said watercolors. I cringed. Not what I had expected.
And so it began, yet another life lesson in [...]

The bed was warm and the sheets rumpled mathematically when I finally rolled over and looked at the alarm clock this morning. 10:03 AM. I shuffled into the kitchen and poured off the remainder of yesterday’s French press into my Australian platypus coffee mug and heated it in the microwave. Stirred in some ancient soy [...]

Dan and I are in Arizona again, visiting family and relaxing. We perused the local paper this morning and found this delightful quote, about the mayor of a local arty mountain town:
“Her skills at conflict resolution were especially beneficial to the town in the
fracas involving town officials and the Haunted Hamburger.”
Then, as I was paging [...]

“Would you like some tea?”

It was the first thing she’d ask when I came to her office, every time. I would walk past the bursar’s window and hover in the narrow hallway waiting for her door to open up. Eventually it would. Some older student would leave, and I would slip into that warm room, light low, air fragrant with cinnamon.

We talked about my writing. I crossed and uncrossed my legs uncomfortably. My jeans were too tight, my boots too big. I burnt my tongue on the hot tea. Good Earth, sweet and spicy. I wanted to gulp it down.

What did she think about those days when I showed her my stories?