I know some things about myself.

For example, I enjoy public speaking, but I don’t enjoy being in a crowd. The idea of cramming myself into a space with tens of thousands of other people–your basic college football game or rock concert–is a hard no for me. I’d manage well enough, but the experience would take a toll in lingering anxiety, broken sleep, scattered focus, and low mood.

The same symptoms befall me when I can’t have fairly consistent slow mornings. For me that means I don’t have to be anywhere before about 1 pm. I can have solitude and unstructured time before noon. My morning might be busy–plant the dahlias, write 2500 words, run three loads of wash, tote up last month’s sales, and so forth–but how I get all the things done is up to me, and I’m not interrupted as I putter from flowerbeds to laundry room to writing desk.

I worry that when a neighbor does drop by unannounced, my body language and micro-expressions are all telegraphing, “Please go away now.” In the usual case, I can roll with the distractions, have a nice chat, and get back to my pothering, but if I plan poorly, and schedule myself five or six days out of seven tearing around to appointments, errands, and obligations, I pay for it.

I know social connections are good for us emotionally and cognitively, and I know being able to control even half the day is a great privilege. For me, it has also become a necessity. If I don’t write first thing in the day (after pet chores), then the writing rarely happens, and if it does happen later, it’s more of an effort and less of a frolic.

What absolutely kicks me in that pants though, is how many decades I lived without control over my schedule, from little up. Some of that was me overbooking myself, but a lot of it was simply the need to pay bills and parent. Now that I can have many days on my ideal terms, I treasure the impact on my life. I’m happier, more productive, better rested, less anxious, and not as grumpy (most of the time).

What do you finally have on your own terms? What happens if you don’t get it? What still thwarts your progress toward ideal days?

PS: The Dreadful Duke is in the house! (Meaning His Grace is now on sale at the major retail sites. Ordering links here. Also, Lord Julian’s first audio book, A Gentleman Fallen on Hard Times, is now available through the web store.

I am considering attempting to become a certified therapeutic riding instructor (CTRI), a process which takes at least two years in the normal course, and involves everything from learning first aid to mucking stalls to spending a lot of time working with seasoned instructors.

If I go down this road, I will have my nose in books such as the Professional Association for Therapeutic Horsemanship International Standards for Certification and Accreditation. This 241-page tome makes a lot of my law school texts look like light reading by comparison. I will learn how to teach a student about emergency dismounts, though some of my students might be paraplegic or deaf. I must become comfortable fitting helmets, accommodating G-tubes in the riding milieu, and managing as many as three volunteers per rider…

It’s a lot. I ask myself: Grace, you are Not Young, you are no sort of athlete, you have little formal training in disabilities, mental health, OR riding pedagogy. WHAT are you getting yourself into?

My initial argument in rebuttal to those reasonable doubts (because lawyer), is: I passed the bar on the first try after four years of working full time and going to law school five nights a week. I might be able wrangle this CTRI thing. Though really, passing the bar isn’t that big of an accomplishment. Most people who make the attempt succeed on the first go.

When did I acquire my first real increments of backbone and confidence?

You can probably anticipate my answer to that question: When I was a single mom with a baby to care for, going for three years on little sleep, managing the money, the mothering, the everything, and more or less getting it all done. I look back on that phase of my life and just shake my head, but good on me for enduring and to a modest extent conquering the challenges before me. (And I readily admit, I enjoyed a ton of privilege in those years too, and I largely brought those challenges on myself.)

In any case, I did not reflexively think of the young, single mom years as my biggest achievement, my biggest bona fide in the “can handle challenges” category. I have no diploma, no professional memberships, no certifications to validate my sense of accomplishment, despite what those years proved to me about my stores of determination and ingenuity.

As far as external validation goes, my biggest feat of grit is a societal so-what, and I expect that’s true for many of us, especially women. We got stuff done, we know what it took to check all the boxes, and now you’d best not mess with us unless you come to

the battle of grit armed with a lifetime of stamina, wiliness, humor, and love, because those end up being the merit badges that really, truly do matter.

