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Dog Days and Slowing down

Whew. We’re in the middle of the dog days of summer here, and I have to say, I’m certainly feeling the heat. At the beginning of school vacation, my kids and I had all sorts of plans. Over the last few days though, things have begun to slow down. Mornings start later, big adventures are scrapped in favor of picnics at the beach, and we’ve definitely had a few nights of pasta with jarred sauce when it’s just too hot to cook.

The garden is the same. There’s always plenty to do, but during some of these sunny afternoons, all I’m up to is picking the many, many zucchini and making sure the watering system is still running. It’s not even that hot! I’m just worn out.

I suppose there’s good reason. We got through the gauntlet of the end of the school year, just to jump into travels and visits, and then into getting ready for summer camp. And now it’s over and there are a few weeks of nothing. We were on a treadmill that all of a sudden is standing still.

But even as I’m standing still, I’ve realized how pleasant it can be. In a house with three teens, there are a lot fewer parenting requirements. Which leaves room for moving slower. For taking the time to try the tik-tok famous Watermelon Smoothie. For hosting campfires with a million friends at the drop of a hat. For running to the thrift store just because.

Last week, at ten p.m., my eldest asked Forrest and I if we wanted to go for a walk. To be honest, I’d been in my pajamas since 8:30 and had already brushed my teeth. But when a fifteen-year-old asks to spend time with me, I try not to say no. I remember a few years ago when the gravity in our relationship seemed to shift from parent to child. I remember realizing that if I didn’t make her a priority, she wasn’t going to make me one either.

So I slipped on my crocs and went outside, pajamas and all. The sun was just setting behind the trees (yes, at 10:00 pm. Seattle is weird). The bugs were out in full force, but other than that, our suburban streets were deserted. And we didn’t talk about anything important at all. But we talked. And we took a few extra turns to extend the walk a little longer.

And when we got back, we each went to do our own things. But now, looking back, I realize that by doing less, what we’re actually doing is choosing to leave space. Space for connection. Space for rest. Space for conversation.

My only hope is that I can remember that I’ve got the rest of the year to get things done. Right now, right here, my job is simple: to slow down enough to enjoy each day as it comes. Maybe not the easiest thing in the world, but I’ve worked harder to do much less pleasant jobs. So, if you’re looking for me, I’ll be outside laying in the hammock.

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Fuchsia

The four of us wandered and dreamed and looked at tags and eventually left with way more than we anticipated.

The girls and I went to a plant nursery yesterday. We had planned to go in and get exactly one plant. We left with ten. I want to be angry about it, but I was just as excited as they were, and there is something charming about a bunch of teenagers making jokes about not having enough “thyme” at home.

We’re replacing a butterfly bush that died in the heat wave a few years ago. I say died, but it held on for a few more months, before giving up the ghost over the next winter. Eventually, we cut down the dried husk, and even more eventually, Forrest and the twins yanked the stump out of the ground. (I was away from home with our eldest and called home to check in. They mentioned that they’d recreated the Bluey episode “Stumpfest” without elaborating. I spent the rest of the weekend wondering which stump they’d been talking about and if there would now be one less tree than I remembered. Such is life with those three.)

Shortly after we removed the dead plant, we traveled to the U.K. and took a long walk through Kew Gardens. There, my kids saw a hardy fuchsia and fell in love. They were determined to have one. Unfortunately, our local nursery went out of business and I haven’t been able to find one at the grocery store. So their persistent requests have gone unanswered.

Still, yesterday was a muggy, cloudy summer day and everyone was in a bad mood, so I thrust all of us into the car to go find a new nursery. Within fifteen minutes, we’d gotten out of town and into the rural area north of us, where my kids began pointing out “alpacas!” and “cows!” We pulled into our destination and the grumpiest of the three said, “I want to live here.” Me too, kid, me too.

We walked to the first table of plants, where I immediately saw a hardy fuchsia. Bish bash bosh, job done. We could have gone straight to the checkout, job done. Of course, we didn’t. The four of us wandered and dreamed and looked at tags and eventually left with way more than we anticipated. Some hydrangeas for a neglected back corner, a few beardstongue for my cottage garden (since the coneflowers aren’t cooperating), and yes, some creeping thyme for ground cover around the fuchia.

