I can’t believe July is already over. We are still in the heat of deep summer here, and honestly, July isn’t my favorite month. It’s hot and almost no flowers are blooming and even the grass just seems drained.

But if July ends, then it’s August. And if it’s August, can autumn be far behind?

Time, though, moves too swiftly, so I’m trying to savor summer before it ends. I’ve tried since Kaleb got out of school, in fact, to just enjoy the days, even though they’re hot. One thing that’s helped is that this year I’ve mostly abandoned trying to wear shorts. I just never feel comfortable in them. I’ve worn a lot of dresses and a LOT of running skirts and yeah, my elephant knees are exposed but I’m just so much more comfortable this summer. I didn’t post on Instagram every day for 31 Days of Skirt, but I did actually wear Skirt Sports every day!

Heat aside, July was a pretty good month. And before I turn my calendar over to August, I wanted to write a recap.

Solstice to Equinox Streak:
I exercised every day this month, except for the Saturday I was sick. I didn’t do cardio every day; on some days I lifted weights or did resistance training for a half hour. I had a little exercise epiphany: there is almost always time. One day I went for a walk at 1:00 in the afternoon, when it was blazing hot, but I wanted to get it in. So I went to the shadiest part of a path by the river and I got it in. Several nights I did my resistance/weights at 9:00 p.m. But committing to the streak has helped so much, not just with my consistency but with my mindset about exercise. I can really do it every day. And while I have yet to see any weight come off (it actually is continuing to bulge around my belly…I have an appointment with my doctor next month because I’m so frustrated by this!), I feel like I am stronger.

I added cartwheels to my workout strategies. I know: that sounds totally weird, and is a cartwheel really a workout? Surprisingly, yes. More of a plyometric thing, but a simple cartwheel asks a lot of your upper body, your core, and your flexibility. Plus it’s just so fun! I visited for a little while one night with my niece and her daughter, who was trying to do ariels in the grass. My body totally remembers how to do them, how it’s not really about the speed you put into it but learning how to swing your arms correctly. I gave her some pointers, and she said “but you can’t do ariels Aunt Amy!” and I said “not anymore, but I can still do a pretty good cartwheel,” and she said “NO WAY! Show me! I think you’re too old!” and so when I was done holding her new baby brother I did a cartwheel for her. Never too old!

I also achieved a milestone this month that I haven’t done in two years: I had a 100-mile month. 103.7, to be exact. (To compare, I ran 90.5 in June and 75-ish in May.) And, I know: that’s not a lot to many people. Lots of runners have 100 mile weeks! But for me, it is a little reward to see my count for the month go over 100. Even last summer when I was in marathon training I never had a 100-mile month (whooping cough!). It feels like I accomplished something. Not all of those miles were running, but that’s just fine, because I also hiked a lot!

Running:
I ran a total of 50 miles (it’s actually 49.98 but I think I can round up). I had my longest run since my marathon, 6.5 miles around where I live. I had the fastest mile I’ve had in a long time, 8:48. (Again…I know that’s not fast in comparison to many runners. But it’s fast for me.) And, guess what?

I TOOK UP TRAIL RUNNING!

Well, maybe “took up” is too intense. I started trail running. I didn’t buy any trail running shoes so I don’t feel like I can call myself a “trail runner” yet. I was cautious and I went on very safe trails. But I just decided one day: I want to run trails too. (A longer blog post is coming on this topic.) I did two trail runs and I’m really itching to do more.

Hiking:
Big Springs with friends twice
My friend Wendy and I got out three times for hikes in the foothills.
Kendell and I together: Great Western Trail, Scout Falls and part of the TImponooke Trail (until the snow got too risky), Buffalo Peak, Rock Canyon, and Silver Glance Lake. We are up to 28 hikes together this year. I’m hoping we can make it to 50 but we’ll see.

I am more in love with hiking than ever. The best thing this year is the wildflowers. They’ve been amazing from all the snow we’ve had! I just wish that I were a better photographer and could capture images that communicate how beautiful they are. But instead of carrying my big camera to photograph the flowers, I have tried to focus on being present and fully admiring the meadows.

Family:
I had a couple of conversations with my kids this month that helped me get rid of some unnecessary guilt I’ve been carrying for a long, long time. Well, maybe the guilt wasn’t exactly “unnecessary,” but these two conversations just helped me to see my choices in a different light. My heart feels so much lighter.

I took Kaleb to swim in a little local pond this month, with some of his friends. He loved it. I had taken him there five years ago, when he was only 9, and I had to pull up my pictures of that day. It was amazing to see how much he has changed. (Sometimes I just have to stop thinking about how utterly strange it is that Kaleb, who was the baby I waited the longest for, is becoming a person. Even though he’s been a person (by which I mean, not a baby) for a long time, it still just sometimes hits me hard. I waited and prayed for him for so long, and then, BAM, all of a sudden he’s grown up. I had a lovely time relaxing on the grass by the pond, reading, but I got so fried on my legs. Three weeks later, they are still so tender and itchy.

Kendell and I had a fun date night when we had to drive north to pick Kaleb up from Lagoon, an amusement park about 90 minutes away from us. We brought Kaleb and his friend some pizza for dinner, and then he and I went out to eat, went shopping, and then saw The Lion King. We haven’t done enough dating in the past little while. We hike together a lot but it was nice to get out and do something a little bit different.

I got to meet my two newest great nephews. I just love babies and am so happy they are here safely. I love that both sides of our family continue to grow.

Hobbies:
While I managed to buy a lot of new supplies, I didn’t ever get around to making any scrapbook layouts this month. I haven’t, in fact, made a scrapbook layout since February or March. I’m not really sure I can explain why, but this is the longest I’ve gone without scrapbooking since I picked up the hobby in 1996. I scrapbooked as a mom with young kids, as a mom with young kids working on her degree, as a mom with young kids doing student teaching and then being a teacher. I scrapped around Kendell’s many surgeries. I scrapbooked while I stayed up late waiting for teenagers to come home from dances and jobs and dates. It’s been a central part of my identity for as long as I’ve been an adult. Kendell working from home has something to do with it, as does the process of cleaning out my mom’s house. (By scrapbooking am I just creating a huge burden for my kids to deal with when I’M dead?) Some of it is that I feel like all the pictures of my mom’s that I need to scan are hanging over me, a project that is zapping all of my creative energy. Some of it I don’t understand. I still want to make scrapbook layouts. I still shop for supplies. I just…haven’t done it.

