We have a bad habit of planning trips SO CLOSE to the beginning of school. Usually this happens because of two things, my habit of procrastination and Kendell’s inability to deal with crowds. This year, we ended up in Florida during the week before school started because of, yes, crowds—that was the first week that the Orlando crowds changed from red to yellow—but also because the flight prices were the cheapest that week.

We had a lovely, if imperfect, vacation in Florida. I didn't even take a regular bra with a wire, I just wore my sports bra and running skirts for the whole trip. I let my hair go curly in the humidity and didn't care about the frizz. I touched an alligator. I laughed with Jake and Kaleb and we shared memes on our phones and took goofy photos by the tiny hotel pool. It rained at inconvenient times and I was flabbergasted by the summer crowds, but we just went with it anyway.

One of my favorite moments came right after I calmed down after having my usual we’re-at-the-beach-I’m-terrified-someone-will-drown anxiety moment (which dissipated after Kendell went out in the water with Jake and Kaleb). I was sitting on a conveniently placed wooden lounge chair (I’m pretty sure it was only supposed to be used by the residents of the beach house behind me…but no one stopped me so I went for it) that I’d covered with my beach towel (which has flamingos on it) and I had some almond M&Ms in my bag and a book to read. I read, I looked up to check on my three boys, I read some more.

I let the feeling of relaxation steep deep down into my center, because I don’t get enough of that in my life. (I’m sure no one does.) The sun made a brief appearance (it rained the whole time we were in Florida), making the crests of waves and the bits of shell fragments and the tips of my toenails sparkle, and I could see half of my family laughing together in the water, and it was just…calmly blissful.

Of course, all vacations end, and then you have to go back to real life, which has fewer opportunities for calmly blissful moments. After a few airport shenanigans that included sprinting through the Phoenix airport and leaving a bag on the long-term parking shuttle, we made it home at 2 in the morning.

And Kaleb had to be to school by 7:45.

So for our family, the end of summer vacation was literally the end of summer, almost down to the second.

And we re re-entering real life all at once.

Even though it’s been many decades since I was a kid, and my summer afternoons were spent lying on the back patio of my childhood home, reading by the peach tree (literally: I would read for hours and I could just enjoy it without thinking I should be cleaning the kitchen or wonder if the laundry is done washing or all of the million other things I think about when I’m reading now as an adult), summer still feels like a break, somehow. A months-long escape from reality. I sleep in way too often during the summer, and we eat out more, and, I confess: I haven’t sorted socks since June. It’s a sock free-for-all in my laundry room!

But then school starts and it’s time to reenter real life. Up with an alarm, and the annoying line at the drop-off zone, and making sure Kaleb is on top of his homework again.

I’ve been cooking much more since we got home. The laundry is done and put away and I even sorted the socks. Our mornings are going smoothly and I’ve started working the post-drop-off run into my routine again. Honestly, reentry is much easier when you only have one kid in school, and he doesn’t hate it this year, and he’s functional in the mornings.

But I keep going back to that moment at the beach, that feeling of calmness that filled me on that stolen chair.

Why can’t I have that calmness in my regular life, too?

Is it like the freedom of reading on summer afternoons as a child, something you just can never get back as an adult because how do you really put down the to-do list, how do you silence the voices reminding you of what you should be doing as a responsible grown up instead of relaxing and doing nothing? Is it just that I need to be more organized and work harder when I am being a responsible adult, and then I could justify relaxing like that?

Or is it that I need to figure out how to allow myself to relax anyway, somehow? That I need to learn that while yes, I am an imperfect adult who doesn’t get everything done or everything right, I still get to find and fully appreciate my moments of calm?

And how do I figure that out?

As we dip now, at the end of summer (on the school calendar if not the actual weather) into the start of fall, that is what I want to take with me, from our vacation into real life: permission. Permission from myself to let go more, to relax when I have the chance, to give myself credit instead of criticism.

"Solid is not true. She would say her marriage is solid, but only because the words people use to indicate happiness are so unnuanced. Not that her marriage is fragile; it's more that her marriage might be only a solid surface, with nothing inside it."

