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!

I was horse-leading along a few lessons ago, walking Noble Steed up the barn’s drive-way, which has a black-top surface. The rider announced, “I like that sound!” meaning the 1-2-3-4 pattern of hoof falls. We use that sound, along with the kinesthetic feel of the body’s sway at the walk, to cue especially auditory learners into the rhythm and sensation of riding a “sound” horse (sorry).

Um, whatever. I like that sound too! I was in Melbourne, Australia (go if you ever get the chance), on the other side of the world from all that is dear and familiar to me, and feeling homesick. Then I heard the rhythmic beat of shod hooves on asphalt, clip-clop, clip-clop right there in the middle of the city. A couple of police horses were out on patrol, and just the tattoo of their hoofbeats settled my feathers and made me feel less of a stranger to my surroundings.

I’ve been adding sound to my end of day ritual, in the form of ten or fifteen minutes of usually instrumental music. My playlist is pretty trite: The Goldberg Variations, Bach’s Air on a G String. The Prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in C major. The Maple Leaf Rag, Solace. The second movement from Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata. Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 in E-flat major. These are calm, mostly lyrical old friends from my way back youth, when I had some musical proficiency. Like the sound of equine hoof beats, they soothe and please me regardless of context.

My daughter’s voice is a heart-sound I don’t hear enough, though some of it comes through in her texts. The voices of close friends and family, the sound of Travis the Cat purring me to sleep, the slow song of crickets in September, the morning aria of the robin coming through my bedroom window in Spring.

I may lose my hearing someday. My mother did, and the prognosis for me is not exactly cheerful, but for now, I have these heart-sounds in my treasure house, and my hope is, if I can appreciate them thoroughly enough, I might still have them even if my hearing disappears. For right now, they have become a conscious part of my daily self-fortification routine and a source of pleasure and joy that I can have for free, no subscription fees apply.

What are your heart sounds? Do you get to hear them enough?

I had a fair amount of energy early in life. Didn’t need much sleep, was up to stacking a wagon of hay in the miserable summer heat, did college without a car and walked all over creation as a result. Same with law school–work all day, in school five nights a week, who needs a car? Then something changed–single motherhood, thyroid disease, various anemias… I’m not sure what, but the energizer bunny became beta fish Grace, at least physically.

Fast forward to now, when I have long since realized that I don’t bounce. If I have a bad night of sleep, it’s going to take several good nights to recharge. If I over-exert myself at the barn, same. I can putter around at low RPMs pretty much all day, but the big step count days will come at a cost.

And yet, I always find the energy to show up at the barn for my appointed shifts. I come home tired and I don’t enjoy the commute, but I go, I toddle around and around with those horses, and I consider it time well spent.

Why? I often have fun, but not always (see the saddle that slipped sideways). I often feel useful and appreciated, which is lovely, but I think the trade off that keeps me coming back (besides horses! and barn buddies!), is that I leave the barn grateful. I can walk, I can use my words, I can regulate my bodily functions, I can regulate (most of) my emotions. Some of our riders didn’t get ANY of those high cards. So I go, I walk miles in the arena and on the trails, and I come home beat but grateful and humbled.

I go for walks around my neighborhood, and that often leaves me pooped as well (do not even think about mentioning how exercise can energize, because I will smite you with my figurative sword). Where I live, the scenery is wonderful. Much of the year is abundantly green, and even when green has gone on hiatus, the wildlife, livestock, and beautiful countryside refresh my mind. I occasionally run into a neighbor while I’m boulevardiering, and even a short chat bolsters my sense of community good will.

If I have all the energy in the world, but little gratitude, or little appreciation for natural beauty, or no occasions to feel humbled, I am in much worse straits than if I am physically whupped for a couple of days a week but have good nourishment for my heart and soul. I am extraordinarily lucky that I can make my living at a sedentary activity I enjoy tremendously, while I’m also able to use what juice I have to earn the very precious sustenance that money cannot buy.

What do you need or enjoy that money cannot buy, and what trade-offs do you make to keep it in your life?

I have begun teaching therapeutic riding lessons like the fully-fledged (wet behind the ears) certified instructor I can now call myself. One friend in the business kindly pointed out that these early lessons are difficult in a way that later lessons won’t be. Even by this time next year, I will have more experience to fall back on, better instincts, more sounding boards, and more completed experiments.