What experiences showed you what you are made of, even if no brass band or ticker tape parade celebrated the moment with you?

PS: A Gentleman Fallen on Hard Times is now available as an audio book from the web store. More Lord Julian audio is on the way!

Once upon a time, I was making a bad job of being pregnant. I was sooo morning sick, the whole way through, though working full time and going to law school five nights a week might have had something to do with my misery (and I was broke). I fainted regularly and I was anemic even on mommy-vitamins. I do not recall that time in my life fondly at all.

I do though, recall crossing paths with one of my sisters, probably the most conservative sibling of the seven of us, when I was approaching my third trimester. I was not married and not expecting to marry the baby’s father, I had not planned the pregnancy, and I was in therapy trying to sort out the kludge I had made of my whole entire, complete, overwhelming, blighted life. From this sister, I expected some judgment, or if she was feeling charitable, maybe platitudes. If she was feeling particularly saintly, maybe she’d limit herself to small talk and pleasantries.

What I got instead was wisdom. Said my sister, who is a mom four times over, unto me: This is not the time to castigate yourself, second guess your instincts, or run yourself down for past choices. You have done the best you could. Right now, just keep around you the people who are supportive and tell anybody else to get lost. That’s your focus and your job. The rest of it can all wait until you have the bandwidth to deal with it.

I was so grateful to hear a Starfleet directive that simplified my situation into a sensible, comforting, little lecture, that I about cried on the spot. I also followed my sister’s advice as best I could.

I’m struck in hindsight by how much I did not need information in that moment. I had a ton of facts in hand–how motherhood impacts earning capability (not for the best, in too many cases), how single parenting impacts children (ditto), what my options were if I had to drop out law school because the pregnancy became high risk (which it did do, of course). Facts and knowledge and data had reached the limit of their helpfulness and were in fact, making the problem worse.

I needed wisdom.

And that begs the question: In this age when we are deluged by information at chronic flood stage, when we can google anything, when we can wallow in facts, lies, statistics, and expert everything, where will we find wisdom? Where will we exchange and build on the wisdom we have? My sister’s advice in the present day could have been summarized in a social media comment, but something about her deep understanding of me–with whom she had played Barbies by the hour–illuminated what she chose to say and how she said it.

So I’m on the lookout for who and what is wise these days, though I recognize that the same person can be wise about, say, how to get somebody else’s book written, and a complete fool about how to manage her housekeeping (just fr’ instance as a random example).

Who or what has been a source of wisdom for you? Are there parts of life about which you’ve accumulated some wisdom? I suspect there are.

PS: Pre-order links are up for book two in the Bad Heir Day tales, The Mysterious Marquess!

I was sitting in an airport not long ago with time on my hands (three hour delay), and so I watched the passing scene. I noticed how unique our footwear has become.

Though 95% of the passersby were in sneakers of some sort, very few wore the same style. Yellow Nikes, black Hokas, retro bright red Keds, beat up deck shoes… we have a lot of choice regarding our tennies, and we enjoy exercising it. Not so much, the clothes we wear on a traveling day. Jeans and T-shirts, yoga pants and turtlenecks, more jeans, leggings… I saw only one truly impressive Joseph’s coat sort of jacket, but the rest struck me as drab, casually fitting, and uninspired.

Mass produced. This got me thinking about clothing in Regency England, which might have been “ready-made,” a new concept for the time, but was in the vast majority “bespoke.” Your clothing was created, or at least altered, to fit you. If your household had any sort of means, you chose the fabric and the color (or your mama did), and the cut was designed for your particular dimensions. Even the London tailors turning out the standard gentleman’s morning coat had brand-specific patterns to distinguish their coats from the other guys’ and they measured each customer meticulously to ensure a perfect fit. (Just for fun, speaking of which, some Zack Pinsent.)

As somebody who was a little taller than average and considerably wider than average (in places) for most of my adult life, I have pretty much never found clothing that fit me. Even now, my calves are so “sturdy,” that extra-extra wide half chaps don’t fit, and the triple-wide ones gap hugely at the top to accommodate the circumference of my splendid gastrocs.

