So I’m reading along in a fascinating little book, Horse Brain/Human Brain, which details how equines and people perceive and process the world in different (or similar) ways. One of the similarities is, the horse’s eye, by about age 20, is no longer taking in light as effectively as it did at age seven.

I did not know this happens to people too. As we age we don’t see as well in dim or very bright light (I though it was just me), in part because we adjust more slowly to changes in brightness, and in part because the window pane of our eye gets cloudier. I should know this. I was literally born cross-eyed and I wore glasses by age three, but I did not come across this fact previously.

This might explain why I so enjoy the brilliance of sunlight on snow, which I’m in a position to appreciate today. At this coldest, bleakest (ye gods my heating bill!) time of year, we can also get the highest blasts of natural, cheerful illumination. I really like that. The summer sun tends to accompany too much heat, as well as a lot of, “Where is my hat, my sunscreen, my lip screen…” fussing.

Winter sun is just purely wonderful. I also think the absence of bugs is just purely wonderful. Right up there on the same list is the absence of kittens at this time of year. Kittens in the abstract are wonderful-plus, but you-will-never-catch-me kittens peeking out from under my summer kitchen in the spring are a testament to my failure (thus far!) to trap-neuter-vaccinate-release my way to a feral-free property. But come winter, when many of the wilder cats will creep into the house during a cold snap, I often trap in higher numbers, and this fortifies me to keep up the good fight.

And speaking of felines and their less endearing traits… there I was, minding my own business, sorting socks and undies by the dryer when I heard that signature thump of a soft, feathered body against glass. Wings beating. Uh-oh.

Came into the living room to find a small blue jay frantically climbing the window while a half a dozen cats batted ineffectually, swatted, and generally menaced the poor creature. Mind you, jays are not my favorite bird, but this one was a guest in my home, as I am a guest in hers. I feed wet food to the cats every day to reduce their predatory activities, but I doubt this bird just spontaneously hopped through the cat door to say hi.

Caught the bird in my hands, which she tolerated calmly. Took her to the porch, lifted my hands and… off she flew, perching way up on a limb of the nearest big pine tree. She flew just fine, she perched just fine. What a story she will have to tell the grandkids! I am still delighted that she will live to tell it. Nature can go be red in tooth and claw on somebody else’s watch, so there!

And this is how I get through another cold snap, another double severe weather warning, another weekend fretting over the power going out (wood stove stocked and ready to fire up).

What small delights have come your way, or cheer your from memory, despite bleakness, despite bodily woes, despite everything?

So… been a week. A very cold week for this region, meaning the big snow is still very much with us, late and soon. The black ice spreads night by night, and the meteorologists sound strangely rapturous about the possibility of another dump of the white stuff in the near future. Must be winter!

I haven’t had a week like this in ages. With COVID we could and did go outside, probably more than some of us had previously, and that was good for us. With the temperature bouncing between a refreshing 2F and a balmy high of 18F, I’m channeling some indoor vibes.

And I am sleeping. For several days in a row, I’ve been telling myself, “Welp, you are over that dreadful bug, this is a great opportunity to Get After The House, so set that alarm, and back on schedule you go!” The plan is, get up early and write multiple wonderful scenes, then switch to domestic force of nature mode, and edit pages into sparkling near-perfection in the evening. Beddy-bye on time between ten and eleven, repeat.

Great plan!

And not happenin’ so far. Tomorrow’s not looking so good either. Instead, I’ve been hitting snooze and sleeping–hard–for at least another hour. My activity level is low, and yet… I am sleeping soundly. Usually when that happens, or when I sleep through an alarm, I shrug and think, “Guess I was tired.”

Guess, I AM tired. And realizing that my sense of when I’m physically fatigued is (still, yet some more) unreliable, I’m pondering what else I’m resting from, because I am resting. This torpid, solitary, low RPMs week is sitting just fine with me.

The first I-needed-a-break that comes to mind is my commute to the horse barn. It’s an hour each way, which is by no means the longest commute on my CV, but my options are for the most part interstates or back-back roads. Roads with no shoulder, plenty of wild life, no handy white line to sight down when the pick-up barreling toward me forgets to dim his brights. Bad to no cell service in stretches.

I hate that rubbishing commute and I hate, loathe, and despise it after dark. Four more weeks, and my schedule will shift, but doing that schlep on three successive days wears me down. I hadn’t admitted that to myself, but by all that’s chocolate, I’m admitting it now.

I am also admitting that trying to step into new roles–Raise ’em charitable funds, Teach that lesson!–is tiring. That stuff takes up mental bandwidth, not simply when I’m in the arena or chatting with a co-worker, but when I’m fretting over what to teach next week, which next fundraising steps I need to first mother-may-my up the food chain, and which I can bull-in-a-china-shop without supervision. I am out of the habit of doing emotional work in an organizational context, but that’s part of the deal I want to take on now.

The residual message for me is: Find some more down time and guard it like it’s my last paperback copy of The Heir. Pay attention to that amorphous sense of lassitude that just might be mental, emotional, or physical fatigue (or all three). Talk to the powers-that-barn about two days on-site instead of three with the spring session, and drive really, really carefully for the rest of the winter shift.

What has the weather helped you learn–the hot weather, the cold weather, the beautiful weather, the dangerous or sweet weather?

PS: We have a final cover for An Heir of Distinction!

I am getting over a bout of norovirus or its near kin. Not fun, but not a protracted illness either. While I was napping, slamming Motrin, and sipping clear liquids, about a foot and half of snow fell, and headline news presented us with another entirely avoidable tragedy in the killing of Alex Pretti, followed immediately by national leadership figures lying about the tragedy or ignoring the tragedy.

I am officially off stride, and Lord Julian is just going to have marinate for a while in his many imperfections, contradictions, and endearing strengths. I’ll get back to the work in progress soon, but just… not… yet.

I am all for staring reality right in the eye, dealing with facts, and relying on fact-based sources, but right now, I also understand the need to hit pause, put the court in recess, and get some settings back to neutral, or as close to neutral as I can manage with the resources available to me now.

I start with a truth: It’s not all going to perdition. The power is still on. Maryland has one of the best grids in the country (and it’s fracking-free). The power could drop two minutes from now, but so far, the house is toasty, the pipes are working, and the potty flushes. I have all the back-ups in place (wood stove, stock-piled water, stock-piled cat food), but not having go Little House in the Dark Ages so far is a tremendous gift.

The cats are enjoying the snow. Many of them have never seen snow, much less the kind they can walk on, and they are darting around outside like Arctic foxes for a few minutes here and there.  The sun is shining, and sun on snow as well all know from Lord Julian’s mutterings, is very, very bright.

My upstairs cat, Travis, thinks I really should be taking three naps a day. Best idea yet! She’s an odd personality, very stand-offish, until it’s plain I’m down for the count, and then she’s the head-booping, face-pawing, jet-engine purring champeen of rural Maryland. Her company has been a comfort.

The quiet has been balm to my soul. NO TRAFFIC (I did hear a salt truck on Saturday night). But none of the up and down the road all day noise that we think we tune out, but we don’t really. My days have been truly, wonderfully, restfully QUIET, and then,

the best quiet of all, the quiet of a heavy snow fall.

So far, I am benefiting from the weather, which leaves me feeling guilty, because of course, so many people are hurt by it. But I needed a hiatus this week, and I am getting one, and for that I am grateful. I am off to shovel another few feet of walkway, and maybe take my first nap of the day. May you all stay safe and warm and on stride.

Any back-handed benefits befalling you lately? Re-sets you didn’t plan, or schedule changes that worked out for the best?

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.