I am a bit under the, um, weather. Might be flu, might be food poisoning. Aches, low fever, chills, GI upset… When I am feeling more than thing, I will get a blog post up. Assuming the power doesn’t go down, or the internet, and that my supply of paperback TBRs is sufficient…

Stay safe, folks!

I learned to make lesson plans on my way to becoming a therapeutic riding instructor. This involved crafting long term goals for each student, and lesson-by-lessons steps for reaching those goals. One of the concepts that pops up over and over again in the lesson planning process is the zone of proximal development.

That’s a hifalutin way of saying, “What is the next skill this rider could work toward that they cannot do now on their own, but can make progress toward with support and practice, and eventually even do independently?” Key to working productively in the zone of proximal development is having a lot of the prerequisite skills already in place. To hold the reins, a student has to be able to control their grip. To ride a sitting trot, they must be able to stay on without support at the walk (which takes a heap more skill and strength than you’d think).

One lovely aspect of later life is that we have acquired a ton of skills. Most of us have had several careers or career phases. We’ve navigated, at least short-term, more than one culture. We’ve weathered several different kinds of long-term relationships. We’ve driven a stick, a tractor, a golf cart, and an SUV. We’ve bounced back from bad decisions and bad luck. We even (sometimes) know how to keep our mouths shut when popping off with a dearly held screed would not be helpful.

With a few very significant caveats, when it comes to learning, the world is our onion. I like learning, and I know it’s good for the old bean, so I’ve set myself some challenges that lie in my zones of proximal development. I’m going after another horse-related certification (about which I will probably bore you at length, later). I have also taken on some fundraising tasks for the adaptive riding barns where I work.

Begging for money is no fun, so why do this?

Welp, my very first job in Washington, DC, forty-thousand years ago, was coordinating the drafting and production of proposals in response to government requests for bids. In law school, I took the classes necessary to be certified in procurement law. I know a lot about the intersection of public money with private enterprise and I love to write. So… how hard can it be to tweak those skills into thumping the tub for the worthy cause of safely putting people with disabilities on horses?

It’s… not so easy. The private foundations with money to disperse seem to all but hide their existence; the major corporations who claim to have charitable arms are also apparently stealth operations. Fortunately, I am tenacious and determined. I am also starting down the American Sign Language education path.

Why? Because I enjoy languages. I’ve studied French, German,  and Spanish to the point of having rudimentary competence somewhere along the way, and I’ve seen Latin and a few glimpses of Scottish Gaelic through the linguistic binoculars. Riders who cannot speak are part of the adaptive demographic, and even though assistive devices can be incorporated into a riding lesson, why not just learn some ASL and see if that’s helpful? The sign for horse makes perfect sense to me.

So those are two of this year’s learning challenges, and what strikes me about both is that I can enjoy them. I can enjoy learning about the charitable foundation data bases, enjoy helping wonderful organizations find slightly firmer financial footing, enjoy trotting out my new sign vocabulary for the week.

What skill or expertise lies in your zone of proximal development that you could enjoy working toward?

PS: And because the first rule of fundraising is, “You have to ask!” if anybody here does have some ideas for how to locate money to host a little barn dance/fundraiser, please do drop me a line at [email protected]!

Later this year I am slated to teach a series of unmounted (not-in-the-saddle) horse barn lessons. We’ll look at how horses see, hear, and feel differently from humans, learn what an un-mucked stall can tell us about our horses, and compare human cognitive capabilities with horse minds. Maybe. If a bunch of six year olds sign up, I’m not sure what material I’ll present, so I’m asking the other instructors what their favorite ground lessons are.

The first response I got was, “Just ask your students, ‘Can you do nothing with your horse? Can you stand quietly for two minutes beside your horse and not fuss, not walk on, not start braiding the mane…? Horses stand quietly with each other by the hour. Can you do the same, and what do you learn from trying?'”

