page 25: “Many people say, ‘I should be able to do this,’ as we work on decluttering tasks, even though the experience of living through traumatic events has caused a struggle to complete those tasks. Removing internalized ‘should’ statements from the vocabulary of people I work with is a long-term goal of mine.” ** I’m […]
i just washed our breakfast dishes by hand. My Sweetie and i live in a 2nd-floor walk-up while i’m in school: no dishwasher, no central A/C (we smuggled in window units), all sorts of century-old visual charm. almost every time i wash the dishes — which is my general responsibility, since My Sweetie continues to […]
things i lost track of today, october 3 2025, in no order: things i made happen today, in no order: It’s quarter to three. I’m in a study carrel at my local library, and my patron-colleagues in the carrels around me haven’t gotten the “quiet place” memo. Except (sort of) for the woman in the […]
A phone-photograph doesn’t see with eyes, it merely captures raw visual experience. So I don’t know whether you can find my luxuriant pathway, crushing violets in Lydia’s purple and sunshine stored in dandelions as I stride.
It’s early on Saturday. I’m waiting outside my shoe repair shop. I assume he’s gone to the store, like last time — there’s only him, as far as I can tell from Saturday mornings. Shoe repair is one of the things I’m fussy about: I know what I want to happen, and artist-artisans are the […]
begun Nov 22, 2022 — in Chestnut Hill, MA (aka Boston) — completed Apr 2, 2025 — in Evanston, IL (aka Chicago) — because PhD life is a series of interruptions in whatever personal sensemaking one might be doing I married a man 15 years my senior. The year we married, we also bought a […]
Write a short (500 word) essay addressed to a non-specialized audience describing your research question/thesis. What are you planning to do? Why is it important? To whom is it important? Present this in class and submit it here. Yeah, it’s been plenty of minutes since I’ve written here. And yet I thought of y’all as I […]
re-a-pprai-sal (n): A second look at or reassess a value of something; a new appraisal. https://www.wordnik.com/words/reappraisal My Mother’s Day 2024 held cards, and a rose after worship, and a thoughtful dinner featuring NY strip steak and store-bought dessert. It held some work, too, because that’s what my PhD life is like in the wake of […]
Big fat drops are sluicing straight down from the sky, smacking the metal housing on the window air conditioner. I’ve closed the bottom half of the apartment windows, but not the top — the smell of rain-damp air, the sharper sound of thunder: these are still novelties to me. Water! Falling from the sky! I’ve […]
My morning routine, these days, seems deliciously? flabbily? long and drawn-out compared to what it was when I worked full time for pay, or when my girls were young. There’s waking to news on the radio, then breakfast and “the newspaper,” now via tablet. “Breakfast” itself has become elastic, not just what I eat but […]