One of my best teachers in life thus far has been the near miss. At one of my earliest jobs, I fell hard for a co-worker. He was wicked smart, had a great sense of humor, didn’t take himself too seriously… after a few happy hours, we ended up, um, getting better acquainted, but then he went to work for a competitor, and our paths stopped crossing. Yes, we had telephones back then, but I lacked confidence that the attraction was reciprocally strong.

He was such a cool guy. I later found out that he had substance abuse issues, was a work-aholic, and traded on credentials that were not quite accurately represented. Yikes. I was a little snake-bit after that brush with leaping before I looked, and doubtless saved myself some toad-kissing for being more hesitant.

‘Nother example of a near miss: In a recent riding lesson, my student’s saddle slipped to the side, though I had repeatedly checked the snugness of the girth. Because the other team member in the lesson was a very experienced instructor, disaster was averted. Rather than going overboard, the rider was able to safely dismount, feet first, no harm/no foul. Double yikes!!!

I hate that the saddle slipped. I am endlessly grateful that the situation was handled safely. Going forward, I will be checking girths, and making sure my rider is centered, especially when it’s a full-size rider ona  very round horse. I knew that was the protocol, I did observe the protocol, but I’ll take the protocol far more to heart going forward.

What I like about the near miss is that it draws my attention to a shortcoming, a dicey decision, or a tricky sitch without also visiting upon me all the complications that come with a big failure. I’m a little sadder, but–I hope–much wiser, for taking near misses seriously. The near miss lets me learn from experience, but at a big discount.

And yet, I never saw much discussion in law school, grad school, or my Fortune 100 employment stints about near miss analysis. Failure analysis, sure. Learn from your mistakes! I also saw some success analysis, along the lines of, “Why we’re the best,” or, “What got us to where we are today,” but those brushes with disaster that spare us the worst outcomes… they were not give much attention.

Near misses also apply to contractors I didn’t hire, contracts I did not sign, relationships I cut loose rather than maintain at any cost. Money I did not hand over. Trust I did not hand over. People who could have trashed me professionally but didn’t… My mom would have said my guardian angels were working overtime. When I narrowly avoid a bad outcome, I hope my hindsight works overtime too, so that I don’t have to swerve that same obstacle ever again.

What has taught you the most meaningful life lessons? Do any significant near misses come to mind?

PS: I’ve already sent out the ARCs for The Besotted Baron (and he’s loose in the wild, bless his handsome, stubborn heart), but if you’re a federal worker without a paycheck, or you’re among the scads of us with too much month at the end of our money these days, I can send out a few more. Email me at [email protected] and let me know what device you read on.

PPS: A Kiss for Hope finally got a cover!

An experienced foster mom once said to me, “I know the kids are going to be alright when I hear them laughing. Some of them have taken months to laugh, one poor little guy never did. But once they laugh–provided it’s a good, hearty, silly laugh–I can relax a little.”

I was reminded of her wisdom when my daughter was dealing with some awful adolescent turbulence. The medication was making things worse, she was growing more isolated in part out of a mutual decision to try home schooling. I was doing everything I knew to do–counseling, horse barn, psychiatrist–and nothing seemed to be turning the situation around (it did turn around, eventually). I was puttering along downstairs, and I heard her up in her room laughing. Haw-haw-haw, ridiculous laughing.

I had assigned her one of Dave Barry’s novels, probably Big Trouble, and she had succumbed to his comedic magic. To speak humorously is a gift, to write humorly is a superpower, and Mr. Barry had my depressed, troubled, “at risk” daughter in stitches. I wrote him the sappiest fan letter an author ever did write to anybody. He made my kid laugh for what might have been the first time in months.

Yesterday at the therapeutic riding barn a couple of the other instructors and I were tasked with desensitizing one of the horses to a rider mounting and dismounting using a mechanical lift. I volunteered to be the “rider,” in part because I want to know what a student has to deal with when they use that device to get on or off a horse. I also wanted to be helpful, and–honestly–these days, I’ll take any excuse to sit on a horse.

The horse was an absolute, utter champ. He stood like an equine testament to eternity while I went up and down, over and around in the lift. Brushed him with my boots on the withers and croup, jabbered, swung my legs like an excited eight-year-old, and that horse did not flick an ear. The mental image of the chorus line from Robinhood: Men in Tights popped into my head, because the lift is on a track, and you can swing yourself to the left or swing to the right, step-behind-step-kick. step-behind-step-twirl…

Which I did. Hilarity ensued, and the whole rest of the day, I heard the Men in Tights chorus in my head, and one of the other instructors referring to me as “Tinkerbell.” Even writing this, the memory makes me chortle.