Grace explains how horses see

My first thought was: Erm, don’t think I’ll start with this exercise… Then I tried it, and realized that the compulsion to lead that horse around, to give the horse neck scratchies, to talk to the horse, was nearly overwhelming, BUT part of that urge is just because I am in a horse barn. I strongly, strongly associate a horse barn with getting stuff done. I am there to make a contribution with my effort, not to improve the landscape by impersonating topiary. Muck that stall, lead that pony, put away that tack.

If you asked me to just hang out with a horse in a loafing shed or in the pasture, I’d probably be more able to coast in silence simply because the venue changed.

I strongly associate creative mental activity with my writing chair, and the only place I have ever written books is at my kitchen table (with a few hotel rooms thrown in). I read in bed to wind down–nowhere else. I visit with friends in restaurants at lunchtime. Without ever meaning to, I have assigned certain functions to certain places. As a kid, I was marched off to Our Lady Victory Church for mass every Sunday. I am sad to say that fifty years on, I still associate churches with that place where you are bored, you sit on hard benches, and you try not to squirm or talk for an ETERNITY. Church = a place for physical, social, intellectual, and emotional discomfort at all once.

The strength with which I associate places and functions leads me to ask: So, Grace, where is the place for grief, fear, or anger? The answer might be…in my eighteen year old Prius. I drive in silence, and usually over familiar routes, and without company. In that situation, the harder emotions have room to surface–I realize that I am still pissed about that guy who cut me off at the Safeway, or that what I’m calling anxiety is really fear generated by current events. Oddly enough, the inside of my car is pretty untidy, and full of a lot of “just in case” stuff, like spare clothing, bottles of water, tools, fix-a-flat, and reusable grocery bags.

And this brings me to the question that stumped me this week: Where do I celebrate? Where do I rejoice? When I am luminous with joy, what place do I gravitate toward? I haven’t come up with an answer–flower beds are celebrations for me–but if I don’t have a place suited to celebrating, why not, and what am I going to do about it?

What places do you associate with joy?

PS: Watch for pre-order links for A Gentleman of Modest Ambitions, Lord Julian’s twelfth mystery, scheduled to publish at the end of May.

I’ve had a lot of time to myself over the holidays, which I’ve enjoyed tremendously. My little life, with writing in the morning, horse barn time, errands, socializing, and appointments in the afternoon, and more book work in the evening, is dear and pleasant to me most days. In recent years, if I’m parted from that routine for any length of time, I get into solitude-deficit mode, which is characterized by fretting, dithering, and wheel-spinning.

It took me a while to learn that, yes, I need days at home by myself–lots of them–to keep my emotional and creative balance. I need to get up in the morning knowing the whole marvelous expanse of hours before me is mine, mine, all mine, and I won’t have to get in the car unless I feel like it.

The self-care experts are all for reminding us to eat veggies and exercise and maintain social connections, and don’t forget journaling and yoga and protein (for starts), but the need for isolation from human stimuli doesn’t often make the list. Unplugging is becoming popular, but not hermiting.

I need to hermit. It also took me a while to figure out that if there is a poster child for the inefficiency and futility of multi-tasking, I am that child. Trying to wrangle a text exchange (it’s not a conversation) while coding general ledger items means I will fling a book expense into the parking category. If I’m trying to discuss a fraught issue while saddling a horse, I’ll get the blanket on upside down or take off the bridle I just put on the beast. Ask me how I know this.

The best way for me to get a lot done well and without drama is to hide frequently, go slowly, and proceed one deliberate step at a time. And if I didn’t sleep well last night, expectations must be lowered, period. I don’t think this list represents any diminution in my powers. I’ve always been like this, but earlier in life I was better at compensating with determination and denial, and not as good at being aware of, or organizing life around, what works for me.

Going forward into the new year, I want to be more aware of how much of me is actually a slow twitch creature. I like to write quickly. I love it when a scene just flies onto the screen, snappy repartee, telling details of setting, and romantic subtext all on the first go. To get those scenes, though, I have to be on my game, which means walk the to-do lists slowly, walk frequently in solitude, and get plenty of regular rest.

What reminders are you giving yourself as the new year begins? Are you creating any tangible prompts to help keep you moving toward or in your happy place?