"It's another reason why you had to be so careful with grief. It was like an impact crater, its surface always larger than the thing that created it."

"These people here, she instructs herself, are people who were once alive and now they are dead. She finds she can take it in. The knowledge, the sadness, is another layer to the atmosphere of her own particular planet, already thickly coated."

"So many things in life just happen...these are quiet events, so unbelievably quiet, you could miss them...Maybe your husband never loved you, maybe your daughter will never comprehend your love. Maybe you have always been alone...But these are the things that you will walk upright with, must wear with no more ceremony than you would a sweater."

The Wanderers by Meg Howrey is a difficult book for me to review. I mean, look at all these pieces I wanted to save:

Clearly there was something in this novel that resonated with me. It tells the story of three astronauts, Helen, Yoshi, and Sergei, who are chosen by a corporation called Prime to undergo a simulation of a trip to Mars. The story is told in each of these characters' points of view, as well as Helen's daughter, Yoshi's wife, and Sergei's son.

So, the scientists are chosen. They enter the space simulation vehicle, which is stationed in a desert in Utah to closely match the Martian environment. There is a lot of press covering the story, and meetings and farewells with family members before the simulation starts. It begins, and for 18 months they pretend they are on a space flight to mars. This is pretending that is highly integrated with technology, of course, with problems on the machine to fix, and a disappearing view of the earth, and Mars walks via virtual reality.

Or maybe, Yoshi begins to suspect, they actually did go to Mars.

The characters who remain here on earth make adjustments. I was particularly fond of Madoka, Yoshi's wife, who is deeply questioning her marriage and facing the reality that her husband, who thinks he loves her, doesn't really know her at all.

But because the story is about characters pretending to have an adventure (or being tricked into pretending they are having an adventure while actually having an adventure), nothing really happens.

It took me almost a month to finish this book. I kept putting it down because not much was happening, but I would pick it back up because I really? wanted to know what happened to the characters. The characters were amazing, fully constructed, and so many of their emotional troubles spoke to things I have also struggled with.

But still: not much happens. 

In the end, what reading The Wanderers made me think about is the act of reading itself. It is sort of like the simulated Mars journey: the author asks us to pretend with him or her that what is happening is real. The success of the illusion rests on the author's craft and the reader's willingness to invest herself in what everyone knows is pretending, is a journey you are taking without ever leaving your couch. All of the astronauts question if the simulation will be helpful to the actual flight, and reading is the same: does it help you in your actual life? For me, the answer has always been (and will, I imagine, always be) yes. There are still things to be learned and ways of experiencing the world through books, even if it is a simulation.

So I loved so much about this book, but I still wanted more. I didn't feel like there was an emotional payoff at the end. I'm glad I read it, and clearly I am interested this year in woman-based science fiction, but I'm not sure I could recommend it to many other readers.

(This is a vulnerable post I’m sharing today. I’m writing it not because I want anyone to feel sorry for me, or because I need sympathy or anything else, but because I feel like writing it will help me process the thoughts and feelings that resulted from the experience. I’m posting it in public instead of just writing about it in my journal because it will help me feel heard, even if no one reads it, which is something I need today.)

This morning I did something completely out of my comfort zone. I got up at 6, ate a quick breakfast, put together my hiking pack, and drove to a local trailhead. My goal was to meet up with a group of hikers who also belong to a hiking group on Facebook that I joined several years ago. I’ve never actually joined in on any of the group hikes sponsored by this Facebook group, partly because I didn’t feel like I would be fast enough or young enough, but mostly because showing up for a group activity where I know literally no one from real life is really, really hard for me.

But last week when this group hike was posted, I decided I was going to go. Even though I knew I would probably blush and have a racing heart right at the beginning, I wanted to learn how to get to the peak they were hiking to, Little Baldy. I’ve looked at that peak and wanted to get up there, but there aren’t any great ways to do it that I could find, so hiking it with a group would be perfect.