Maybe this is the disarming absurdity of the Portland Frog, or it’s the kid in all of us taking charge for a few moments. I do not know what the secret sauce about laughter is, but I know when I can really and truly laugh, I’m a happier person. I have a little more courage, a little more self-appreciation, and I feel a little safer in my identity.

Who or what has recently tickled your funny bone? Do you have any memories of joyful laughter popping up when least expected? My family got the giggles on the way to my grandma’s funeral, and I know nobody would have approved more heartily of that loss of decorum than Grandma herself!

Many therapeutic riding students are plagued by anxiety. Some of it is situational–horses can be unpredictable. They are big. They have enormous, sharp teeth. Their reflexes are much faster than a human’s. Many equines wear iron shoes. Whose idea was this anyway?

But for other students, the anxiety is chronic. They are, by nature or bad luck, champion worriers. One strategy we use with those riders is singing. Singing, because it requires us to exhale more slowly than we inhale, engages the parasympathetic portion of the nervous system. (So does humming, whistling, or keeping up stream of self-talk.) The parasympathetic system is our “rest and digest” wiring, as opposed to fight, flight, or freeze. My repertoire in the past week has included that stirring anthem to simplicity, Alice the Camel.

I’ve also done a few choruses of You Are My Sunshine… And then there’s always The Bare Necessities. Of course, if the instructor is yodeling her way through the lesson, her parasympathetic system is activated, and any anxiety she might be feeling abates. I suspect this is why most religious services start and end with music, and why sports events kick off with a musical moment–it’s a  neurological hack that gets us feeling calm and at peace.

I should be singing more, not because I’m any good at it, but because I love music. My first academic degree was in music history, though anybody who’d spent as much time on a piano bench as I did in adolescence should have been a performance major. I could not perform repertoire–went hopelessly splat in front of recital audiences, though I could accompany ballet classes, play wedding receptions, or teach all day long.

I was reminded of this at the barn dance fundraiser my barn held a few weeks back. A live band did covers of Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline… old standards that are as singable as they are dance-able. I Fall To Pieces has been stuck in my head ever since. Last night, I attended a Jim Malcolm concert (Scottish traditional singer), and he has us singing a few of the choruses and finishing up with the Robert Burns’s version of Auld Lang Syne.

I left the venue feeling sweet and settled (also a little sad. I miss Scotland and my friends there). Nothing lights up our neurological circuitry like music (except for the combination of music and dance). We connect more disparate parts of our mind when listening to and making music than we do with almost any other activity we can pursue. Music is a powerful tonic, one I particularly enjoy, and yet… I have neglected it.

After back-to-back live music experiences, I feel a little bit like there’s a free bottle of high quality daily vitamins sitting on the counter and I keep dragging myself past it, day after day. And this particular bottle of vitamins is guaranteed to work especially well for me, because it reminds me of the first time I was half-way competent at anything beyond tying my shoes or brushing my chops.

So I’m adding to my nightly routine: Journal, five gratitudes, and one song or piece of the good stuff. Sing it, listen to it, maybe even play it (I do have a piano), and finish the day on… a good note.

Are you ignoring any sources of free, available vitamins for the body,  mind, or heart? Things you used to love that faded from your life, or activities you once did but put aside? New endeavors you’ve been meaning to try?

My parents retired to the endless summer of San Diego, and my dad was happy there. Lovely breezes, tons of sunshine, that gorgeous (to him) ocean a block from the house. My mom adapted, eventually, but that was not her version of paradise, and when I had to spend summers there as a kid (or visit as an adult) I found it a nearly unbearable purgatory.

WAY too crowded, WAY too built up, WAY too lacking in greenery. Too many people wanted what my dad wanted, and all those people were cramming themselves into an ecosystem that was never designed for a dense population. Just looking at the ocean made me anxious.

But the other problem was… the SoCal climate disagreed with me. Nearly every day the same, with the big story on action news being June Gloom (fog that burns off by noon), or rarely, rain. Global warming has changed the climate in San Diego somewhat (and added wild fires to the calendar), but you still won’t find me moving there for a Highland Chocolatier gift certificate nor money.

