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?

My paternal grandmother was a widow with a baby at age nineteen, her husband having been a casualty of World War I. She married two more times, ditched both (drunken, philandering) husbands before divorce was popular, and at age sixty, opened up a candy store that would support her adequately until she died in her eightieth year. My maternal grandma welcomed her first born into the world in a tent at Joe Junior mining camp, and gave birth to her last-born at age 45.

These women were handed some mighty daunting challenges and had little choice but to Cope. I am much more privileged. I could choose whether to go back to school (twice); choose to be a single mom (once); choose to close the law practice and rely on writing to support myself.  Compared to my grannies, and to so many other people, I am the veriest little tadpole in the life challenges department.

So I realize that deciding to attempt the therapeutic riding instructor certification was both an exercise in privilege (in many ways), and a pretty tame effort as challenges go. I have plenty of positive experiences with learning goals. I have been around horses for decades. I had great support going into the venture, and found more support along the way. A walk in the pasture–right?

Well… yes, and not quite. I have never tried to master a large body of book learning with a geriatric brain. I have never taken on substantial physical challenges at this age, and while losing a lot of weight too quickly. I have never had to do much teaching–a few piano students, some writing workshops, a few conflict management seminars–and none of those experiences involved the dangerous instrumentality that is the horse. My attitude going in, “I can do this…” morphed into, “I hope I can do this,” and then, “I’m not sure I can do this.”

As I drove over the hills to take my final test, though, it occurred to me that getting the certification might not be the point. Because I aimed at that goal, I took my hearing loss more seriously. It’s hard to understand somebody who is speech-impaired when you have good hearing. Try it without the upper frequencies, and you’re at a disadvantage as an instructor.

I took my physical health and especially strength more seriously. A therapeutic riding instructor has to get disabled people on and off of horses safely, and that means everything from grip strength to upper body strength to walking stamina matters. Most significantly, I took a harder look at my cognitive health. Lion’s Mane supplements seem to help with my recall and retention–who knew?

The first and primary beneficiary of my jaunt down the riding instructor path was me. I  learned a lot of material that interests me, I am taking better care of myself, and I flexed my ability to ask for help (not one of my strengths). My goal was to qualify for a certification, but in hindsight, I think my goal should have been simply to challenge myself. Pass, fail, or try, try again, the challenge itself has done me a power of good.

And–icing on the cupcake–I did pass that final exam on the first try. Phew!

How do challenges figure in your life? Always on the lookout for good ones? Had quite enough of them, thank you? Somewhere in between?

I made a couple changes this summer to how I occupy my house, and I’m only realizing now some of the undesirable consequences. The first change was to put a mama cat and her four wee teeny little kittens in the upstairs half of my house. Once they are all fixed and have finished all their shots (later this month), they will be transitioned to another, much less restrictive situation.

I’ve enjoyed watching the kittens grow, and they are endlessly rambunctious and playful. The mama is sweet, and I think this set up has given them a good, safe start in life. No regrets there.

The other shift I made was to set up a desk in my bedroom (upstairs) where I could do my riding instructor studying and keep all the course materials. I could have worked at my writing table (downstairs), but wanted to be able to focus on the riding material at the beginning and end of my day, and in some place other than where I work on my books.

Initially, I was pleased with myself. I was being organized, keeping order in my house, and checking the “everything in its place” box. But as the summer wore on, I felt a sense of, “All I do is work.” Start off with upstairs cat chores, move to  downstairs cat chores, shift to writing tasks, take a break/not really a break to get in steps, head upstairs for some studying, downstairs to deal with emails and payroll, toss in more cat chores, back upstairs for more studying at the end of the day… pick the three upstairs litter boxes before lights out.

With the possible exception of the kitchen, I have work waiting for me in every part of my house. (My washer and dryer are in the bathroom, and I do a fair amount of pet-related laundry.)

Without realizing it, I organized my way out of the set-up where going upstairs at the end of the day was synonymous with leaving all the work-y stuff behind. No chores, no obligations, no should-dos once I’m upstairs. What happened upstairs–reading, resting, lollygagging–was spatially separated from all the things in my life that require self-discipline. The Task Manager part of me was not allowed up the steps, and those steps have a door at the bottom that closes the two parts of the house off from each other.

The situation will fix itself when I’m through my riding instructor curriculum, and the five foster cats go to their next billet, but I hadn’t realized how much I benefit psychologically from having a specific consistent place that is work-free. I hadn’t realized how good it feels to close the door at the bottom of the steps, and climb up to the place where I am not a writer or a student or a cat mom, but just me, who likes to read, who needs to rest, who wants to recharge before jumping back into the affray in the morning.

Do you have a place to recharge? If you created one, what about it would be important to you?

My summer reading list this year includes titles such as, Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides by Geoffrey L. Cohen, and Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness by Jamil Zaki. I’m off on this tangent in part because I’m tired of studying for my riding instructor test, but also because I want to understand how we became a society that can be persuaded, divided, and controlled by lies.