The hike started at 7:00 a.m. and I got to the trailhead at 7:01. I got out of the truck, put my backpack on, and wandered around, looking for a big group gathering together, but there wasn’t one. I stood by the start of the trail for a few minutes, thinking that this was a first: *I* was the only one on time that morning. I chatted for a second with a golden retriever who came down the trail before her owners, and then I mentioned to them when they got there that I was waiting for my group. (Because I didn’t want to look like an idiot, just standing there doing nothing.)

“Do you mean the Hike the Wasatch group?” the dog owner asked. “They are already about 10 minutes up the trail.”

Sigh.

All that effort and anxiety and worry (my heart WAS pounding while I looked for the group) and I missed them because I was literally one minute late.

If I had known they had already started, I could’ve absolutely caught up with them right at the start, but by standing around waiting, I missed them.

I decided to hustle as fast as I could up the trail, to see if I could catch them. I know the first mile of the trail very well, as Kendell and I hike it all the time, and I knew mostly where they were going until the new turn off to Little Baldy, which I didn’t know at all. So I hoped I could catch up, and I went as fast as I could.

I did eventually see the group. I was on the south-east side of one mountain and they were across the valley, on the north-west side, going up in a line. I considered waving or shouting, but what would I say? “Wait for me!”??? None of them know me in person so I’d just be another hiker waving and shouting at them.

At that point, I was only about five minutes behind them, so I picked up my hustling and jog-hiked for as long as I could, but once I came around to the south side of the mountain, I had to admit defeat: there was a trail split, and from that point on I had no way of knowing which way they’d gone. I stood at the split, trying to decide: right or left? The trail I knew or the one I didn’t? I went left—the trail I didn’t know—but eventually it petered out at a fire ring, and then I had to admit defeat: I couldn’t find them now.

I went back to the main trail and kept going for another half mile or so, because I decided I might as well get a good four miles in. As I hiked I realized I was close to tears, so I started edging around my psyche a bit to figure out why.

Partly it is because it is so difficult for me to show up for this kind of thing. I had to push through and get myself to be brave (and if you’re thinking “that’s lame, it’s just a group of people, why does that require bravery?”, don’t worry, I’ve wondered the same thing) enough to go, and then I miss the group by literally ONE minute?

It’s like The Universe is trying to tell me something.

But it was also the feeling I had, looking across the valley at the group together on the ridge. I was there, they were there, but my existence was non-existent to that group. If I had slept in and not shown up at all, the result would’ve been the same.

Which kind of feels symbolic of my life, honestly. (Here’s the real vulnerability.)

Usually I can accept the fact that I do most things by myself. It’s when I am in visual sight of groups of friends that I realize: I don’t have a tribe. My existence is invisible.

I had a tribe in high school. It was a fairly fucked-up tribe, honestly, and we all did all sorts of damage to each other. But we were still a tribe because deep down, we understood each other. Our strangenesses mirrored each other’s, so we could be who we were without fear of judgement.

I had a tribe for a little while when I had little kids, but it dissolved when our financial issues made it too hard for me to fit in with them. After that, I really stopped trying.

Maybe church, though. Maybe I stayed so long at church, even when I struggled with the doctrine: because it gave me the illusion of having a tribe. I always knew I didn’t really fit, but it was close enough that I stayed. Now that I am not going to church much anymore, I’ve learned that yes, most of those friendships were only church friendships. I wasn’t really ever part of that tribe.

It’s also why I post a lot on social media: because, to quote Luna Lovegood, “It’s like having friends.” I know that social media isn’t real, it’s everyone’s best day every day. But it still lets me feel, a little bit, like I have a tribe.

But there I stood, lungs heaving after my fast uphill hike, alone, looking across space toward a group I couldn’t catch up to. A group that didn’t even know I was trying to be included.

I do have friends in my life. Dear friends who add depth and happiness to my existence. I am grateful for those friendships and for their trueness.

But here is an honest truth: I wish I had a tribe. I wish there was a large group of friends, even if the friendship was more casual, who saw me, who I mattered to, who included me. (Go ahead and wince, I know that sounds pathetic.) I tried to take the first step in making that happen today, and it didn’t work out. Probably in a week or so I will be better able to try again…but right now I’m feeling like somewhere along the line I pissed off The Universe and my bad karma comes in the form of isolation.