But! I have quilted a ton. I’ve got all my scraps managed and organized. I am almost done with the quilt I’m making for Jake and then I can start the one I’m making for Kaleb. I am actually, finally sewing together all the billion half-square pink and black triangles I’ve made over the past 7 or 8 years. (I’m trying to decide…is 90x90 too big for a quilt that won’t be used on a bed? I just have so many squares I love. And I live with tall people. But on the other hand: How much will a 90x90 quilt weigh once I back it (with minky!) and add batting? Will it even be useful or just a big pain in the butt?

July has not been a great reading month for me. I’m stuck in a book with characters I like and am interested in…but the story is moving so slowly I keep putting it down for other things. But I don’t want to not finish it because I want to know what happens to them all! Maybe I need another sick day just to get through it. I am also re-reading the novel Contact, which I read about 18 times as a teenager. I was a little bit nervous about the re-read because what if my adult tastes found it lame or inane or narrow minded? But what I am discovering is just how much of my beliefs about the universe/religion/is-there-anything-after-this-life was shaped by this book. Which is really strange, but also fairly liberating.

Finally, writing. I’m continuing to work on the poem I started. There is a deadline and a place to submit so that is pushing me. I still haven’t written the perfect transition I need, but I DID dream I wrote it, and then in the dream repeated it over and over so I wouldn’t forget it when I woke up. But I don’t remember it. I want to write more—I have an essay about pie crust that’s partly formed, too.

Tomorrow I am going to write my goals for August, but right now I am going to go sit out on my back porch. I’m going to listen to the crickets and admire the scent of the summer air, which is especially delicious tonight because it rained today. I’m going to breath in this deep-summer night and try to store it up as a hedge against winter darkness.

How was your July?

Last fall when I was restricted to only hiking trails with not a lot of vert, Kendell and I hiked to Silver Lake. I chose it because it was listed as “easy” on many of the hiking websites and apps I use, and the elevation gain didn’t seem too bad.

Aside from the last quarter-mile, which IS steep, it was a perfect trail for my knees at that time. When I got to the lake, though, I was a little bit frustrated, because I knew that there is another lake, Silver Glance—smaller but less crowded—about a mile up the trail, but with almost 1000 feet of elevation gain in less than a mile, definitely too steep.

Now that my knees are doing better (they are not healed and not “normal” but I can do almost everything I want to do, with a few modifications and a little bit of wincing) I decided that it was time to go to all the way to Silver Glance.

We have to time this hike carefully, because it’s not easy to get to. It’s in a canyon that’s about 25 minutes from our house, and then there is a three-mile dirt road to the trailhead that takes FOREVER to get up. (It actually takes only 20 minutes, but 20 minutes of jostling and bouncing in our old truck is a long time.) We’ve almost done it for three weeks now, but other things came up that required us to be home sooner.

But yesterday was the day.

When we hiked this trail for the first time, it was at the tail end of fall. Almost all of the leaves were down and there was very little water in the streams. This time, at the height of summer after a very snowy winter, it almost felt like we were on a different trail. It was so pretty, full of all different types of wildflowers, and the water was still raging. You don’t ever get to the waterfalls you can hear, but there are two stream crossings. I love crossing water, even if I get my boots wet. (Actually….I sort of prefer it when I get my boots wet!) Right by the second crossing, Kendell saw two raccoons! I turned left after the stream and wandered for quite a while before I realized the barely-a-trail, straight-up-the-slope “path” I was following wasn’t the actual trail, and plus, Kendell wasn’t behind me, so I had to backtrack, figure out where the trail was (RIGHT after the crossing, not left), and then I started hustling because I had no idea where Kendell was. A few minutes later I heard him hollering for me, so we kept track of each other by shouting “Aim!” and “K!” (“Kendell” just doesn’t travel well) until I caught back up to him.

When we got to Silver Lake, we found a big, slanted granite boulder where we sat and had a snack. For about five minutes I laid back on the rock, closed my eyes, and tried to listen and feel everything around me. The wind in the aspens, the birds, the piney scent mixed with florals…I opened my eyes and looked at the layers of colors in the cliffs across the lake…the only way it could’ve been better is if the groups of hikers around us could also be quiet!

I’d read as much as I could find only about how to get to Silver Glance. Everything I read was super vague: “find the slight trail.” Clearly there WAS a trail, as people have gone there, but once we started looking for it, I just wasn’t sure. We did a few false trails before going back to the first one I’d tried with the goal of just seeing if it petered out or not. It didn’t!

So, if you, too, want to hike to Silver Glance Lake, here’s how you find the trail. It’s not so much that the trail is “slight.” It’s that there are so many different little paths people have made. When you first get to the lake, turn right. Then look for another trail that is also a right turn. There are at least two right turns you could take (because I went up one and came down another). One is almost immediately after you turn right. The next one is just past a big white granite boulder. If you miss these and continue to move around the lake, you’ll get to a stream crossing and then you know you’ve gone too far. You want to stay south of that stream.

I was also not sure I was on the right trail because right at the beginning it curves south and I knew I needed to be going north-east-ish. But, keep going around the curve. The trail IS faint there, but push on for just two or three minutes and it gets more defined.

The trail from Silver Lake to Silver Glance is steep. And while the total elevation gain (about 900 feet) spread over a little bit less than a mile is steep but doable, it’s not a consistent uphill. You climb, climb, climb, and then you get to a flat meadow, and then you climb some more. So the climbing parts are actually more than 1000 feet per mile. You just have to settle in and realize it’s going to be hard and slow, but that’s OK.

It’s OK because it is a really fun trail. There are small boulders than kind of work like stairs. At a few different places you just walk right up the little stream of water. (I’m guessing that by the fall this is dried up and you walk up the dry bed.) The meadows have tons of large boulders that are great to sit on for a quick break and some water. And the flat parts feel so amazing to cross after you’ve pushed hard up the incline.

The BEST part about this trail, though, is the views. You have to look back to see them when you’re going up. As I usually hike in front on the uphill sections of a trail, I stopped several times at the high points and looked back for Kendell, and I loved being able to watch him ramble through the meadows with the north east side of Timp behind him. It was amazing.