One theory posits that survival is more important than the truth, and survival for homo sapiens long depended on belonging to a tribe. How does that work? Welp, back in the day, 20-40,000 years ago, we depended on our tribe for safety. Hunting big game with one spear was a losing proposition. Expecting everybody to make their own spears, when Ogette was incredibly good at it, was perilously inefficient. We survived by virtue of cooperation and belonging, and we are still wired for that model.

Whether we crossed the river above or below the tree last year truly did not matter anywhere near as much as staying on good terms with the women who made the rafts. Be willing to let the truth slide–we did cross above, despite what Og says–and you won’t be left to entertain the lions on the wrong shore.

When we experience social rejection, our cortisol levels spike, we are more likely to view ourselves negatively, we are more prone to aggression and poor decision-making. Rejection shows up in the brain in the same place as physical pain, and people made to feel rejected are easily manipulated.

And yet, when I write Lord Julian’s tales, he almost always at some point faces a critical rejection–from friends or family who doubt him, or from somebody who’d only recently turned to him as a desperate last resort. They hit him where he’s already bruised–in his sense of belonging–and his job is to ignore the blow and keep searching for the truth.

And because I am the queen of my writing desk, Julian’s willingness to stand alone in the hope of discovering the truth always results in freedom for a formerly oppressed party and some self-affirmation for Julian. Neener-neener!

I think we need our Lord Julians every bit as much as we need our tribe. We need the people who aren’t willing to lie for the sake of popularity or likes if the lie is a substantial moral compromise. Crossing the river at the wrong point can, some years, get us all killed.

And I do know this: When I see somebody stand up, speak truth to power, and brave the lions, that person has earned my respect and trust. Those are the kind of people I want to belong to. They won’t tell me that huge sleeping cat with all the fangs and claws is a puppy, and he’d love for me to pet him. But a tribe made up of moral invertebrates bound together by lies might convince me of such an outlandish and dangerous falsehood.

When have you seen somebody speak out for unpopular truth? Might have been a character in a book, might have been back in fifth grade. Might have been you in your last HOA meeting…

I’ve spent much of July and August studying for the final therapeutic riding instructor test I plan to take in September, but this summer has also focused me on some other kinds of learning.

I am still figuring when I am tired, for example. I know when I’m exhausted, because in that condition neither mind nor body will move beyond a crawl, but the pretty-darned-weary phase before that–which can go on for days or weeks–is slow to get my attention. That I’ve posted about being irritable and grouchy, and worse than irritable and grouchy, is one sign of not resting enough (which is different from though often related to not sleeping enough). I’m on the lookout for others, such as messing up my schedule, because apparently, yawning is not an litmus test of depleted resources.

Because I wanted to study the riding curriculum, and because even I knew I needed a break, I stepped back from my therapeutic riding barn in Virginia. I’ve kept a hand in with a smaller, slower-paced barn here in Maryland, and the contrast has been edifying. The lesson for me is that being equal to a challenge and deriving benefit from that challenge are two different propositions. I could have spent the summer with the Virginia crew, on a tighter schedule, with a larger staff, and a larger client rotation (also some larger egos), but for where I am on all sorts of learning curves, the more modest operation has been a huge, unexpected exhale.

This summer has also presented me with opportunities to work on my listening skills, for want of a better term. Because I’m not spending hours on end at a barn, I’m getting in steps by walking my own neighborhood more than I ever have. In the past eight weeks, I have talked to more, different neighbors than I did in the previous eight years. One woman told me that our daughters went to school together–thirty years ago–and we have lived about a mile apart for those whole thirty years, but never spoken previously. She was an absolute delight and gave me some mimosa tree seeds (butterflies love mimosas).

My neighbors have been there all along, fretting over the same rabies outbreak I am, fretting over politics and economic challenges, but I have not exerted myself to strike up conversations with them, and have been poorer for it.

So summer school has been really interesting and rewarding for me this year. How has your summer treated you?

PS: I can’t imagine this is news to the folks on this blog, but Lord Julian’s tenth mystery, A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets, is now available on all platforms. More print versions coming soon.

For the first time in a long time, I nearly raised my voice at someone this week. Current events are enough to shorten anybody’s fuse, but on this occasion, the irritant that nearly started the bonfire was Amazon customer service.

I’d been having a pretty productive morning, but because I’d done some Zoom calling, I was on my Mac rather than my PC, and without thinking about it, I tried to log into my Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing dashboard. Stupid, stupid, stupid… Amazon saw me on a “new” (nine year old) device and demanded that I change my password. What is the FULL NAME associated with this account? Grace Ann Burrowes.

Wrong. The name under which I created the account ten years+ ago was simply Grace Burrowes. Amazon’s system did not make the leap, and lo… when I went through all the two-factor-nope-not-that-code-the-other-code, all of my books were gone. No Lonely Lords, no True Gents. Forget Julian and Violet, nothing. Not a novella. Never published a word much less a book.