I would like to tell you that everyone was in an excellent mood for the rest of the day. But I have three teenagers and not even a trip to a quaint and well-supplied nursery will banish all complaints. Still, once we got home, everyone went their separate ways for a while, eager to plant and, maybe, to have a bit of solitude.

As for me? I enjoyed a cup of tea with the spare time (and thyme).

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Book News! (ish)

To keep myself accountable to some schedule, and to keep people updated, I’m introducing the gold standard of author marketing staples: an email newsletter. It’ll only come out once a quarter and will include book updates, a quick blog post, and some bonus content from either the Mud Witch universe or the Hellebore Society universe.

Hi!

I know I’ve been MIA of late. I’ve been deep in book writing, and as always, it takes longer than I want it to. It’s frankly annoying how long it takes. And writing the book takes precedence over writing the blog most days. But summer is coming and oddly, with that there is less overall time and more writing time, since I have fewer obligations (read: chauffeur duties). I hope to be blogging more.

But to keep myself accountable to some schedule, and to keep people updated, I’m introducing the gold standard of author marketing staples: an email newsletter. It’ll only come out once a quarter and will include book updates, a quick blog post, and some bonus content from either the Mud Witch universe or the Hellebore Society universe.

If you’re interested, you can sign up at the bottom of this page or on the homepage of my website. I promise not to spam you or sell your data. The only other thing I may use this list for is to send out purchasing details in the week before I release a book (so, one additional email a year). I usually run price promotions then and I don’t want you to pay full price if the book’s going to be discounted the next day anyway!

This will be the best place to hear book news from me, although I will do my very best to keep Instagram and Facebook updated. As always, I am delighted and so grateful to everyone who reads my books and supports my work. Thank you for being such a wonderful community of thoughtful people!

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Controlled Chaos and Experimental Parenting

I’m consistently impressed, but now I wonder why? Human beings, when given the freedom and resources to make their own choices, often make impulsive and extravagant choices at first (ask my kids about the giant hole they dug in the yard – twice). But eventually, the consequences of those choices become clear, and sanity reigns.

Our family has been watching some of the coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show because, although I have three teenagers in the house, I’ve successfully indoctrinated them to be 13 going on 57. Like our own little version of Househunters, we’ve enjoyed critiquing the gardens, imagining what we’d present there, and, most importantly, coming up with ideas for things we could implement at home.

Our house, and by extension, our yard, has always been a laboratory for everyone in our family to try out their ideas. We live in an area that is rapidly urbanizing which means that our little cottagey rambler will someday be torn down to build two McMansions in its place. As sad as that may seem, it’s actually been quite liberating: there is no resale value in the house – the land is far more than the structure. So we can paint our walls how we want, install the tile we want in the bathroom, and build and unbuild whatever backyard landscaping we desire.

This devil-may-care attitude gets combined with a commitment to giving our kids as much agency as we can. My youngest was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes early on and with that came many, many impositions on her. I spent many years downplaying them, but that’s a lie. It is much more onerous and burdensome than you can imagine.

So, because of all of those responsibilities, Forrest and I have done our very best to give our kids as much control as we can over literally everything else. They wear what they want (yes, always, and yes, that did mean that my daughter wore a bathrobe to school every day for five years). Their rooms look how they want (often messy but much more tasteful than I would have imagined). And we let them have a lot of leeway over what deciding what our backyard looks like.

I keep telling them that this is all an experiment and that we, as their parents, might be screwing it all up. But as they age, what I’ve realized is that with that power comes not responsibility, but consideration. They think deeply about what and how they want to use that space. Forrest is always on hand to help but he’s as bad as the rest of them: I left for a four day trip once and came home to a nearly-finished treehouse as well as a small catio.