Once we got to Silver Glance—which really is much smaller than Silver Lake!—we wandered around a little bit. I had wanted to put my feet in the water but there wasn’t a really great spot to do it there, so I kept my shoes on. The views change dramatically depending on where you go, so if you hike up to Silver Glance, spend some time exploring. The lake sits just underneath Red Baldy, and you can summit Red from here, but you have to just find your way, there isn’t an established trail.

When we were headed back down, I stopped at a spot I had seen coming up, which had white rocks and a bunch of artist’s paintbrush. This is one of my favorite wildflowers but I haven’t seen any so far this year. I was so happy to find a bunch of it all over this mountain. I asked Kendell to take a photo of me there, and just as I got into place I heard a roar and a clatter. It took me a minute to figure out what I was hearing: a rock slide! A bunch of rocks were tumbling from the tops of the cliffs behind me. I didn’t look back…I just sprinted back to where Kendell was standing. I was slightly terrified but the slide was happening at least a half a mile beyond us, so we weren’t in danger. (I couldn’t tell until I turned around to look, but in my panic mode I distinctly thought Go! You don’t have time to look!”) We watched the rock slide until it stopped and it was crazy to see those big boulders bouncing and rolling.

When we got back down to Silver Lake, I took a quick moment to dip my feet in the water. I’ve decided that I want to do this more when I am hiking (and it’s not against the trail rules for people to get in the water). The first time I got my feet wet on a trail was when we hiked to Half Dome, and it was almost a spiritual experience. It felt like a way of putting more of myself into the landscape, and besides: it is so refreshing to chill your feet. There was a big group of hikers by the water when I first got there, but they left before I got my boots off, so for a few minutes I had my feet in the water with no one else around. It was bliss! I’m so glad we did this hike again, that I didn’t get frustrated and give up on finding the trail to Silver Glance, and that I was strong enough to make it. It was an incredible day!

I was full of sadness this morning.

I had planned on going with Kendell to his INR check and then running home, but my knee was unhappy, so I didn’t. I waited outside for him, though, and the air smelled so fresh and felt so cool it made me distrust it. Like it might be the last good thing I could remember before something bad happened.

We went home and I listened to a little bit of the news, and then I read again about Emmett Till to refresh my memory of what happened to him, and while I tried to read it out loud to Kendell I started crying. Why are humans so awful to each other? Why are cruelty, meanness, judgment, racism, violence our first responses? Why is the world so ugly when it doesn’t have to be?

Next I cleaned the kitchen and I texted with Nathan and I started crying all over again. Not only because I miss him—I miss him, and I thought while I stirred up some protein pancakes about how he is so good to me, how he is sort of my Person, in the sense that he tries to understand me and is gentle and kind to me and takes me for who I am, but how that isn’t fair to him because his Person should be his one-day spouse—not only do I miss him, but because of how his absence is a symbol for how everything changes, how I am at the cusp of not having any kids living at home, and how I want that to be a good time in my life, how it can be good, but also how I miss it when everyone was still at home.

While I ate I read some poetry and this line made me feel a little less alone, from a poem by Oliver de la Paz about small towns: “as though//the little things we tell ourselves about our pasts stay there,/rising slightly and just out of reach.” I had almost skipped reading this poem when I turned the page because it is long, but I read it and it both devoured and fed me. Fed because yes, I too will never be done being haunted by the little town I shook loose from and I thought it was just me but of course it isn’t. Devoured because the poem is so good, and I want to write good poems but I’m not sure I really have the capability or skill or talent or ear.

But I took my drink out to the porch and tried working on a poem I have been working on for weeks now, a poem about finding my own voice, and I got stuck at the same place I always get stuck in this poem, which is the transition between the persona in the poem listening to others and then deciding to listen for her own voice instead. In my real life, this transition was marked by so many things, too many to cram into one poem—the Kavanaugh hearings and the way the Mormon men upheld him, my growing understanding that the bridge between my mother and me was starting to burn, her illness and the way my inability to help her the way she thought I should was a match, a thing to see with briefly but then a thing that started the fire. It wasn’t one thing, it was a process, it was a slurry of things, a flood, and I had always been living in a flood I just hadn’t noticed how hard I was trying to stay on top of the water. All the things that had kept me floating before were punctured. And in the poem I want a line that captures that transition. I have the beginning and the end, but not the transition.

So I sat on my back porch with my orange notebook and my “feminist” mug and I tried to figure it out. The air was still deliciously fraught and then, very gently: it started raining. A delicate rain, consistent enough I had to move back under the overhang so my notebook didn’t get wet. I smelled the air and worked on my poem and sipped my drink.

I didn’t figure out the transition yet.

I didn’t write a good poem.

I couldn’t hug Nathan, or run downstairs to see Haley working on homework somewhere. I still don’t know how to help Jake or what path Kaleb will find.

My house is still too empty and at the same time I want it to be completely empty. I crave solitude but I am lonely.

But as the rain fell my heart lifted. A little, a little. The smallest bit of hope crept up as the rain tickled my toes. Maybe I won’t always be lonely. Of course Jake will figure out his life. How can a world that smells like that—petrichor and water and petunias and the green scent of the catalpa leaves giving off a little bit of their summer heat into the cooling air—only be filled with ugliness, despair, and violence? It’s not. There is good here, too. Even in my little corner.

I smelled the air and then I turned back to my notebook.

Maybe there is a good poem in me, too.

One of the cool things about log cabin squares is that the way you arrange them creates a totally different pattern. The squares themselves “read” as if they are made up of two triangles, a light and a dark, especially when mixed with a bunch of others. As with all quilts, even though these were gifts, I also made them for myself: so I could learn how to do this technique, so I could learn what looks great and what might not. So I decided to arrange the squares differently for each quilt. There are a bunch of different ways to put log cabins together, but I liked the flow of light and dark that these two make.

If you are making a quilt with log cabins, my suggestion is to not wing the assembly of the squares into a finished quilt top. Put them on a design wall if you have one, or arrange them on the floor. It is worth the time, especially if your squares are scrappy. This is the final way you create balance with all of those disparate patterns and/or colors, so take some time to get the squares in the right order. I find that even once I think they are perfect (no repeated fabric touching, for example), if I take a photo of the layout and then look at it on my phone, I see it differently and change a few more squares.