I have in the entirety of my life, come across a few outfits that felt luscious on me, were the right colors for me, and made me feel more ready to take on the world. They flattered my physique and reinforced a persona I wanted to project. Part costume, part robes of state, and perfect for me. I have seen that mountaintop, though not often and not for decades.

Shopping for clothing generally became my idea of purgatory. Going naked would be worse, so off to Chico’s or J. Jill I would go, looking for elastic waist bands and wide cut everything else and feeling like a misfit. (Please note: If not for stores such as these, I would have nothing business-casual to wear. At. All. I am not dissing them.)

All of this is to say, those Regency ladies and gents had something I have only glimpsed. Within the limits of budget and time, they could make or have made for them the clothing they enjoyed wearing. Right down to whether cuffs were embroidered with violets or roses, and how much embroidery on the bonnet ribbons would be added to match.

“How do I want to look?” was a different question for them than it has been for me. I have considered the query successfully answered if I looked “presentable.” Maybe it’s time to up my game in the sartorial department, and now that I am less wide, maybe the project has a better chance at happy outcomes. I look good in raspberry, for example (most people do). I like purple with dashes of green and peach…

How much consideration do you give to your wardrobe? Do you have a few outfits that you love to wear? What is special about them? If you could have an ensemble made just for you, what instructions would you give your seamstress or tailor?

PS: A print version of The Dreadful Duke is available on Amazon and pre-order links for The Mysterious Marquess are live.

By now, I hope everybody has seen a video of skater Ilia Malinin’s world champion figure skating routine. This guy is nineteen years old, he ended up being last in the order of go, and he has fallen in competition more times than I can count. He’s also the only skater thus far to do all six competitive skating jumps as quadruples. He’s breaking records and doing what was previously considered “impossible.”  Long and happily may he skate!

Roger Bannister did what was was considered impossible when, in the middle of his med school studies, he ran a mile in less than four minutes.

Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay and New Zealander Sir Edmund Hilary did the impossible when, as part of the ninth British expedition to make the attempt, they summited Mount Everest.

Since Bannister ran his mile, 1755 other athletes have done the impossible. In fact, Bannister’s 1954 record stood for just 46 days, though attempts to break the four-minute barrier had been going on for decades. As for Mt. Everest, more than 6500 people have seen the view from the top of the world since 1953, many of them more than once.

When I watch Malinin toss off those successive quad jumps, I want to whoop and stomp and applaud. How does he dooooo that? (He used the pandemic to practice is part of the answer, and it doesn’t hurt that his mom was an international skating super star.) Even so, some part of this guy decided that the impossible was achievable, and I promise you, quad jumps will find their way into more programs in years to come.

A broken barrier is an inspiration, for better or for worse. I’ve only broken one memorable barrier (so far), and that was when I was in eighth grade. I’d taken a year of home economics in seventh grade because it was “mandatory.” A semester of sewing, a semester of cooking. I already knew how to bake brownies, and I could stitch up a split seam. I did not consider that the first year of home ec had any value, and I wasn’t about to endure a second.

Fifty years ago, girls did not take shop, but I signed up for shop anyway. That meant some woodworking, some metal working, and some power mechanics (taking apart lawn mower engines). I learned A LOT from those shop teachers, I learned something about male spaces, and I learned that sometimes, you can create options just by being a little insistent.

That one experience led me to take a class load in eleventh grade that had no lunch. My mom shrugged. The principal was utterly nonplussed. In college I could not decide between music history and pre-law so I obtained degrees in both. I played both jazz and classical piano. I studied both Spanish and Latin in high school. Making one choice at age thirteen to color outside the prescribed lines led to other choices, and I am richer for having gone astray.

Have you seen any impossible dreams come true? Colored outside any lines? Are there any rules you wish you would have broken? It’s time once again for ye old e-ARC list. The Dreadful Duke, first of the Bad Heir Day Tales, will be published in a very few weeks, so email me at [email protected] is you’d like a copy.