"Sometimes people look critically at a woman who spends time on her hobbies when the carpet needs to be vacuumed," Bonnie said.

"Yes, but think about it." Gwen rested her chin in her  palm. "Who would criticize a male artist who spent the day painting or sculpting instead of mowing the lawn? Nobody."

When my mom died, I decided I wanted to donate a book group set to my library in her memory. The Quilter's Apprentice by Jennifer Chiaverini seemed like the perfect book, not only because many of the patrons who use our book group collection want gentle books, but because my mom was a quilter. She taught me how to use a ruler and a rotary cutter, how to thread a sewing machine and how to sew straight lines. Most importantly, she taught me the idea that making quilts is a fun and good thing to do. I once had a friend tell me that she didn't know how I dared cut into the fabric I bought. "It's so expensive," she said. "What if you mess up?" That conversation helped me realize that even though my mom didn't teach me everything I know about quilting, and even though our styles were very different, what she really gave me is confidence to not just dream about doing something, but to actually do it.

(And yes: fabric is expensive. And sometimes I DO mess up. But my quilting motto is "fabric is a flexible medium." Even when I've made a mistake I've been able to find a way around it. I'm OK if my quilts aren't perfect and I like to think that part of my quilting style is actually influenced by my imperfections. Like, someone in the future could just double check the corners, find at least one wonky one, and say "Yep, great grandma Amy made this.")

At any rate, I choose The Quilter's Apprentice to donate, despite not ever having read it, because I had read enough about it that I could recommend it without hesitation. But then I decided I needed to read it anyway.

It tells the story of Sarah, who has moved to a small town in Pennsylvania with her husband, who has recently (finally) found a new job. Now she is looking for work, but not with much enthusiasm as the career she chose—accounting—doesn't fulfill her. One day, frustrated with another unsuccessful interview, she decided to go with her husband to his job; he is working on renovating the grounds of an old house for an eccentric client. This woman, Sylvia, and Sarah have a sort of snippy first meeting, but Sylvia asks Sarah if she'd like to work for her as well, helping her clean the inside of the house to prepare it to be sold.

Sarah reluctantly agrees, but she discovers that Sylvia is an expert quilter, and Sylvia ends up teaching Sarah how to quilt. As she learns about piecing, color balance and contrast, straight lines, matching triangle tips, applique, and a bunch of other quilting techniques, Sarah also learns Sylvia's life story and the reason why she left Elm Creek Manor decades ago.

I think I definitely picked the right book to donate. My mom would've liked this book, and the patrons who use my library's book group sets will love it. It is very gentle—there is only one swear word and zero sex or violence. The story doesn't only focus on quilting, but on history and on the impact of creativity in a person's life.

I'm also glad I read it, even though it isn't entirely an Amy sort of book. I haven't found the right word to explain my response to this type of book, but it is very similar to my response to the book The Home for Unwanted Girls. It is a quality that many gentle books have: there is nothing wrong with the story itself, but the writing style somehow feels constructed. As if I can see the author moving the marionette strings in ways I don't notice with more literary fiction.  I appreciate the story and the experience, but I can't entirely lose myself inside the book.

I'm glad I read it, however, because it made me feel accepted. I love making quilts. I probably have made too many. I will probably continue to make too many. I might, as a certain spouse sometimes points out, spend too much time and money making quilts for babies who might never care. So I sometimes get a bit defensive about this hobby, and to spend time with these characters, especially Sylvia who understands quilting on a more aesthetic and academic level, helped me realize that it is OK. Loving the process of making this is part of who I am. I especially loved this realization Sarah has, when she is feeling stressed about the experiences she's facing: 

Sarah found herself looking forward to her quilting lesson later that day. Not just look forward to it, she suddenly realized, but needing it. Tangled, anxious thoughts relaxed when she felt the fabric beneath her fingers and remembered that she was creating something beautiful.