Once you have the squares arranged the way you want, sew the blocks into rows and then the rows into the finished top. I ironed the seams open but I’m not sure if there is a right or wrong way to iron log cabins.

After I finished the two log cabin quilt tops, I cleaned up my sewing space, organized all of the scraps I had left over (seriously…I think I could make ten more baby log cabin quilts), and then agonized! I really wanted to freeform quilt these quilts. I think it would’ve enhanced the bigger pattern the arrangement of the squares creates. I did some Google searching for free-form quilting tips, I checked out and read two books about it, and I even did some practice free-form quilting. But in the end, I knew I am not skilled enough at free form to make it look good, so I went with some straight line quilting instead. (I think these two quilts might just be the thing that pushes me over the edge: I might just be ready for a new sewing machine! Any recommendations?)

As I made these quilts, I started thinking of them with names. And as all of the Cool Quilting Bloggers name their quilts, I’m going to go ahead and start naming all of my quilts, too. (I actually also started a draft of a poem about quilting, which is really a poem about grief, history, time, female ancestors, and if I manage to finish it it will be titled “Grief Cabins.”) So! Here are the finished scrappy log cabin baby quilts, with their individual names:

Midnight Feeding

I think the arrangement of this one is called Barn Raising. I’m calling it Midnight Feeding because I spent some late nights working on it, and because the colors of the back feel more like night colors. I LOVE the little pops of purple sprinkled throughout this quilt. I had to shop a little bit for some more purples, and I discovered that quilting is similar to scrapbooking: It’s REALLY hard to find good purples. (I like cool instead of warm purples.) I showed this one to a woman at the fabric store I’ve started to become friendly with, and she said something similar: “Oh, I love the purple on this! Not enough people think of purple as a boy color, but it really works with blue.”

It has scraps from quilts I’ve made for Haley, Jake, Nathan, Kaleb, and Elliot. Some of the logs are from my mom’s stash, as are all the hearth squares. Some of the logs come from baby quilts I’ve made for friends and neighbors. Some, I confess, are new fabrics.

I quilted it by first quilting in the ditch around each of the hearth squares and then with echoing diamond lines. When these lines got to a hearth square, I didn’t quilt through it, so the squares are a little bit more highlighted.

I pieced the backing out of two different flannels. (I love a pieced backing!) The dinosaur print I bought when Kaleb was about two. I made a pair of PJs for him out of it but had a ton left over. The polka dots I got the day I took the top into the fabric store and the colors matched so well, it was a happy coincidence!

I made this for the baby of my niece Hilary; he was born three weeks ago.

Imagination

The arrangement of this one is called Fields and Furrows. The light/dark diagonal lines just make me so happy! I love the little details of the quilt. Each of the hearth squares is different. There are sharks, kittens, a cowboy paisley, a few wordy pieces. Since I pieced this so slowly, I tried to sort of match the fabrics thematically a little bit, like there’s a sheriff’s star print with the cowboy paisley, and bubbles with a shark print. I kept picturing the baby I made it for, when he was a little bit bigger, looking at the different prints and making up stories about them. (Realizing that that idea is me projecting my childhood thought patterns onto someone else entirely!)

A lot of the scraps I used for this quilt came from my attempt to build up my blue stash, so some of it was new. There is a dark blue flannel that came from my mom’s stash and a few other blue pieces. (I wanted to put more of her stash into this quilt, because it was for her great grandson, but her taste in blues was so different from mine, and she almost always chose a cream base instead of a white one.) But I also used some of the fabric I’ve been accumulating for a quilt I’m making soon for Kaleb.

Again, I agonized over how to quilt this, but went with two diagonal lines ½” apart, again after stitching in the ditch around the hearth squares. On one of the squares (the second one I quilted) I accidentally quilted around the square made by the first row of logs. I considered unpicking it….but I decided it just added to the random/scrappy aspect of the quilt.

I had planned on backing it with a solid blue minky, but when I found this fabric I couldn’t resist, because the niece whose baby I made it for is a country fan. And because the baby’s name is Gus, and Gus is a character in one of my dad’s favorite novels, Lonesome Dove, which happens to be about cowboys, so. I realize it’s sort of a mix of two radically different styles, the modern improve feel of the front and the comfy, country feel of the back…but somehow, I think it is OK.

I made this one for my niece Jacqui’s baby, who was born two months ago but who I finally got to meet (and give his quilt to) on Monday.

There’s always a moment when I’m making a quilt for someone else that my husband gets a bit annoyed with me. He sometimes sees my quilty efforts as over the top. And sometimes it is a lot of time spent on a quilt for a baby who might not ever know me very well. But…I think I make the quilts as much for myself as I do for the babies. A person only needs so many quilts in her house, and right now I have no babies or grandbabies of my own to quilt for. But I also make them because of a quilt someone made for me, when I was a baby. My great aunt Myrle made a pink whole cloth quilt for me. It has a lamb quilted on the fabric, with a bright blue eye, and expertly finished with a white cord binding. This quilt is an inherent part of many of my childhood memories, but Aunt Myrle? I don’t remember her at all. So I like to think of her, making that quilt for me, but also for my mom. It doesn’t matter, necessarily, if the baby becomes a person in the future who knows me well. Maybe just knowing that someone cared about him and about his mom enough to make something for him will be a sweetness to him, as that pink quilt (I still have it in my linen closet) is for me.

When my mom passed away, one of the categories of stuff we had to deal with was her immense collection of fabric. When it was done—it went to so many different people and places—I resolved that I will never let my stash get that big. So for most of February I worked on gathering all of my little fabric stashes, organizing them by color, and cutting anything that would work in a baby quilt into 6" and 8.5". My fabric is now well-organized and my stash is manageable (I also got rid of some pieces); all of it is in one closet and neatly boxed.

When I cut the baby fabric, I was left with a ton of strips. I had two new grand-nephews on the way, though, so I decided to make a couple of scrappy log cabin quilts with my strips. Can you believe in all the time I’ve been quilting, I’ve only ever made two log cabin quilts, a Christmas one and the one I made this winter for my niece Lexie’s baby, and these were both just ONE square made into a large quilt? I was inspired by one of my favorite quilting bloggers, Amy Smart, whose vintage-inspired log cabin quilt is so beautifully scrappy. It made me realize that scrappy log cabins are a thing, so I dove in.