I’m consistently impressed, but now I wonder why? Human beings, when given the freedom and resources to make their own choices, often make impulsive and extravagant choices at first (ask my kids about the giant hole they dug in the yard – twice). But eventually, the consequences of those choices become clear, and sanity reigns. They realize that as much fun as it is to play in the mud, it’s nicer to play in the grass. And while an elevated slide with a four foot drop onto the ground might seem like a blast, eventually someone gets hurt. (Yes, this did happen, and no, it did not require a visit to the ER).

The key, I think, is to let those consequences have time to become clear. This has been the hardest thing for me. It really is a bit like playing a game of chicken. One time, the twins decided that they wanted wash our deck. Seems good, yes? Except, knowing them, it involved pouring the better part of a bottle of dish soap on the deck, scrubbing for a while, and then getting bored and leaving soapy residue everywhere. It took maybe an hour in the hot sun to make it sticky and terrible, but I just walked right over it to make a cup of tea. It took two hours before they realized that it was sticky and terrible. It took three hours before they realized I was not going to clean it up for them. And, in their own way, with more scrubbing and a hose on full blast and, oh, so many wet towels, the deck got clean. Cleaner than it had been in years.

For some reason, that particular adventure has never been repeated. But my kids did clean the deck for me this spring, while I was in the front yard planting seeds. And this time, they used brooms like a normal person.

People have said that our family is “controlled chaos” before and I think they’re right. But slowly, over time, the control has moved from my hands into theirs. And while this is a grand experiment, I can’t think of any better result than that.

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Yarrow

I’m interested to see just how little time I can devote to it, given that the rest of the garden will be full of much greedier plants.

It’s the time of year when I decide what new plants I’m going to try next spring. And this year, among others, I’m experimenting with yarrow. Unlike many of our other experiments, I’m not in any doubt about whether or not it will work. Yarrow seems tailor made for our dry summers - it likes full sun, long days, and near drought conditions.

It also likes poor soil, which I think is a funny term, since a lot of the plants that we like best prefer it. I know that it just means nutrient-poor, but since lavender, rosemary and daylilies all like it, I’ve always smirked a little. In fact, we had a hard time growing lavender for a while, I believe because our soil was too well nourished.

That shouldn’t be a problem for the yarrow. It’s going on the side of our house in an area that can’t really be cultivated for much. Forrest spent the summer and fall ripping out ivy and some kind of thorny vine that had been taken over, and then building some basic beds to contain the plant matter in a hugelkultur set up. He laid half-rotting logs, covered them with pruned branches, then finally, some topsoil. The hope is that over time those logs and branches will break down, but in the meantime, the location of the beds means whatever goes there pretty much has to fend for itself.

So, yarrow it is. I’m interested to see just how little time I can devote to it, given that the rest of the garden will be full of much greedier plants. There is something special about those plants that can look after themselves, like a cat that is happy enough to sit in the sun without constantly needing attention. We give so much adoration to the beautiful but difficult plants, don’t we? The roses that need to be perfectly pruned, the melons that must have gallons of water and hours of sun, the orchids that need special, well, everything. But I delight in the species that find a way. At the lettuce that will grow in the earliest, coldest months. At the garlic that will overwinter, ignoring frosts and rain alike. At the mint, which will take over the whole yard if we’re not careful.

They’re not the stars of the show, that’s for sure. No one is talking about their prize yarrow plants. Still, the sturdiness, resilience and sheer stubbornness of these plants is worth taking a second look at. I’m looking forward to spending a summer doing just that.

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Wildfires and Paradoxes

If we are willing to tolerate the paradox – the discomfort of “not yet but perhaps soon” – we open up a world of possibilities.

I just read another sad news story in a litany of sad news stories. The wildfires in Los Angeles are still fresh in my mind. Even though we live in one of the wettest areas of the US, our summers are so dry that we also fear the wildfires. So far, the snowpack in the Cascades melts off slowly enough to keep the fire from our doors, but climate change brings the inevitable fear that we, too, will one day run from our house, subjects of an evacuation order.