I saw a post go by that made me think about how much more easily we were thrilled in childhood. Pizza for dinner was a thrill, Christmas morning was a big deal, the first snow flakes inspired our rapture, and school letting out was cause for giddy elation. We were thrilled by rainbows and cupcakes and sparklers… Life was wondrous (except when it wasn’t).

I have been thinking about this wonderfulness that was so close at hand when I was a kid, and even into early adulthood. Why did I mothball my capacity to be thoroughly delighted? I still like a good pizza, but pizza for dinner is just a “That’ll be a yummy change,” between “Have I paid the mortgage this month?” and, “I’d better wash a load of towels tonight.” The world is too much with me, late and soon–the practical, whiny, devil-in-the-details world.

And yet, in these challenging and annoying times, for wonder to lose out to a load of laundry strikes me as a sour deal. So I challenged myself to be more appreciative of wonder, to focus on the little thrills when they come my way. A partial report of the results is as follows.

Do you know what’s truly wonderful? A leaf blower. I was on evening barn chores detail earlier this week, and one of the last things you do before lights out is use the blower on the aisle. All the little bits of hay and chaff and horse poo go whooshing down the aisle before you. You can make the dirt dance, ricocheting your dust devil off one wall into the other, and when you’re done–ten minutes later–that barn looks like Martha Stewart’s horse lives there.

I had never used a blower before, and I found it profoundly satisfying. (Barn work, sure! House work? Must I really?) More wonderful happened when I rode this week. My hands bounce all over the place and I have no stamina, but once Lola The Mare and I get going, especially to the right, we approach a forward, connected trot that can even move laterally. The plain English translation for that is, we rock along, and it is wonderful.

Pansies are wonderful–they scoff at snow. Shopping at the garden store is wonderful (IN MODERATION, Grace Ann). I got to provide a little assistance on a grant writing project this week, because federal procurement and I go way back. To use what I know in that regard was a real kick. That the landscaper is coming to till up my new forty-foot long pollinator strips (two of them) is great fun. That I found a glimmer of a plot idea for Lord Julian’s sixth tale is glorious.

And when I list these moments for you, they add up to a lot of smiles and some lightheartedness and the realization that wonder is still there. I just need to savor it with more focus.

What’s wonderful for you lately? What has thrilled you, even if it’s only the micro-thrill of using a leaf blower on the barn aisle?

Lately, I feel overbooked (though not yet overwhelmed). For no particular reason, a lot of to-dos have converged at once. The car needs new tires, somebody had better file both business and personal taxes, I’m at the end of my COVID booster window and contemplating plane travel (to see the new grandson, of course), and kitties need various kinds of attention from the vet. A lot of running around and feeling scattered.

I used to run around far more peripatetically than this, and work a full time lawyer job, but them days are gone and I do not miss them.  I suspect this burst of activity on my part (I schedule the vet appointments, I book the new tires appointment, oddly enough) is simply because spring is upon us.

The sunlight is more abundant and brighter (before the leaves come out). The landscape is popping with colorful flowers and trees in bloom. I wake to sunshine in my room, even after the time change (all together: Boo, Hiss, on the time change). I spend less energy wrangling fire wood or simply maintaining body temperature.

In the midst of my busyness, I do not want to miss the joys of spring, because they are abundant. Three months from now, when I am whining about the humidity, the bugs, the noise (fans, farm equipment, pick up trucks, mama cows separated from their babies), please, bloggin’ buddies, remind me of the following:

The beautiful flowers and their bright colors. (Somebody should have pruned that forsythia bush by the barn. I wonder who it could be?). The pleasure of not having splinters in my fingers nigh daily from feeding the wood stove its many meals per day. The litter boxes going for days without use because it’s nice outside. The smell and feel of sun-dried laundry. The joy of working in my flower beds. The beautiful sound of the stream greeting me first thing in the morning and the equally lovely chorus of birdsong.

I will soon miss the wood stove and its luscious radiant heat, not only because the weather will warm up, but also because burning wood is a climate no-no, and the Big Job this year will be installing heat pumps.

For now though, I can put my tweezers away, and be grateful not to need them. I can ease up on the litter-box patrol (some), I can dress in less than three layers (whee!), and leave stuff in the car without fear that it will freeze if I don’t unload it before morning.