The basic design of a log cabin square is this: you begin with a central square. Traditionally, these are red, as they represent the hearth of the cabin. You sew one strip to one side of the square, turn it, and then sew the next strip to the next side of the square. The pattern is light, light, dark, dark. (Or the opposite, depending on how you want to do it.) As you build the square, the strips have to get longer and longer, because each strip adds its width to the overall size of the square.

Traditionally (the log cabin square is a very old, traditional pattern, with ties to colonial and Civil War America), the squares are the same size and the width of the strips (or “logs,” really) is also the same.

But I had strips of all different widths, so I decided to do a thoroughly scrappy version by using squares and strips of different sizes. I just kept adding logs until the squares were the right size. Sometimes this meant that the bigger logs were slightly out of order, or didn’t have a pair of dark or light, but I was OK with that. In fact, I think it added to the scrappy feel of the quilts.

The first quilt I made took me forever. This is because I would sew on a strip, walk over to the ironing board, iron the seam open, riffle through the strips for the next one, sew it on, walk to the ironing board…I guess I got my steps in, but that is a very slow way of making squares. I think it took me two weeks to make the 25 squares for that first log cabin. But, I really loved the process. It was a sort of meditation for me, looking for just the right pattern to go next, the heat and woosh of the steam from the iron, the rhythm of the process. And I love the clear delineation between the whites and the blues.

When I started the second quilt top, I decided to try to make the process faster. The squares in this quilt are all the same size, fussy cut from a baby flannel I took from my mom’s stash. Instead of the classic light and dark of the first one, I wanted this one to include more colors (partly because I used up quite a bit of the navy and dark blue strips I had). So, I sorted the strips into two piles: low volume (which is a print made with a white background and a pattern in a color; it “reads” as light in the quilt) and colors (which could include white, but which “read” as purple or aqua or blue or whatever). Then I sorted the colors more specifically, not by color but by intensity/darkness of the hues. Finally, I did one more sort so that the shorter strips were separated from the longer ones. I put these sorted strips into a box that I kept by my sewing machine, and then I started piecing. (I REALLY wish I had taken a photo of those sorted logs. They were lovely!)

For this second quilt, I did strip piecing. So, I started with a square, took a short, dark log (because the squares were lighter, I started with darks), sewed it on. Then I grabbed the next center square, another short, dark log, and sewed it together. When you strip pierce, you don’t lift up the presser foot on your machine, but just keep feeding the pieces through. When I was finished with all 16 squares, I’d cut them apart, pile them on my thigh, and start again. No ironing between each log, just a quick finger press of the seam to keep it open. I would add four logs this way, and then iron, and then keep going.

This process was much faster! It only took two days to finish all of the blocks for the second quilt.

There were many times during the process of making these two quilt tops that I wondered how they would actually turn out. Would the varying width of the logs give the quilts an improve feel, or would they just look sloppy? When I put the squares together and the logs didn’t line up neatly (like they would if the strips were the same width), would it just look weird? I wasn’t sure! I usually have these moments of doubt when I am making a quilt, because my approach isn’t exacting. I’ve made a few non-scrappy quilts (what would be the word for that? I’m not sure!), but mostly my approach is to bring in a whole bunch of different patterns, even if I am staying within a specific color scheme. These are my favorite kinds of quilts, both to make and to admire. But there is always at least one moment when I stop and think: what am I doing???? This is going to look ridiculous. But I think those moments are a natural part of the process, a spot in time when you stop to look and make sure the colors “go” (they don’t have to match) and that you’re balancing big and little prints well. Sometimes you have to wait for the whole thing to come together before you can see that it does, really, all work.

Come back tomorrow for my next post, where I’ll show you the two finished scrappy log cabins I made for my two newest grand nephews and you can tell me if they work or not!

A favorite quote:
Girl nerds are in even more trouble than boy nerds, because everybody says we don’t exist, or if we do exist, it’s because we’re trying to get the boy nerds to like us. I don’t like any of the boy nerds in my school. I’m smarter than all of them, so they’re mean to me just like everybody else.

Some books are really, really hard to describe. "What are you reading?" is a question people often ask me, almost always followed by "what's it about?" (And that's actually a fairly loaded question anyway. What a book is "about" often depends on what the reader brings to the book, what her reading history is, what she needs to take from a novel, and besides, is it about the story? the characters? the place? the plot?)

Middlegame​ by Seanan McGuire is even harder to explain. It's about a colorblind boy named Roger, who seems to be able to have conversations with his imaginary friend, who's named Dodger. It's also about a girl named Dodger, who is brilliant at math but not so much at language arts, who seems to be able to have conversations with her imaginary friend, Roger.

It's about an alchemist, James Reed, who is attempting to embody the theory of ethos. Actually put pieces of it into two separate bodies who, when they eventually are able to connect fully, will do...something extraordinary. 

Reed was created by another alchemist, Asphodel Baker, who wrote a series of children's novels (sort-of like the Wizard of Oz, but only slightly, and sort-of like Narnia, but not really, and while there are excerpts in the book from the children's books, I'd really like to read Over the Wayward Wall) that were read across the world but are actually instructions for alchemists.

It's about Erin, who is sort-of like Roger and Dodger, but not really, and who might be there to help them (with what?) and might not, but she is definitely there for a purpose.

It starts with Roger and Dodger being ambushed and shot at in some mysterious way that ends abruptly with we got it wrong and then it tells you a bit of the Baker children's story and then it starts on Roger and Dodger's story.

It moves, sort-of, between those three things, forward (probably) through time, but always going back to that moment of ambush, which is similar but different every time it repeats.

Plus you read about some of the work of contemporary alchemists as well.

So it's definitely non-linear, even though the story mostly goes forward, with Roger and Dodger meeting and then disconnecting as they work towards what is described in Baker's book as the Impossible City on the Improbable Road.

(Which isn't the yellow brick road, not at all, but Oz does come into the narrative.)

I feel like I'm bungling this explanation but I don't know how else to write it. I've erased and rewritten already, several times. Which just goes so well with the book itself that if you've read it, I could leave it at that.

If you haven't read it, well.

If you need a book that is straightforward and uncomplicated and that doesn't ask you to pay much attention, you probably won't like Middlegame.

If seemingly-senseless violence bothers you, you probably won't like Middlegame.

If you like strange books that play with time, you will like Middlegame.