PS (Reminder?): Lord Julian’s tenth mystery, A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets, is now available from the web store as an audio book!

My nature is somewhat contrarian (you can take the lawyer out of the courtroom…), and thus as the year end approaches I am not thinking about what I need to fix in 2026, or what I need to put behind me from 2025. I’m thinking about what went right in 2025.

This was the year a friend put me onto the recycling dumpsters in a little town just across the river. Anybody can pull up, “donate” their cardboard, plastic, or tin cans, and drive off, their green halo shining just a bit more brightly. This has given me a monthly dose of  joy, when the county I live in makes recycling both tedious and fee-based.

2025 was the year I rediscovered what used to be a small Works Progress Administration park a few miles from the house. While I wasn’t looking, the MD taxpayers saved about 50 acres of green space by tacking former farmland onto the existing park, adding trails, a dog park, and soccer fields, creating a safe, pretty way for everybody to walk from town to the local library. When I need a change of scene for a walk, or I just don’t want to be on a road, the park has become a wonderful, convenient respite.

I switched therapeutic riding barns in 2025, and feel that I traded up. The old barn had a lot of positive features, and I owe that organization much. I left reluctantly, but the new barn is a better fit with my values, and I very much enjoy time spent there.  I can make more of a contribution at Great and Small Therapeutic Riding, and maybe even do some grant writing. Wheeee!

Photo Credit: Ridin’ Buddy extraordinaire, Alison Duvall

When I think about the doors that have opened without much effort on my part, it’s easy to sidle over into thinking about other just plain wonderful aspects of life. Wikipedia, for example, occasionally gets it wrong (iced tea was not invented at an Edwardian World’s Fair, fer cryin’ inna bucket), but the model corrects for boo-boos, and an army of volunteers has created a free, comprehensive knowledge repository that makes us all just a little closer to the information we need.

Baking soda goes on my list of signs and wonders. Regency cooks didn’t have it–baking soda is an early Victorian discovery–meaning our guy Carême leavened his goodies with yeast, whipped cream, or whipped egg whites, period. No cupcakes! No brownies! No pumpkin bread! Truly, baking soda deserves some appreciation.

I met a wonderful landscape crew this year, guys who have done hard, dangerous big-tree work with a smile, and made me and my property safer. I’ve made new horse friends, become a grandma for the second time (to hear that baby giggle is to have your heart warmed), and written some fun books.

What has gone right for you this year? What are you hoping will work out well in 2026?

PS: This is my final post for the year. See you in January, and I hope everybody’s holidays are peaceful, joyous, and full of good books!

I am indebted to the ever-fascinating Dense Discovery newsletter for drawing my attention to an essay by evolutionary anthropologist Eli Stark-Elster. The premise of the piece is that among our hunter-gatherer cousins and ancestors, children spend and spent a lot of time goofing around in largely unsupervised peer gangs. Now, we’ve taken away all the safe-ish places our kids could do that–no more woods at the edge of town, no more hanging out at the swimming hole, no more sandlot sports–and thus children have nowhere left to seek unsupervised peer society other than the dangerous, dirty, depressing internet.

This little thought piece has stuck with me, maybe because my upbringing did include woods that started right at our backyard, a sandlot baseball diamond/rugby pitch/soccer field, solo tromps to school from age five, horseback rides over hill and dale at all hours with not an adult supervisor to be seen. No internet nothing. No TV allowed for much of it.

But I was also raised by parents who played. Mom went off to whack tennis balls with her lady friends, Dad would sit down at the piano and fool around with some boogie-woogie licks a friend had shown him in high school. When Dad got together with his old friend Ben, they’d play cribbage by the hour and you never heard such silliness as those two grown men indulged in. Mom and Dad occasionally got into flirtatious and playful moods, though I have no idea why my dad was dancing to Get Up and Boogie with underpants on his head that one morning when I was in eighth grade (he was also decently attired).

I saw play modeled by the grown ups around me. I saw it validated as a worthy use of time, as a source of legitimate joy. I was not only allowed to play, I was expected to play. I was also expected to excel in school and do chores, but unstructured goofing around, with and without peers, was firmly on the agenda adults assumed I would follow.