I rolled up my sleeves and started with author support. “Could somebody please help me find my books?” Author support laughed politely. “It’s a log in issue, and for that you have to deal with Amazon customer service.” Round and round I go, unable to make anybody understand that I can log in, but my books are gone. Finally, I get some lady in an overseas call center, who also did not grasp the issue.

She kept crooning two things at me: “Calm down,” though my voice was never raised, I never resorted to profanity, and never made a personally disparaging remark. Over and over, “Don’t get so upset. Calm down…” while she did nothing to help but put me on hold any number of times. The second thing she said in several ways was, “I am going to solve this problem for you. Don’t worry. I will resolve this for you.”

She, of course, did not solve the problem Amazon had created, but resorted to that old dodge of, “Let me put you on hold while I verify some information…” and five minutes of horrible musak later, some clueless guy in another call center picks up, and informs me, oh, so sorry. “That’s  a Kindle Direct Publishing problem We here in customer support really can’t do anything about that.”

I might be a little less crispy about 100 books–my livelihood, that I cannot replace–going poof, were it not the case that Amazon is making record profits by the billions, yet again, some more, how wonderful. I might be even less crispy about it if I hadn’t gone through multiple iterations of, “Call back is not working at this time,” and “The chat bot is not working at the time.”

The problem is still not resolved, but I understand the wrong turn. Amazon could not tell the difference between “never heard of this person before so this must be a request to set up a new account,” and, “I just got the correct PW and email from Grace Burrowes and then asked her to change her PW. Now she gives her name as Grace Ann Burrowes. Might be Grace Burrowes? Better ask some more questions…”

All the hype about AI, and a simple password change takes days to resolve at one of the biggest tech companies on the planet. Yeah, I’m steamed.  Don’t be so upset. Calm down. Don’t worry. Billions in profit above even the projected billions but you have to stiff my print readers over tariff increases?

It’s a good thing she was on the other side of the planet. Telling me what to feel and what not feel when I am legit upset, and wasting my time while lying to me. That there’s a class one, ten years to life, no parole collection of felonies in my book…. or it would be, if I’d written any books.

What are the things nobody should ever, ever, ever say to you when you’re upset?

PS: The images this week are from my citizen journalist sortie to the front lines of the horrible crime wave affecting national parks in the DC area. This is the C&O Canal towpath, and you can see mad chipmunk cartels have doubtless run amok, undocumented butterflies have flown at will, and flowers are popping up where nobody planted them. Call out the guard! Oh… wait.

A couple of ideas collided for me this week, one stemming from Heather Cox Richardson’s interview with Gov. Gavin Newsom. She asked him, essentially, if we don’t like seeing cities militarized on a flimsy pretext or health care put out of reach for millions, what do we DO?

Newsom’s response surprised me, and it came down to this: Be yourself. Believe in what you believe in, speak up when the topic arises, stand up when the opportunity presents itself, whether you’re on the left, on the right, or all over the place. Participate in the dialogue. Just be yourself. I personally think Newsom had made some serious wrong turns as governor of California, (also some right turns), but this piece of advice struck me as worthwhile.

Then I read Austin Kleon’s lastest post Your Hobby Looks Exhausting, (paywalled), in which he references another writer who posited that one of the foundations of Britain’s resilience during WWII was… hobbies. In addition to being the kingdom of  Keep Calm and Carry On, the Brits are also stamp collectors, darts players, rose enthusiasts, knitters, bowlers, hill walkers, choir members… they had and have a vast and enthusiastically pursued appetite for private and social pastimes, which translates into an arsenal of identities beyond bomb shelter occupant, widow, or veteran.

Kleon posits that to the rose enthusiast, bowling looks like lot of noise and sitting around. To the dedicated bowler, roses are a lot thorns, dirt, and bugs. To each his own, but to the enthusiast, the hobby is very much theirs to own.

This juxtaposition of ideas, that our hobbies and enthusiasms help define us, and that knowing and acting on who we are makes for a healthy society was reassuring to me. I can water my zinnias, I can remind the nice people at the pharmacy that all this wildlife only showed in our end of the valley when that huge housing development went in a few miles to the north.

Jane Friedman added to the discussion with the notion that she doesn’t want to be remembered as somebody who responded to email quickly. She wants to be remembered as somebody whose responses, whenever they arrived, were civil and thoughtful.  Her question–What do you want to be remembered for?–help me focus on Newsom’s challenge to be myself.

I hope people recall me as a kind, honest person. They might also mention all those cats and horses, or how happy I was in a writing life, but I hope their first recollection of me is that I was honorable, albeit stubborn in my (always well reasoned) opinions, and determined on my (always wisely chosen) objectives. That glowing hindsight is something to aim for, anyway.

For what, or as whom, do you want to be remembered?

PS: First batch of ARC files has been sent out for A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets, and the print edition is already on sale at Amazon. If you’d like an ARC file, please let me know what device you read on at graceburrowes@yahoo.com.