If you like books that make subtle references to all sorts of cultural and literary things, but without being pretentious about it, you will like Middlegame.

If you like books that make you think about the junctures in your life, the places when you made a choice that changed everything, and how it would be different if you'd chosen different, and if different would've been worse or better—you will love Middlegame.

Not everyone will love this novel. It does require your attention, but not in a painful way. In a fascinating way. It isn't a simple book, or an easy one, but one that is worth the effort.

And all of that is to say: I loved Middlegame. Even though it's hard to describe. Maybe because it is hard to describe. 

Let me know if you read it!

PS: If you loved the following books, I think you will also love Middlegame:

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
My Real Children by Jo Walton
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin
The Midwich Cuckoos​ by John Wyndham
Time After Time by Kate Atkinson
All the Birds in the Sky ​by Charlie Jane Anders

Favorite quotes:
A good podcast can add a glorious multi-world texture to anything.

Grief is a scar. The tissue is tough and when it’s cut again, it heals poorly.

This might be heresy to say out loud in this day and age, but I confess: I don’t love thrillers. I know! Everyone seems to love books like Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train, In a Dark, Dark Wood; The Wife Between Us—books, in other words, with unreliable female narrators. Everyone loves those right now, but—and maybe it’s because everyone loves them right now—they just annoy me. I guess it’s partly because frustration is not what I want during my reading experience. Partly because I tend to resist doing what everyone else loves, even when it comes to books. Partly because the things the characters—flawed, but fairly normal characters—experience in a thriller seem so unlikely. (Which is dumb because I don’t have that problem with fantasy or science fiction, which are also full of unlikely experiences.)

BUT.

Sometimes The Universe brings a book to my attention more than once. It if The Universe does this three or four times, I say back to it: OK, Universe, I’ll read it. This was the case with the book Conviction by Denise Mina. I noticed it on a recommended reading list from a publisher, and then in another email from Book Riot. Then, the very next day, I noticed it—because its cover is so distinctive—on our New Books display at the library. Three times in less than a week?

I checked it out. And then a few days later I spent one of my most pleasant sick days reading it, in between waves of severe abdominal pain.

And while it is exactly what you expect from a thriller (unreliable, seemingly-average narrator trying to figure out a possible murder), I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I think I liked it because it’s not only about the thriller experiences, but about personal damage and how we try to cope with it, and about reading as an escape mechanism, and maybe even because part of it is set in Scotland. Also because the writing is just so good.

Anyway.

I’m not spoiling the story by telling you this: It starts with our main character, Anna, discovering that her husband is having an affair with her best friend. The adulterous couple tells her that they are taking her two daughters to Spain so she can have some time to clear out and find a new place to live; her husband gives her a bunch of money to help in this process. There is shouting and yelling and then they leave Anna alone. She contemplates suicide but instead continues listening to the true-crime podcast she’d started that morning, about a seemingly-haunted ship where a father and his two adult children were probably murdered.

She returns to the podcast partly because it’s an escape but mostly because it mentions the names of two people she knew in the past, Leon Parker and Gretchen Teigler.

She continues, though, contemplating suicide, until someone knocks on the door. It’s Fin, the husband of her best friend who is cheating with her husband, who happens to be a semi-famous rock star who is suffering from anorexia, and they set off across parts of western Europe to figure out the mystery in the podcast.

One thing that bugged me about this story is how Anna and Fin are able to figure things out that no one else has noticed about this mystery. Partly they can do it because of their life histories: Anna, who is not who she seems and whose real story unfolds as the current one does, knows things about both Leon Parker and Gretchen Teigler that the other investegators couldn’t, and Fin’s fame gives them access they wouldn’t already have. But partly it’s luck and coincidence.

I think I’ve decided, during the writing of this blog post, that maybe I’m a reluctant thriller reader because they require that you suspend your disbelief in very specific ways that I have a hard time doing. Our main characters having ah-ha moments that no one else has had so far—such as, who took the photo of Leon Parker and his two kids if there was no one else on the boat, which is a turning point and which only Fin thinks of—is a thing my mind refuses to suspend.

At any rate, adventures ensue, including some Russian/Yugoslavian hit men with wild stories they tell in a train, and in the end the mystery is solved.

Wait—I’m really not writing this review as if I liked the book. But I really liked the book. Mostly because I liked the two main characters, Anna and Fin, and because the ways they are unreliable and damaged are ways that resonate with me.

And the structure of the book, which only becomes entirely clear in the last paragraphs.

And how it points out how social media in all of its aspects influences our lives in negative and positive ways.

I’m really, really glad I listened to The Universe and read this one!

A favorite quote: Hold on to the moments when you were smiling, happy, when forever seemed too far away to see the end of it. Only let go of the moments like this. Of crying so hard there’s no longer any sound.

Tin Heart by Shivaun Plozza was a random book for me. It was in a pile of new YA books I was putting out on the New Books display shelf, only I decided to check it out instead. (I’m trying to do this more…just immediately start reading a book that seems like I’d like it, rather than checking out 50 or 60 titles and then being so overwhelmed by all the books I want to read that I don’t read anything.) Partly I checked it out because the blurb on the cover— “Swoon-worthy, moving, deep, and funny”—came from another YA author I like, Jennifer Niven. Partly because the story seemed good: teenager Marlowe’s life has been saved by a heart donor, but now she feels like she can’t move forward into her new life until she meets and thanks the family of the person whose death made her new life possible.

In the past ten years I have spent a lot of time worrying about hearts. (In fact, just now I realized that this fall will be 10 years since Kendell’s first heart surgery.) When Kendell was diagnosed with a used-up aortic valve, I wanted to learn more about it. As much as I could, so I would read medical journals and books when I was at work. I didn’t want him to see the books because somehow that would make it more real. Three heart surgeries and one near-death experience caused by v-fib…Kendell and I both know a lot about hearts.

Worrying about your husband’s heart is one thing, however, and worrying about your youngest son’s is another. Kaleb’s heart also has an issue: he has a bulge on his aorta. This is far scarier because in theory it could burst at any time. It means he has to be limited in his activities. In fact, he’s really not supposed to be playing soccer or basketball at all, something our doctor really emphasized the last time we saw him, but I really don’t know how to handle that. Kaleb is not the kind of kid who will be happy sitting on a couch and sometimes strolling around the block. He likes to be out playing sports with his friends, and the maddening thing about this entire situation is that he is really good at it. I’m actually in the process of trying to find a different doctor for him, not necessarily one that will tell me what I want to hear, but one who will help us all cope with this experience.

