Tag: Good Books

Grief is a Sneaky Bitch and Other Holiday Thoughts

When we first moved to Dallas, we made some colorful friends who were actors at Scarborough Renaissance Festival- King Henry and a Contessa, to be exact. During October, the Scarborough Fair grounds become a spooky maze of haunted houses, Scary-oke, expensive food vendors, and a throng of tweens looking to snuggle up to their crush…
Captain’s Log: Baby’s First Flight

Tuesday, 7/11/2023, Nashville Airport 2:08 pm I wasn’t anxious about this until we popped open the back of my sister’s van. It’s not the actual flying that concerns me. The Baby is almost chronically un-anxious, as in, he is not anxious even when he probably should be, like when he tries to drown himself by…
David Sedaris: Call and Response

January 23, 2023 Dear Mr. Sedaris, My son, {The Baby}, came screeching into the world via an emergency c-section at 26 weeks- a two-pound potato whose vital organs needed lots of assistance to keep him alive. I met him for the first time four months later, when his birthmother invited me to visit the Neonatal…
Emmanuel: God With Us

I remember talking about atheism and agnosticism in my world religions class in high school. In my little conservative corner of West Texas, we didn’t spend much time talking about the godless heathens, but I remember the description of Clockmaker god, who designed the world, perfectly calibrated all of it’s gears and dials, and then…
Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Wieners and Buns

Let me preface the beginning of this series with a few things: I’m gonna take weekends off for my “writing every day” goal in November. I can do this because I’m a grown ass woman and I want to. I want to explicitly acknowledge that I have AMAZING parents who did the best with what…
As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…

Last August, my little family met my parents in Estes Park. We have done this trip every couple of years since I was a kid. We stay in cabins and hike and explore and breathe in the fresh mountain air. COVID made things a little different, but we were just happy to escape Dallas for…
On Medicaid

Well, today the Wise family said hello to a new bed and goodbye to two of The Baby’s teeth. A few months ago, we started the laborious process of getting a SleepSafe bed approved through The Baby’s insurance because his crib had become unsafe. He was able to stand up in it and when he…
The Good Doctor

The Baby turned five this week. It’s crazy. All of those five years tend to blur together. After all, time flies when you’re drowning in medical chaos (just kidding…kind of). On the night of his birthday, our dinner conversation centered around remembering all of his firsts- the first time he sat up, the first solid…
On Being a Size 16

(You can listen to an audio version of this post here.) I went to David’s Bridal today to purchase a bridesmaid’s dress for a friend’s wedding next summer. She had a dress already picked out in the system so they pulled her profile up and I followed the very nice saleslady to the racks laden…
Let’s Trash It: Forced Modesty

(I realize this is very lengthy so I have strategically placed pictures of smiling animals throughout the piece so that you can mark your place if you need to take a break and come back to it. At my sister’s suggestion, I’ve also made an audio version of this blog. You can download/stream it by…
Welfare Queens and Other Lies My Hard Heart Believed

I grew up in West Texas- land of wide-open spaces, sky high teen pregnancy rates, and a colorblind racial ideology that masks racism instead of confronting it. In colorblind ideology, it is impolite to talk about someone’s race. I remember hearing a story about a friend who was trying to tell her son which store…
Why Christian?

I just got back from San Francisco. I went to (hides face) a Christian conference. I found myself hesitant to tell people that it was a Christian conference because of the connotations of that. My sense is that many Christian conferences are lame attempts at pep rallies for God, the adult version of church camp,…
Fix It, Jesus

“What was I thinking?” I thought as I stared forlornly into the mirror. I should have known better than to impulsively stop at the hair salon directly adjacent to the Tom Thumb, still clutching my bag of avocados. I was hoping for a cute haircut before I left on my 10th anniversary weekend trip. Instead,…
On Being LGBT+ Affirming

I was a mere 21 years old when I got married. My uncle officiated our wedding. Before the wedding, my then-fiancee, now-husband, Alex, and I drove down to Corpus to do some premarital counseling sessions and stay with my aunt and uncle. After one of these sessions, Alex and I got ready to leave and…
New Wineskins

I went to a vigil in Balch Springs for Jordan Edwards last week. It was everything you would want a vigil to be- beautiful and sad and moving and comforting. Like most, I was horrified by Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice’s deaths. I have been deeply affected before by deaths caused by police brutality, but…
2002 Experiment: The Library

Well, I’ve read ten books over the last three weeks. It’s amazing what I can accomplish if I really remove all other distractions. At all times, I have an upstairs book and a downstairs book that I’m working on simultaneously. The genres have spanned from suspense (Yesteryear) to a comedy fantasy novel about a group…
Getting Published: The Book Proposal

A nervous new author has a moment of weakness and turns to a fucking robot for help, until she realizes that she trusts her voice.
Sura Mpya: A New Chapter

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” -Anatole France
The 2002 Experiment: Cheater, Cheater

Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned.
A Tale of Two Rings: 19 Years and Counting

Nineteen years of marriage. Two wedding rings. Lots of love.
The 2002 Experiment: One Week In

A week of 2002 technology has shaken me, but in a good way.
The 2002 Experiment: Adios, Kindle

Before this project, I took my Kindle for granted. Never again.
The 2002 Experiment: Day One

On Day One of my 2002 Experiment, I cried. I napped. I puzzled.
The 2002 Experiment

The Scientific Method Step 1: Observation We got rid of our Alexas a few months ago. We bought our first little puck-shaped speaker in 2017 and slowly added to their number. Eventually, there was one in each bedroom and one in the living room. We were not very efficient or exciting Alexa users, mostly using…
Too Damn Good

” In that moment, in Missouri, with the screeching motor of boats racing by, I was scared to wade into any emotional pool deeper than an inch, but I appreciated the opportunity to dip my toe in and feel the cool waters of gratitude and love for a second.”