I love the changing seasons, and the season I love most is at its best around me now. Nights in the 40’s, days in the 70’s. Some sun, some rain, some leaves coming down, some asters blooming riotously. Mums everywhere, the crickets singing alto, horses getting furry in preparation for winter. The deer have shifted from russet to brown coats, and thank all the merciful powers, the stinkin’ raccoons are less in evidence.

We have about twelve hours each of darkness and daylight now, and that seems to suit me. I wake up as it’s getting light, and I go through the day with more of a sense of, “No lollygagging. We’re burning daylight!” In summer, when it’s light until 9 pm, I’ll put off my walk until 8 pm. In winter… well, I rely on my days at the therapeutic riding barn to get the step count up in winter.

This is also when the windows are open and the fans are off. A chorus of fans can be loud, and I do not care for loudness in my house at all. I care less for flies and sweat though, so one compromises.

I regard fall as the sweetest season. Winter around the corner makes me treasure the beautiful light, the scrumptious weather, the last of the flowers, the open windows. If I ever do leave my bide-o-wee here in Maryland, I will have to move to someplace that has fall, however briefly, or I will go into a decline.

Have you ever had to live someplace that did not suit you? How did you cope or how do you cope?

I have not shopped for blue jeans for about, oh, maybe… fifty years. Even now, when I’m at a healthy weight, my calves are so grand that finding pants to fit them often leaves every other aspect of the garment gapping and sagging. I’ve tried men’s jeans, mom jeans, baggy jeans… I just gave up on jeans and thanked heavens for yoga pants and their many near kin.

But this week I agreed to volunteer at a barn dance. Lots of therapeutic riding programs have them. Put the horses out out for the night, hire a band and a bartender, thump the charity donation tub, and enjoy some great barbecue. Not my thing, but I believe in the therapeutic riding mission, the people hosting the hootenanny were very nice, and it was an excuse to buy mums, pansies, and pumpkins.

Except I needed jeans a pair of jeans to wear on the night in question. I asked around, “Where do you buy jeans these days?” (Meaning, in my case, in this century.) Old Navy got a few nods so I checked out their DEI creds, and then had a look. I found a couple pairs of jeans that actually sorta, well, yes, fit. Golly days. That’s odd in itself.

Odder still, when I hauled the first stack of “try these on because it’s the only way to know” candidates into the fitting room, there was a guy sitting on the “take a load off and re-charge” bench (has outlets). Then another guy came in and started sorting through the discards that needed to be returned to the sales floor.

The fitting rooms were gender-neutral, and the sales associates on that shift just happened to present as male.

I had to have a little think about this, because changing my clothes one flimsy door away from where strange men know I’m changing my clothes… that’s a bit of a stretch. I also feel uncomfortable talking on the phone unless I’m dressed, and though I live alone, I lock the bathroom door even to brush my chops.

Hmmm. Guys in the fitting room area. I decided that this is a kinda big deal, because it declares clothes shopping to be a human activity rather than a gender-segregated activity, at least where jeans are concerned. It declares that as a shopper in that store, I am a person first rather than a gender first, and that I’m supposed to look at sales associates as sales associate people first rather than as a specific gender. I see value in this approach, potential equality, and no diminution in the quality of the shopping experience.

But that was not my default thinking. My default thinking, I am sorry to say, was: “When I am literally half-naked, you are making me tolerate the presence of a type of person who has been harmful to me, and I resent that.” Except that nobody made me do anything. Moreover, we are not types, we are individuals, and we each deserve a fair shake and to be judged on our individual merits, not our apparent “type.” Maybe I should have checked my own DEI creds?

I am not ready to buy a bra from a guy, but maybe I should be. When I asked where the ladies’ belts were or where to put back the baggy high rise pair that didn’t fit, the sales associate had the answers. When I gushed a little at the check out over being able to find a pair of jeans that mostly fit, the sales associate made the appropriate “Go, granny, go!” noises.

It can be true, that I am generally distrustful of men in certain situations for good reasons, and also be true that the better path is to see past stereotypes, my own history, and society’s biases, and just be grateful that I found a pair of jeans that fit.

What’s your take on clothes shopping and gender roles? Would you have walked right out (the thought crossed my mind), given it a think, or not batted an eye at gender-neutral fitting rooms? Am I years behind the prevailing norm or is this a new trend?