At any rate—hearts. Heart conditions are terrifying. And they can sometimes be repaired but they are never really fixed. There are always lingering after-effects. Most damaging to the person with the actual heart condition, of course, but not just them. It affects everyone in the family. For me, the side effect of having two family members with scary hearts is that deep down, I am always, constantly afraid. I try to mask it and I use my little lucky-charm ideas (which are just magical thinking I know). One of which is that I kind of feel like I HAVE to read every book I find that’s about hearts, because if I don’t then it will somehow make something bad happen. I don’t actively search them out, but when I find one, I read it.

So maybe I am not the ideal person to review this book, but then again, none of my reviews are actually even real book reviews. You can read them anywhere, so what I want to try to share on my blog with every book I write about is how it fit inside my life, what it taught me, why I loved (or didn’t love) it not only for the plot/writing/characterization/setting/pacing/tone, but for its impact on my life.

Tin Heart was an interesting read for me, in other words. I really loved the main character, Marlowe, because for me she seemed authentically teenager-ish: sometimes wise, sometimes unbearable, prone to bad decisions made out of good impulses. She decides that even though the donor family has requested she not contact them, she’s going to find them anyway, a decision that drives the entire story to its resolution. In a sense, this plays out in the same sequence that a romantic comedy does: a relationship forms until The Secret is accidentally revealed, and then the drama is whether or not the relationship will even be save-able. Which is one reason I don’t watch a ton of rom-coms, because they almost always turn out great. So another thing I loved about Tin Heart was that not everything was resolved. The ending felt authentic and plausible.

Of course, as with every YA novel I read, I also had to remind myself that I am not the audience for this novel. Teenagers are. Which hopefully will excuse the fact that while I got caught up in Marlowe’s story, what I really wanted to read was the experiences of the donor family, especially the donor’s father. Which, then: that would be an entirely different book written for a different audience.

Which brings me back to that blurb on the cover. I don’t know if this book is actually swoon-worthy, at least not for a middle-aged mom. But it is moving, deep, and funny, which is a fantastic combination. I’m glad I read it, and see! my superstition proved correct. No one had to have an emergency heart surgery in my family while I was reading this book, so they were all protected by my reading, at least for a few days.

Last week something surprising happened to me: the 4^th of July arrived, and it shoved me right down into a pit of despair. Eventually this will all lead to my thoughts on my solstice-to-equinox streak, but it’s kind of a long build up, so bear with me.

Two days before Independence Day, I was talking to Kaleb in the morning before I left for work. He said, “Mom, I don’t think it’s fair, being the youngest. All of The Bigs got to have cool stuff on every single holiday. They always got to have a party at Aunt Suzette’s or at Candace & Ernie’s house on the 4^th of July. They got to do fireworks and tons of fun stuff. I don’t get any of that.”

Sigh. He’s totally right. It’s not fair and it does suck. And while I pointed out the ways that being the youngest is a perk, he wasn’t having it. Because holidays should be about spending time with your family. In fact, after that conversation with Kaleb, I swear about every other post on Instagram was that quote from Erma Bombeck: “You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.”

Kaleb got that for the first decade of his life, but things are just different now. On Kendell’s side of the family, the cousins have all started getting married and having their own families, so we are extraneous (and the black sheep to boot). On my side, I also feel extraneous; usually I can get over it but right now there is just so much tension because of the settling of my mom’s estate that it seems like everyone might need a break from each other.

At any rate, on Independence Day I went running, and Kaleb went to the water park with his aunt and his cousin. Kendell and I hung out in the house all day and contemplated how sucky it was that our water heater needed to be replaced. We all went out to dinner together (me and Kendell, Kaleb and his cousin and his aunt, plus another cousin and his wife), and then…that was it. I didn’t even go outside to watch the neighbors light fireworks because I was kind of annoyed with my neighbors.

In fact, the best part of the 4^th of July was the wind storm we got. I stood outside on my porch and watched my big sycamores move in the wind, restless and unstoppable. Large branches kept crashing down, and I just stood and watched and cried. (Told you: pit of despair.)

This was surprising to me because it was unexpected. I expect that I will be sad at Christmas. But the 4^th of July? I didn’t know it would be a marker: of how my family has changed, of my mother’s first year of death, of estrangement, of change. But it was.

Then on Friday Kendell and I had a lovely BUA during my lunch hour. A mean one; things were said that cannot be unsaid. I came home from work apprehensive and thinking my stomach ache and utter exhaustion (not to mention pervasive sadness) was caused by the argument, so I skipped the hike I had planned, did some sculpting exercises instead, and went to bed. Only to be woken at 3:21 a.m. with excruciating abdominal pain.

Ah. Not too tired to hike, but actually sick.

But still pretty sad.

That Saturday, I did absolutely nothing besides lie in bed with the hot pad. I read an entire book, but I felt awful. I drank Sprite with lemon and worried about fibroids and cancer and diverticulitis. I still don’t really know what was wrong—that pain took five days to finally go away completely. But the next day I had to move, so Kendell and I went hiking. We intended 4 or 5 gentle miles and ended up doing 8, but it was OK. My weird pain wasn’t too bad, it felt glorious to move my body, and we worked a few things out.

I was feeling weird about missing a day on the exercise streak because I was the one who started it, and already I missed a day. But when we got to the place we decided to turn around—a beautiful, lush little meadow between two mountain peaks—I decided to set the uncomfortable feeling down and leave it there.

It’s OK that I missed a day.

Even if I hadn’t been sick (or whatever that was), it still would’ve been OK if I missed a day. Because that was what my body needed: rest, somewhat mindless reading, bubbly sweetness. The contrast between Saturday and Sunday, of doing nothing and hiking in the blazing sun, taught me something I am struggling to put into words. It has something to do with what I wrote in my last blog post, about coming to accept my body for what it is. Exercise is not my only interest, physical fitness isn’t the only focus of my life. The softening of my body isn’t my only struggle right now. Sometimes there are other things, too, and on that weekend, for whatever reason, my body had had enough. Running couldn’t heal me that Saturday, just like if I forced a family party on the 4^th of July it really wouldn’t have solved anything. I don’t know what will, honestly.

