Category: Five in Five

  • Butt Hurt: Tuesday, February 28

    Butt Hurt: Tuesday, February 28

    Gack! Here I’d hauled my cookies downtown and raced breathlessly into the lobby, readying myself for a much-needed yoga class, only to be greeted by a sign on the counter announcing a class cancellation.  What made it worse was that I’d known the teacher couldn’t find a sub and there would be no class, but […]

  • Grad Present: Monday, February 26

    Grad Present: Monday, February 26

    And so today was lovely, a day full of hours with my daughter, a day when we laughed and were in sync, and it was all so much of everything good. There was no question I would write tonight about this day, even in limited fashion, because I want to remember it. But to write […]

  • Foiled One: Sunday, February 25

    Foiled One: Sunday, February 25

    Perkily, she greets him. “Hi, Haakon!” As is his way, he extends a quiet hello. Then, at loose ends for the few minutes until class starts, she notices someone else she can greet. “Are you Haakon’s mom?” she asks, extending her hand towards me. As I nod, she adds, “I’m Mrs. Rebecca King.” We shake […]

  • Seven Goods: Saturday, February 24

    Seven Goods: Saturday, February 24

    Things Farmers Like About February My sister-in-law, Erin, her husband, Ben, and their daughter, Allia, live on and run an organic farm in central Minnesota — selling Community Supported Agriculture shares to people in their community, providing vegetables to local colleges and Twin Cities’ school districts, and committing their values to their daily work. And […]

  • Five in Five: Friday, February 23

    Five in Five: Friday, February 23

    Things Virginia Has Written on Slips of Paper and Dropped into the Gratitude Bowl in the Narthex of the Congregational Church My dear friend Virginia has jotted down her thanks for these humble things: 1. See-through plastic bags — she can see what’s in them without taking things apart and doesn’t have to empty the […]

  • One and Forever: Thursday, February 22

    One and Forever: Thursday, February 22

    It matters to this story that dusk is creeping around the edges, and thick, quiet snow is falling slowly, slowly from the sky, accumulating into a desert of white dunes outside the large picture window behind my back. She’s talking, my great pal Virginia is, as she lies on the couch to my left, her […]

  • Five in Five: Wednesday, February 21

    Five in Five: Wednesday, February 21

    Five Things about Countries Beginning with “E” that Allegra Told Us During a Car Ride to a Race in Wisconsin: She Was Reading from One of Her Beloved Travel Books, Both of Which She Bought with a Barnes & Noble Gift Card from Byron’s Great-Uncle 1. One of Egypt’s trademarks is incessant honking 2. Egypt […]

  • A Lifetime in Twenty-Seven Minutes: Monday, February 20

    A Lifetime in Twenty-Seven Minutes: Monday, February 20

    The letter sat on the kitchen counter for a few days, a visual reminder to call the insurance company and find out if I am covered for this new 3D mammography. It also sat there for a few days as I calmed the impulse to mark the thing up — “The third sentence here is […]

  • 400 Noodles and Four Hours: Monday, February 19

    400 Noodles and Four Hours: Monday, February 19

    I knew it was coming, so I’d had a couple days to brace myself. Mostly, my strategy was to hide upstairs, answer the occasional question, and deliberately pour my soul into a zen acceptance of chaos. Actually, now that I reread that previous sentence, I think I might ask Byron to stitch a version of […]

  • Eight in Some: Sunday, February 18

    Eight in Some: Sunday, February 18

    A prompt for today’s post: Recently, the chief curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City rejected the White House’s request to loan Vincent van Gogh’s Landscape With Snow painting, instead offering to lend Maurizio Cattelan’s functional, solid gold toilet sculpture titled America. If you could borrow any work of art from a museum […]