One of the guys I dated, by contrast, had been raised in a conservative farming family. One day a year they’d pack up the station wagon and take a picnic to the shores of Lake Michigan. For that entire day, the dad would grumble about time wasted, the mom would sit white-knuckled in the front seat praying the family made it home. One grouchy, anxious day a year was all the leisure and recreation that boyfriend saw modeled.

Play is good for us, and great for children. It strengthens our executive functioning, problem-solving skills, creativity, empathy, social resilience, autonomy, and even the very structures of our brains.

I do think that wrecking our green spaces, putting cars at the top of our community design priorities, and buying into stranger-danger paranoia is bad for us all around, and especially bad for our children. I also wonder, though, if we’re making enough space in our parenting and collective child-rearing, for the seriously beneficial activity we call play.

How did you play when you were a kid? If a child looked at your life now, would they see you being regularly playful?

At some point during the pandemic, my rural county seat here in Maryland began sporting panhandlers on its main street corners. The begging became so ubiquitous that the county fathers (they are all fathers) had the municipality pay to put up signs about panhandling being unsafe, so “change the way you give.”

I understand the point of the signs–structural problems are solved by structural change–but I also understand that, but for my parents helping me catch up all my overdue mortgage payments the second time I was laid off, I and my infant daughter would have been staring at homelessness. Even thirty years ago, the bank didn’t let you limp along one or two payments behind. Catch all the way up, or pack up.

Fast forward to earlier this week, and I’m out and about on the usual errands.  I pass a man holding a sign, “Please help,” but I’m moving in traffic and I wasn’t in the right lane, and and and… I debate doing a U-turn, or a jug-handle turn, or detouring back that way on the home-bound leg…

I could not get that guy out of my head. Structural change wasn’t working for him. The day was cold, with worse weather on the way. My rural county of 150,000 souls has exactly ONE shelter that admits men (30 beds), and that one is only open during winter.

I DO hand cash to people who are asking for it. I keep a little in the car at all times just for that purpose. But I passed that guy without doing anything to help him. Gah. Fortunately for me, another person with another sign was on the corner nearest the pet food store, so my little cash stash found a new home, but that other guy still bothers me. I will look for him on my next pet food run.

The lesson I take from the day is, unhoused people are supposed to bother me. Handing every one of them enough for a couple meals doesn’t make their problem go away–the sign is right about that–so why should handing out a few dollars make my concern for them go away? They are in a seriously difficult predicament. Yes, I know, many prefer that predicament, but many others do not. Maybe “change the way you give” means stop thinking a little cash here and there–while helpful in the moment–is enough to excuse action from me on the larger issue.

Change how I give, by giving not only a little cash, but also some activism? Now there’s a daunting thought, but then, homelessness is beyond daunting.

All of this leaves me with a question: How do you know when you’ve given enough? How do you answer that voice in your head that says, “Your neighbor is in difficulties, and you have to at least try to help”?

PS: A couple of readers have asked about a holiday novella/short story I wrote for 2018 anthology. The anthology has long since ridden into the sunset, leaving A Knight Before Christmas (easily confused with THE Knight Before Christmas) orphaned. It’s a mere stocking stuffer at 15k words, but I hope to have it formatted and added to the web store freebie page in the next couple weeks.

I recently traveled to Colorado for a therapeutic riding conference and also got to spend a little time with my sister. We found ourselves reflecting on how wonderfully pared down my mother kept her household, right up until the end. Mom was by nature relentlessly tidy, but even tidy people can accumulate boxes of old clothes, vases, garden tools, or books.

Not my folks. They lived in the same Pennsylvania college town for more than thirty years, and managed to keep that house free of junk. When it came time to move west, Mom took very little from the PA house to the CA house. This has puzzled me, in that both Mom and Dad lived through the Depression. They were entitled to hoard or at least hang on to anything still functional, and yet, their households were always on the lean side.

No attics full of old pictures or half-busted furniture, no chests of defunct clothing, smooshed hats, or mildewed boots. Whatever it is that keeps the junk haulers in business, Mom and Dad didn’t have it around.