My mom taught me to make beautiful things. Quilts, yes—she started me on the path to learning how to make quilts. But at a more basic level, she just taught me TO MAKE something beautiful. So, yep. Quilts. But I also try to make my cakes pretty and my pies golden and glossy, and my other hobby, scrapbooking, is highly influenced by my quilting hobby. (Color and color balance and how to mix prints, for example...and I can't tell you how many times I've bought a scrapbook paper simply because it would make a great fabric for the quilt I was working on, or an entire yard of fabric because I wish it was scrapbook paper. Quite often, I don't even do it on purpose!) I think she'd be happy I donated this in her name. 

A few weeks ago, I went shopping at Macy’s for the last time. Or, at least, my local Macy’s, which is now closed. It made me think about all of the stores we used to have that are gone: Weinstock’s, Mervyn’s, ZCMI, Sears. We used to have a Nordstrom in our valley, which was lovely. I still miss Robert’s (a craft store), and, even though I haven’t shopped there for a couple of years, it is so weird to me that Toy R Us no longer exists.

I don’t remember the last thing I bought at any of those stores, but I realized today: the last thing I bought at Macy’s is a beautiful copper bundt pan.

I totally forgot about it until this morning, when I needed to make a cake for a co-worker’s birthday, and I wanted something pretty and delicious but also, I was tired.

So I made this lemon bundt cake, but I was full of trepidation. Because, you know it’s often complicated to get a cake out of a bundt pan. And that’s the usual bundt pan, but this one is built of peaks and teardrops…a whole bunch of possible cake breakage points.

But I used my knowledge and, sweet! The cake came out just fine, and it was fairly beautiful, and I think it was pretty delicious, too.

Here’s the secret to getting cake out of a bundt pan:

1. Grease the pan with butter. (I guess you could use Crisco if you’re a savage, that’s totally up to you!)
2. Pour about ½ cup of white sugar into the pan and swirl it around so that the butter is covered with sugar. Toss out the extra.
3. Find your baker’s spray and spray away!

The combination makes it so that the cake almost always comes away clean. Now you know how to get that cake out of an intricate pan, you should buy one too!

Here’s a printable version of the recipe I used. I love the addition of a lemon syrup, because it crisps up the edges and adds a delicious sourness. Let me know if you try it out.

Download Cake lemon bundt

One of my goals for 2019 was to read a print version of some poetry every single day. I have been off and on with this goal, mostly off for the past three weeks or so.

But August is a challenge month done by the poet Nicole Sealey. Her challenge is to read a book of poems every day for the entirety of August. I LOVE this idea and am going to play along, except I know I won't finish an entire book every day. So I'm going to reestablish my poetry-every-day habit, and in the spirit of social media challenges, I am going to share more on my social media about poetry or poems or the poems I read and love.

HERE is an explanation of the challenge and a list of 31 poetry titles recommended by contemporary poets. It is a great list and a good place to start.

But I thought I would also share some of my recommendations, so here it is: Amy's list of 31 poetry titles you might want to read in August. Even if you just picked up ONE book of poetry from your library (it's in the 811 section of Dewey) and read only one poem a day, you might just find you love poetry too.