There’s still time though, and from what I can see, the state government is doing a good job of preparing. Part of that preparation, paradoxically, is controlled burns of the undergrowth throughout the state. For the better part of a century, those in charge believed that any fire should be put out and as a result, our forests are full of fallen trees just waiting to burn. And burn they should, but hopefully not all at once and not when there is wind and drought conditions that will drag them out of control.

This policy is deeply controversial. Every time I read about it in the news, I think of how many of the most important goals in life require us to tolerate those paradoxes. Whenever my girls are struggling with homework, I remind them that in order to become knowledgeable, we must first learn to tolerate feeling dumb. No one ever learned anything by sticking to the easy stuff.

Saying that and doing it are two different things. Tolerating feeling dumb is a hard thing to do, especially in a world where people feel empowered to say the most awful things. And it’s not just learning. How intimidating is it to go to the gym for the first time – out of shape and uncomfortable, walking around and seeing people who look like they were born in a weight room? But there is no other way to fitness than to start when we’re not yet fit.

But if we are willing to tolerate the paradox – the discomfort of “not yet but perhaps soon” – we open up a world of possibilities. It seems to me that one of the keys to life happiness is the willingness to seem dumb, or unfit, or even a bit ridiculous. One foot in the adult recognition of  “not yet” and another in the childlike hope of “perhaps soon.”

I’m not sure what’s bringing up these thoughts today except that when it comes to the state of the world, I, too, am in a place of “not yet but perhaps soon.” We do not yet have a handle on climate change, but perhaps soon we will find the will to make the adjustments we have to. We do not yet have a world that values my daughters as much as it values your sons, but perhaps soon they will all learn that both men and women are better off when the hierarchies are destroyed. We do not yet have a world where the most vulnerable among us are protected, but perhaps soon we will agree that none of us are safe until all of us are safe.

Until that day, though, I’m going to sit in the middle of my paradoxes – studying new knowledge, attempting new skills, making new memories – and remembering my own words: No one ever learned anything by sticking to the easy stuff.

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Rhododendrons

Whether we’re coming or going, that rhododendron is right there, shouting, “Spring is here!”

We decided to name our house a few summers ago. You know, like Green Gables or Tara or Wuthering Heights. The girls were all in favor of naming it Kitten Manor or something, but in the end, I got my way, and we live in Rhododendron Cottage. I’m still looking for the perfect sign to announce it to our suburban neighborhood. I’m sure people will be confused, or worse, sigh over yet another Dillaway oddity.

I chose Rhododendron Cottage because directly in front of our house is a very large red rhododendron. When it blooms in May (late because it’s on the shady north side), our entire living room basks in the pink reflected light. You can barely see the greenery. When it’s in bloom, the rhododendron also makes noise. Ok, it doesn’t make noise. But it is so covered in bees that you hear the buzzing from a dozen feet away. My children are terrified of being stung, but I am delighted every year. So many pollinators! And they’re so happy!

If it sounds like I’m bragging, I’m not. First, I have done nothing to cause our rhododendron to be so large and productive, except perhaps ignoring it. We barely prune it. We let the fallen leaves rot on the ground. We don’t use fertilizer. Second, here in western Washington it’s not exactly hard to grow rhododendrons. They’re the state flower and they grow nearly everywhere. Just down the road from us is a park that has a huge collection of them. I once saw one towering over a two-story house. It feels like everyone has a rhododendron.

But to us, it’s our rhododendron that’s special. Because it blooms later than most. It blooms only when spring has actually come to our house, to our yard. And it blooms so spectacularly that even the interior of our house is transformed. We can’t ignore it. Whether we’re coming or going, that rhododendron is right there, shouting, “Spring is here!” I love its brashness. There’s nothing delicate or fragile about it.

Maybe that’s why we settled on Rhododendron Cottage in the end. Because our home is all of those things. Brash, sturdy, and probably a little indelicate. Just the way we like it.

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Clarity

I’m talking about stepping away from work and stepping into play.

Now that The Hellebore Society has been out for a week (you can get your copy here if you haven’t yet!) it’s time for me to dive back into the sequel to Mud Witch! I’ve been working on it for a while, but between finalizing The Hel and all the end of year holidays, I honestly can’t wait for some quiet mornings to just…write.