As I’ve pondered this tendency to not collect stuff, I suspect part of the equation is that my parents never fell prey to the, “consume your way to happiness” pathology. The average urban resident sees 1600 marketing images daily, every one of those images screaming that if you’ll just buy this device, moisturizer, home gym, weighted blanket, life coaching course, or pair of shoes, you will finally be OK, or less not-OK than you are right now.

Maybe Mom and Dad were basically OK enough to see the flaw in that message, or maybe they were inoculated early in life with the “waste not. want not” philosophy. They never had a clutter problem, and I believe this was an area of accord in the marriage. When they died at the ages of 92 (Mom) and 97 (Dad, eighteen months after Mom), they left very little in the way of things behind. I have the captain’s rocking chair that was given to Dad when he retired, and one of Mom’s Vera Bradley purses.

One of my brothers has the lathe-turned open barley twist candlesticks my grandfather made for my mom. A sister has the photographs, a niece has Mom’s recipes. Another niece has Mom’s silver. We all have the love.

I would like to leave my daughter a tidy, lean house to sell (or keep) upon my death. I’d like her to have her grandfather’s rocking chair, some scrapbooks, a nice nest egg of literary royalties, and lots and lots of my love.

How are you doing with the balance between possessions and meaning. What stuff of yours will have meaning when you’re gone?

I am always looking for ideas that let me get a little more done, a little more easily. One popular productivity approach is, “Eat the frog.” This is click-speak for, “First, do the thing on your list that you dread the most. You’ll sail through the rest of the to-dos with much less friction when you aren’t putting off a dreaded task.”

I am not a huge fan of this tactic, though I can occasionally apply it to good effect. Many of our “dread the most” tasks can’t be moved to the top of the list. You have to confront your spouse when they get home and are in a receptive mood. Other dread-the-most tasks are repetitive. Heaven, deliver me from picking the kitty litters over and over and over again. Still others–like a dentist appointment–just sit on the calendar like a troll under a bridge until the appointed time rolls around.

I do find some utility in a “just do something” strategy. Knock something off the list, get going, start taxi-ing down one run way or another, doesn’t matter which one. Take out the trash, fold the laundry, code the general ledger, get ISBN numbers for the next work in progress. Momentum and the joy of completing a task might carry me forward until I’m at the bottom of my list.

I am also a fan of what I call the “stuff it under a cushion” approach. I truly do not enjoy picking four kitty litter boxes every day, sometimes twice a day (if it’s wet and miserable outside). I derive no joy from seeing the litter restored to a pristine expanse, because before I have taken a bag of doots out to the trash, some feline is delighting in spoiling my efforts. I’m the same way about house work, payroll, grocery shopping…

So I try to minimize both the drudgery and my resistance to taking on these tasks by tending to them between and around the good stuff. While my second cup of tea is steeping, I will do the downstairs litter patrol. Only takes fives minutes when I don’t dawdle, and that’s long enough for my jasmine white tea to brew. I won’t make a grocery run that’s just a grocery run if I can help it. Throw in a pet food run, a trip to the bank, a swing by the bakery, a walk in the local park.

I’ll take out trash when I need a get-up-and-move break between writing scenes. I try to prepare mess call for the herd of feral cats (open fifty cans of wet food and dump it into a tub), when I’ve just read yesterday’s pages. I open-the-can/dump-the-can while my mind is on, “What does the reader expect to happen in the next scene? How can I stand that on its head or tweak it in a fresh direction?” Pretty soon, mess call is prepped, and I have a few ideas about where the rest of my chapter might go.

The point is to minimize my focus on the task, to minimize its importance, and then the next time I’m facing the same to-do, it’s just another way to fill in five minutes, or thirty-five minutes between the good stuff.

Or so I tell myself. What do you tell yourself to get through the to-dos, must-do’s, and don’t-wanna-do’s?

PS: This year’s holiday novella, A Kiss for Hope, is now available. This is a happily ever after for Joshua Penrose, whom we met early on in the Rogues to Riches series. Wheee!