I want to keep my body healthy partly because I want to be healthy for as long as I can. Healthy and involved with my life. But just like I am working around the limitations of my body (that persistent knee pain, for example), I also have to work around the reality of how my life is turning out. I don’t love every change that has happened over the last three or four years. Like Kaleb I am sad, annoyed, and disappointed to find myself in this strange, lonely place. But sub-patella cartilage doesn’t repair itself just like my life is just my life. Kaleb’s life, too. We both have to learn how to deal with it, to work around it, to find moments when we give rest to what needs rest.

That’s what I learned from my day off from my streak: you can plan, you can make goals, you can imagine how you think things will turn out. In reality you’re not always in charge and it doesn’t go the way you imagined. Sometimes you feel bad about this, and that is a valid response. Sometimes you have to pause. But there is also the next day, when you can start again, maybe still without answers, maybe still with heartache, but refreshed, just a little—just enough—by your break to continue on finding joy in movement.

I have spent all morning today thinking about my body. How it has changed over time and how I feel about it.

Here’s a photo of me from five years ago, at a 5k race I ran in that was a library fundraiser. (You were supposed to dress up as your favorite literary character; as I am easily annoyed by anything extra while I’m running, I kept my costume extremely simple. I’m Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, right? Two braids, blue dress, sparkly red shoes.) Not necessarily my favorite literary character, but those are hard to represent in costume anyway.)

Kendell and I were looking at this picture last night and I started thinking about all of the ways my body has changed in the five years since it was taken.

My perimenopausal body has finally decided to grow some boobs. Seriously, I’ve been waiting for this to happen since I was 13 or so. Unfortunately the message got muddled and the boobs are in the wrong place. SIDE boobs? That’s not really what I meant, body.

My belly is so much softer and rounder now.

My back looks like I used to weigh about 100 pounds more, and I lost the weight, and now the skin won’t smooth back. Except that didn’t happen. If it had, I would understand what was happening back there on my back (like I understand why my belly will never be flat). If I understood the source of my back fat and wobbly skin, I might feel a little less bugged by it.

The skin around my knees is saggy and wrinkled.

My batwings—and my maternal line has never been known for having resilient triceps skin—are a million times flappier.

I have side chunkies and a muffin top.

AND I have crepe-y skin on the fold of my arm at my shoulder.

My face has more wrinkles.

My eye asymmetry is far worse.

My grey has gotten greyer and more pervasive.

Do I wish I had the body back of my 42-year-old self? Sort of. Well, yes, of course. If wishing actually worked then I would wish for the body I had before I started having babies. But wishing doesn’t work. Sometimes it feels like nothing works, because I exercise and I eat as healthily as I can but the weight is still creeping on.

But this post really isn’t meant to be a listing of all of the ways I perceive my body is faulty.

Instead, it is about the ways that bodies change over time and how to accept those changes.

Yes: in the eyes of the world, my body is less attractive than it was five years ago. It is FAR less attractive than it was 25 years ago.

But the eyes of the world (which is sometimes much, much smaller than it seems) (which means that by “the world” I mean the critical voices that influence my thinking about myself, and the actual words they have said—“heavy,” “chubby,” “soft,” “old”—and how those words grow more cruel as I replay them) are always going to be critical.

My body is not perfect. Right now, I feel betrayed by my body in many ways.

But it is the same thing I say to people—to women—who refuse to be in photos because they’re “too” something (too fat, too grey, too wrinkled): it is only going to get worse.

The Amy in that photo 5 years ago had the same critical voices as the Amy in this photo:

Actually, 42-year-old Amy had more critical thoughts about herself, because I was still equating “runner” to “fast runner” then. Not only was I too chubby, too soft, too flat-chested, I was also (in my mind) too slow.

It is always only ever going to get worse.

In five more years, when I am in my early fifties, what will I think when I look back on that photo of me today? (What I thought of it when I saw it: my calves look enormous, I should’ve sucked in my stomach more, my body proportions are all wrong, my nasolabial folds are getting worse, that dress is so unflattering, I have man shoulders, there's that embarrassing forehead...) What will I wish I had back?

And not just my body, but my life.

Because how much has changed since that photo of me as Dorothy? I went through some big traumas with my husband’s health issues, my mom died, I had some pretty severe depression, my relationship with my religion changed utterly, I had to come to peace with how things really ARE vs how I hoped they would be in almost every aspect of my life.

As I looked at that Dorothy photo last night, as I thought all morning about my “conversation” with Kendell about it—he is far more blunt than I am and maybe I am too sensitive, I don’t know—as I thought about what was fueling this swirl of despair, anger, body shame, and frustration, this is where I arrived:

I want to be seen not for my body but for who I am.

I want the people in my life to love me whether or not I am “heavy.”

I want to be more than the sum of my not-quite-good-enough body parts.

But I can’t force anyone to feel that way about me. I can’t make our society see my middle-aged body as anything else but pathetic. I can’t control any of that.

All I get to control is me—and clearly, right now I am learning that that doesn’t include controlling my body.

Maybe what my body wants me to learn is something different. Not how to run longer, stronger, faster. Not the newest body sculpting techniques. Not even how to deal with my joint issues.

Maybe my body wants me to learn how to see myself not for my body but for who I am, to love myself no matter my weight or side-boob measurements, to stop the arithmetic of shame, disgust, and self-doubt.

And if I am honest, I will say: I don’t know how to do that. I want others to give that grace to me, but I don’t know how to do it for myself.

I grew up in a house with a mother who was very concerned with bodies and thinness. I participated in a sport that was all about being small enough (gymnastics). I married a perfectionist with his own body issues. Those aren’t excuses but just the facts, the things that have influenced my thinking about my body.

I am 47 years old and I have thought about my body in negative ways for as long as I can remember.  Maybe body shame is as much a part of my identity as loving books and thin hair and my talent of standing on my toe knuckles is.

Maybe.

But maybe that is the yellow brick road I need to follow. Maybe that is the journey I need to take, a path that will help me finally figure out how to put down all the weight I am carrying. Not the twenty extra pounds, but the shame over the extra pounds.

I don’t know how to do this. But—and maybe this is a cliché, maybe this is banal and obvious and silly, but so be it—at least knowing where to start: at least that. Maybe knowing that I have to start with me. Maybe that is enough to be the first step.