My kids leave early for school these days, which means that if I’m at all diligent, I can be sitting at my table by seven and done with my writing by lunchtime. There is a real beauty in those morning hours and an even more wonderful feeling of accomplishment when I stand up, stretch out, and have time to get outside.

It’s easy for me to forget the importance of the last part. Now that I work primarily from my kitchen table, I can go a whole day without getting outside if I’m not careful. And while that is extremely appealing when I’m warm and comfortable, it’s also extremely bad for me. There’s a tunnel vision that can set in, where the project becomes the only important thing and nothing else really matters. While that is productive, it’s also not very conducive to creativity.

Tunnel vision is what keeps me writing a plot that is no longer working. Tunnel vision is what keeps me banging my head against the desk, trying to make up for the wrong direction by writing prettier words. Tunnel vision is what eventually paralyzes me with self-doubt.

It’s only by stepping away that I gain the clarity to actually do my job. For a long time, I was a work hard, work hard kind of person. Even when I wasn’t working, I would think about work. Perhaps that’s because I’m not always so good at the playing part. It’s easier to do things that feel important and bring a sense of accomplishment. It’s harder, somehow, to choose not to forgo those feelings.

I’m not talking about simply slumping into the couch at the end of the day. That’s easy. I’m talking about stepping away from work and stepping into play. Putting precious commodities, time and energy, into activities that are anything but useful. It feels risky somehow. What if I go to all that effort and it’s not restorative? What if it’s not even fun? What if I make that choice and come back to my desk and I’m no more creative or productive that I was before?

Those questions show the flaw in my thinking, don’t they? The idea that fun, the rest, is only there in order to feed the work. That if I return from my break still mired in tunnel vision then there was no point in taking it at all. What if I looked at things a different way?

What if I do all that productive work to make my fun more satisfying? It sounds bizarre to me, but then I think of working in my garden on hot summer days and sitting down afterwards to drink the best glass of water I’ve ever had. I think of cleaning my house and cooking dinner for friends, just to be able to enjoy sitting with them, knowing that everything is done. Or getting to a Friday night, tired and spent, but ready to sit down with a good book I’ve been wanting to read all week.

Maybe the fun is the point. Maybe if I start thinking about it differently, I’ll remember that I write not just to have the words on the page, but to experience that first, glorious stretch after I stand up and look at a job well done.

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Craftsmanship and Consistency

I’m releasing the best version of this book that I could. And still, I promise you, if I return in a year or two, I could probably make it better. Gosh, I hope so.

It’s book release day! I’m so excited to share The Hellebore Society with you all and also, to be honest, pretty nervous. It’s a vulnerable thing to put something you made out into the world, isn’t it? Forrest and I have talking about craftsmanship a lot lately. About how strange it is that many of our favorite people in the world just happen to have hobbies that require that combination of skill, artistry, and perseverance. Of course, I doubt they “just happen” to do anything. I think something changes within us when we commit ourselves, however lightly, to the practice of consistent small improvements over time.

I don’t want to wax too poetically about it, but there is a beautiful cycle of creating a concept, then a plan, which moves into production, and then to revision or alterations, and then to an end product, which no craftsperson can help but analyze for tips and tricks for the next time around. That cycle breeds humility and patience, all the more so if it is done for no other reason that love of the craft itself.

Let me be clear, writing books isn’t the quiet place where I learn most of these lessons. Gardening is. People comment positively about our gardens, but we would do it even if no one ever saw them. In fact, I might like it better if they were truly secret, since I would feel more comfortable during the ugly winter months when it really is best to leave last year’s detritus on the ground to rot. I take the lessons I learn there and use them in my books.

Things like working hard and trusting that the work will create its own magic. Or realizing that each season has its own jobs - trying to edit while you’re brainstorming is just as foolish as trying to prune while you’re planting. Or learning that sometimes things don’t work the way I wanted them to, but if I open my eyes, there’re usually something that’s growing more abundantly than I could have imagined.