Spring is here (despite some backsliding in the forecast) and I am grateful.

What will you be taking for granted later that you are appreciating now? What did you take for granted that you lately hold in greater esteem?

I think it’s time for a give away. To three commenters, I will send the web store title of their choice, and that includes audio titles and a pre-order for The Dreadful Duke!

Author Patience Griffin’s “Gandigow Star” quilt

The comments inspired by last week’s post made me sad!

We’ve given up baking, quilting, scuba diving, swimming, gardening, needlework, and who knows what else, all interesting activities in their own rights, and also ways to positively connect with other people. To part with these personal joys hurts, and isolates us from those who shared those pleasures with us.

When I sit on a horse, I am not merely somebody who enjoys riding, I am a rider. It’s an identity and an activity, and that’s what struck me about the losses described in last week’s comments. We part with the identity–scuba diver, swimmer, gardener, quilter–as well as the activity itself, and there’s no memorial service for that cherished part of us that has quietly slipped away.

Perhaps these gloomy thoughts inspired me to realize that becoming a grandmother is also, for me, a loss. As a single mom with one daughter, I was pretty focused on my only child for a big chunk of my adulthood. Since she left home almost twenty years ago, I have remained in her life, a support and a comfort, I hope, even as her adult partners have come and gone. (Some could have gone a lot sooner, if you ask me.)

Now that she is a mom, I’m bumped down the list of significant people in her life. If she had to vote either me or the baby off the island, I’d be packing my bags. There’s a new kid in town, and he displaces me to some extent, and that’s exactly how it should be.

Rationally, I know motherhood gives me and my daughter something significant in common. I grasp that love doesn’t operate like search engine optimization protocols that rank every hit, and only show the first few. You can love your offspring madly, and have plenty of time and attention to give others in your life, at least some of the time.

But still. A loss.

So this seemed like a good time to say to my bloggin’ buddies, be you a lurker, a regular, or in between, that I am grateful to have this place to share the occasional thought with you. We might have to give up some roles as life moves us on, or shift the way we inhabit those roles, but the fundamental joy of connection remains available to us. I appreciate the livin’ peedywhaddles out of your willingness to connect with me here, whether you stopped by today for the first time, left a few casual observations, wrote from the heart, or caught a few of my earliest posts more than ten years ago.

Someday I will have to hang up my spurs, and that will make me sad too, but to know I’m not the only person aging out of a beloved hobby, not the only woman who will miss flower gardening on her knees, is a very great comfort.

Thank you for that, and for all the thoughtful, kind, funny, and inspiring comments you’ve left over the years. I’ve read every one of them, but I’ve never taken the time to say thank you, so I’m saying it now.

Who or what comforts you when life gets to be daunting?

I haven’t been on a horse for about a year, and I was getting that “Now or never,” feeling about climbing back in the saddle. I dislike “slow grief” situations, where you aren’t absolutely certain of a loss, but it’s looking more and more sure as time goes on, but there’s no closure, no ritual, no moment when you can say, “That relationship or role or aspect of my life is gone for good,” except in hindsight.

I was beginning to doubt that I’d find my way back to the saddle, despite all the great memories, the bond with my daughter, and the mental challenge that riding has given me. Instructors, understandably, are looking for students who will a) buy a horse, b) board that horse at the instructor’s barn, and c) have the ambition and athleticism to aim for the show ring, because competition entails hauling and coaching fees for the instructor (usually), if not fees for also riding the horse at show. Then too, teaching an old lady who mostly just wants to mess around is hardly the pinnacle of pedagogy for a true equestrian.

I observed a few lessons with local instructors, and ye gods and little fishes. So serious! So un-fun and dominance-based. My old trainer has long since moved to Florida, but I’d hesitate to ride with him even if he were available. I’m not in shape, and what muscle I had even a year ago has been compromised by weight loss. And the longer I’m away from riding, the more my courage for the sport ebbs. Horses are big, you know…

Fortunately for me, the therapeutic riding barn recently offered me the chance to ride in a class for volunteers. The horses get to do more than walk along the rail, and the volunteers can experience what our equine co-workers are like to ride. I was nervous, friends, and I’m enough of a horse girl to know that horses sense when we’re nervous, and then they can get nervous, et cetera and so forth.