1. My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter by Aja Monet. The first book I’m going to read. “Aja Monet’s ode to mothers, daughters, and sisters—the tiny gods who fight to change the world.”
2. Calling a Wolf a Wolf by Kaveh Akbar. The second book I’m going to read. “The work here means to go out on limbs, be it to fling blossoms, chew fireflies, or push old nests into the river once the rearing is done.”
3. A Woman without A Country by Eavan Boland. The third book I’m going to read. I started this one a couple of years ago, but only got a few pages into in before I picked up something else.
4. Any edition of The Best American Poetry anthologies. These look like they are long compared to other poetry books, but there are also two introductions (one by the series editor and one by that year's editor) and quite a bit of biographical info about each of the poets, so it's not as long as you think. I buy my own copy of this book every year because I love finding both new poets and new poems by poets I already love. It is a great way to immerse yourself in contemporary American poetry and get a sense of what that means.
5. Love Poems (for Married People) by John Kenney. This is sort-of funny poetry. Funny because it's true, so it's also painful. But funny. (As an example: One of the poems is titled "When Are You Going to Turn off Your Kindle?")
6. Power Made us Swoon by Brynn Saito. Woven through all of the poems in this book are poems about Warrior Woman, who is "descended from the dark/river of women"; the rest of the poems are disparate but unified by Warrior Woman. One of my favorite lines: "I don't know whose story/has taken up residence in my body, what ghost."
7. Anything by Mary Oliver. She is accessible (meaning you won't just think "huh?" after every poem) and wise and her poetry will make you despair over the crumbling natural world while you simultaneously remember just how glorious and beautiful it is.
8. Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong. His poem “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong,” which is in the collection, is in my top-20 all-time favorite poems. “The most beautiful part of your body/is where it’s headed. & remember,/loneliness is still time spent/with the world.”
9. Magdalene by Mary Howe. Poems through Mary Magdalene's perspective.
10. American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin by Terrence Hayes. This book will challenge any assumptions you've made about yourself being "woke." Seriously, I want everyone to read it. It is political but deeply personal (if you can even separate the two). 
11. The Mobius Strip Club of Grief by Bianca Stone. Poems set in a purgatory that is part burlesque, part feminist poetry stage. The ghosts of the dead can do scandalous things. This is something that contemporary poetry can do in the hands of skilled poets, create something heretofore unimagined and make it breathe.
12. Dizzy in Your Eyes: Poems about Love by Pat Mora. In theory this is a collection of poetry for teenagers, but if you've ever been a teenager, or a teenager in love, you will connect. Plus the poet explains the origins and methods of some of the poetic structures she uses, so you learn about poetry while you're reading poetry.
13. Averno by Louise Gluck. I could also write "Anything by Louise Gluck" here, because her understated, wry poems are all a punch to the gut you never see coming. But this is my favorite by her, as it explores the Persephone myth.
14. Native Guard by Natasha Threthewey. All of her poetry is worthy of your time. This one, which I just read last year, changed me because it gave me a different vision of the voices a poet can use in her work.
15. Ariel by Sylvia Plath. Not because of the Sylvia Plath suicide idealization or because her husband was an awesome poet but an enormous asshole, but because the poems are just so good. And because many of them are cultural touchstones.
16. Stone Spirits by Susan Elizabeth Howe. She was one of my favorite professors at BYU. A local poet in the sense that she lives in Utah, but her poems are published everywhere. This collection is her first and it is excellent.
17. Blackacre by Monica Yoon. This book got me through my Narnia Winter. Not sure I would be here without it. 
18. American Journal: 50 Poems for Our Time edited by Tracy K. Smith. Smith is the current poet laureate and this anthology is awesome. It is small enough to carry with you in almost whatever bag is your favorite. I've read it in line at Taco Bell and Target, while waiting for a movie to start and while waiting for a doctor's appointment. This is another awesome place to start discovering who contemporary American poets are and what they do.
19. Selected Poems by Anne Stevenson. I discovered Stevenson when I was in college and she is a seminal influence on my ways of thinking. Her poems about motherhood are exacting in how brutal and beautiful that experience can be.
20. Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl by Diane Seuss. Poems about art are some of my favorites.
21. Transformations by Anne Sexton. Or really any of her books. I really…I love her poems. But the more I know about her as a person the more I really have to work to separate the poet from the poems. So many of them are intimately connected to my relationship with poetry itself, the connections it makes and how it helps me feel embraced by the world at large. But she had some strange ideas about sex and motherhood that I cannot get behind. I cannot admire her as a person, but her work is incredible. This duality can be an inherent part of any literature, of course, and I think it is possible to make that separation.
22. Anything by Seamus Heaney. I had a dream once that I met Seamus Heaney at a store that was having a sale on wool socks. I would like to turn that dream into a poem one day.
23. Kingdom Animalia by Aracelis Girmay. Full of "Self Portrait as a __________" poems. At first you might thumb through and think "those poems are too long for me" but they are worth the emotional investment. You wouldn't want to miss lines like "we walk inthe rubble/of the African dream,//brushing shipwreck/from our hair and dresses" because you're afraid of a little bit of length would you?
24. Good Bones by Maggie Smith. So freaking good​. Especially if you've ever A---been a mother or B---had one. 
25. The Beautiful Librarians by Sean O'Brien. I bought my copy of this book at the British Library in London, but hopefully your library has one too.
26. Oceanic by Amiee Nezhukumatathil, if only to learn how to say her name (but of course for the poems too).
27. Wade in the Water by Tracy K. Smith. Race, gender, politics, society. Will break your heart.
28. American’s Favorite Poems by Robert Pinsky. This is an anthology that Pinsky put together while he was the poet laureate. It is poems selected by everyday, average American people who happen to like poetry. Because yes: everyday, average American people like poetry! (HERE is what I wrote after I actually met Robert Pinsky, which was a pretty cool day in my life. 
29. Anything by Donald Hall. His book Without, about his wife Jane Kenyon’s battle with cancer is one of my favorites. (Is that weird…to love a book about someone’s death? It is a way of witnessing, for me.)
30. Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds. Her poems are so joyfully invested in her marriage and sexuality that this was utterly shocking to me, a chronical of her divorce. Like Without, it is a devastating book about loss and grief, but so beautiful.
31. The Door by Margaret Atwood. The whole book is excellent, of course. But the title poem? If you are anywhere close to 40 or older, the title poem with fill you with fear and rip your heart out and make you mourn for the briefness of life and the length of death.