I should not have worried at all. The instructor put me up on Mae, a sensible, mature Clydesdale mare, and twenty paces away from the mounting block, I was riding instead of fretting. Which is our bendy side, which is our straight side? How to approach contact with the bit when the horse is built to pull rather than push from behind? Will she move off my leg? Eyes up and soft, Grace. Remember to breathe…

The day will come when I will hang up my spurs, but I rejoice greatly to say, today is not that day. The saddle can still be a happy place for me, and my gratitude for that knows no limits. I danced a little nip-up in the barn aisle I was so stupidly happy. Texted my daughter. Cried in the car. I don’t yet have to say, “I was a horse girl.” My paddock boots and helmet are back in the passenger’s seat, and there they will stay for now.

Have you ever had the chance to revisit a previous passion? Is there a passion you’d like to revisit or maybe visit for the first time?

PS: Lord Julian’s fourth tale, A Gentleman in Pursuit of Truth, is now available from all the usual suspects, and mystery number five, A Gentleman in Search of a Wife, is available for pre-order.

I saw a Facebook post go by celebrating the knock-on effect of dopamine. The syllogism went something like this: I treated myself to a fish tank I could not easily afford, but I just love that fish tank. Every time I see those little fishies swimming in their beautiful little world, I am happy. On the strength of that happy (a dopamine hit), I was motivated to tackle a bunch of other stuff I had been putting off, like organizing my kitchen shelves, because dopamine isn’t just the reward chemical, it’s the motivation chemical. Now I’m going to follow my joy. Pretty soon my house will be clean, I’ll have a savings account, and nothing but blue skies in every direction.

My instinctive reaction was, “Yeah, but you spent money you couldn’t comfortably spare, the fishies might have all died, and you were probably getting to the ‘my kitchen is driving me nuts’ point anyway. Besides, that dopamine stuff has lot to do with turning people into compulsive fish-tank hoarders, as everybody well knows.”

Do they really? I got to thinking… My parents’ rubrics were business before pleasure, and work hard and “get ahead,” whatever that means. What I saw as a kid though, was two devoted coffee drinkers who also smoked and tippled heavily right through the week (as did most of their peers), and a father who got a migraine most Sunday nights before starting out the week at a job he was outwardly devoted to. Mom’s housekeeping would be called compulsive by current standards. If business comes before pleasure, when does pleasure ever get a turn?

I’m also reminded of James Clear’s admonition that the most important part of building a new habit, is associating the habit with something pleasurable now. When you floss, if you stop to grin in the mirror at your pearly whites and say to yourself, “Good job! I’m proud of you!” you are more likely to keep up the flossing. If you bundle the daily walk with catching up with a friend, or admiring the botanical gardens, the walk is more likely to remain daily. Something about how you go about the new habit itself–not the result it produces–has to be attractive, or the behavior is hard to sustain.

And then I thought about how my day begins–with my now famous cup of jasmine green tea laced with manuka honey. I start the day with a treat, and with my treat in hand, I go to the computer and do some writer “work.” I use quotes, because I do love my job, and I would much rather do writer stuff than house work, yard work, marketing stuff (blech), or errands. As a matter of fact, when I started writing for pleasure, my migraines began to wane. Hmm.

In other words, I start my day with joy. THEN I deal with litter boxes, laundry, and life. I honestly don’t think I could do it the other way around very well now, though I ordered my life in the business before pleasure direction for decades. Now, I would… pout? Stall? I’m not sure what the right word would be, but I function better if I prime my emotional pump with some pleasure and indulgence.

How does motivation work for you? Lean into joy, or start with the hard stuff and celebrate after the race is run? Some of both? Depends on the context? Do tell!

PS: Lord Julian’s fifth mystery, A Gentleman in Search of a Wife, is now available for pre-order on all the web store and the retail sites, and even has its spiffy final cover!