If you read any poetry this month, I would love to hear what it was and what you thought of it.

My August goals:

Family and House:

• Do something every week with just me and Kaleb before school starts. This week we have already gone school shopping twice and it’s been so much fun!
• Be brave and have the conversation I need to have with one of my kids. I don’t want to reopen wounds but I also feel like there is some festering going on…
• Go on another actual date with Kendell.
• Get all of the lingering stuff from my mom’s house organized, boxed, and put away. (I inherited so many beautiful things from her. I just don’t have a place to put them right now.)
• Get the kitchen painted. (I HATE PAINTING)
• Continue working on finding somewhere new to move. This experience has been so frustrating. It is mind boggling how expensive houses have gotten here. It makes me worry about what my kids will do in the future (I mean…how can they even get started when a small starter home is $600,000??????) and it makes me feel like a failure (if I had made different choices perhaps I would’ve attained some measure of financial security) and it is emotionally draining. We found some lots a few weeks ago that would’ve been perfect, not too expensive, the right size, a view of the mountain, but they all sold in five or six days.

Health and Exercise:

• Continue with my solstice to equinox streak: At least 30 minutes of exercise every day.
• As the uptick in cardio has done absolutely NOTHING to help my weight, I’m going to tweak my goal a little bit: I’ll still do cardio on most days but not every day. But I am adding a muscle-strengthening goal to do some sort of muscle strength exercises every single day.
• I’m not sure I’ll get 100 miles again this month, because we are going on our summer vacation and two of the days will be harder to run. (Walking around an amusement park would totally add to my mileage, I know, but does that really count as “exercise”?) So, I’m not going to worry about total mileage; instead I am setting the goal of lengthening my longest run to 8 miles. We’ll see how the knees do!
• At least three hikes this month with Kendell. Four might be hard because of that vacation.
• Have a good, long discussion with my gynecologist about hormone levels to see if she has any advice about my weight issues. If not, make an appointment with my GP.
• Get my mammogram done.

Creativity:

• Most importantly: Finish my poem and submit it.
• WRITE MORE. On my blog but also with the goal of writing something I could submit.
• I want to start scrapbooking again, but I don’t think I actually will this month. I want to achieve my other goals first, so for scrapbooking my goal is to do a deep, brutal purge after we get home from our vacation. If you know anyone—individuals or groups—who need scrapbooking supplies, please let me know. I want to send it off to good homes.
• Before we leave on vacation, I want to finish Jake’s quilt and get it to the quilter. Make a good start on Kaleb’s quilt (I realized this week that I don’t have enough of the main neutral fabric, so I had to dig into the dusty corners of the interwebs to find a few more yards, and now I’m waiting for it to show up!) and keep putting together my pink & black squares.
• Finish the book I am reading right now and then finish two others. (Stop getting distracted by my phone when I have time to read, in other words.)

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What are your goals for August?