I’ve watched the woodworkers and painters and crafters in my life learn these same things, but differently. Forrest can tell you that measure twice, cut once is actually measure eight times, cut once, but also that if push comes to shove, you can usually find a way around flaws and mistakes. Most of all, though, I see a steadiness in them. There have been many imperfect projects, yes. But there will be many more chances to perfect, to branch out, and to learn.

In that learning lies the beauty of craftsmanship. I’m releasing the best version of this book that I could. And still, I promise you, if I return in a year or two, I could probably make it better. Gosh, I hope so. I hope I keep getting better at this. So yes, it’s a vulnerable thing, to put my creation out into the world. But it’s a beautiful thing, too. Perhaps the most human thing I know how to do.

Whatever it is, I’m grateful to all the people who helped me get here, and all the people who will take the time to read it. That’s no small gift from you to me – that gift of your time and attention. So to you I say, thanks for reading my words – whether they’re in this blog or in my book. It means the world to me.

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Rosebushes

I like roses, in their place. And to me, in their place means in someone else’s carefully cultivated garden.

I want to chop down my rosebushes. I’m told I have to wait until midwinter to do it. I’m not sure exactly why but I think it has to do with them going into a less active, more hibernatory stage, and therefore being harmed less by being pruned. To be honest, I don’t really care.

I like roses, in their place. And to me, in their place means in someone else’s carefully cultivated garden. Like grapes, roses seem to require such meticulous cultivation. Painstaking pruning, constant vigilance, and work-intensive trellising. Unlike grapes, roses will stab you.

I did not plant these roses. They came with the house and every year, they take over. We cut them back and they take over again. Why not get rid of them, you ask? Probably for the same reason I do a lot of things: my children. My kids love them. They love eating rose petals in the summer. They love making bouquets of the flowers. They love the way the look and smell and even the way they seem to grow six feet every year.

It’s funny, the things we put up with for the people we love. Forrest and I were watching some old videos last night and we both remarked on how messy our house was. It was ridiculous. He and I have never been the most organized of people, but add in three kids in two years along with all the toys and clothes that entails, and every single surface of our house was covered. I used to feel bad about it. People would comment, remark on it, tell me they couldn’t imagine living in such a small house with so many kids. It hurt then, but now? It was a product of that time. Life was full. Full of work, full of fun, full of stuff. So we put up with it.

And as the kids aged, the stuff disappeared. The art supplies moved out to the garage, where secondhand tables make artists’ workspaces. The toys were traded for laptops and board games, which are both conveniently storable. And while the occasional pile of laundry does build up, there are no more diapers and extra onesies stashed around the house for easy changes. (You forget how you really can’t leave them alone in a room, even if their sibling needs a change. So you learn to stash diapers everywhere, I guess.)

Those roses have been there since the beginning. And even though my kids have had their run-ins with the thorns, every time I talk about pulling them out, they protest. “How could you even think about getting rid of them?” Those roses have been used in a hundred mud pies and secret potions and flower crowns. How could I even think about getting rid of them?

And so, the roses stay. We’ll be cutting them down, of course, pruning them brutally, but roses, contrary plants that they are, like that sort of thing. They’ll grow back again and again and I wonder if, even after my kids are grown and flown, I’ll keep those rosebushes. Just in case they’re home and want to make another bouquet for my kitchen table.

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Stories and Second Acts

In stories, heroes are at their most mighty when they’re young and energetic. But, as important as they were, my twenties were anything but mighty.

I’m not sure if you’re truly bored of hearing it yet, but it’s only one week until The Hellebore Society comes out! It’s been a weird few weeks of Christmas festivities interspersed with last minute tasks and then the occasional eye popping remembering of how close that date is! I’ve written a bit about it, but since the release date is soon, I’ve been musing on how this book came to be.

I woke up one night two years ago with a book title in my head. “The Middle-Aged Heroes of the Magpie Society.” It came to nothing, as so many late-night thoughts do, but it niggled at me. In stories, heroes are at their most mighty when they’re young and energetic. But, as important as they were, my twenties were anything but mighty. They were marked by nose to the grindstone work, figuring out a million life skills (like how to get insurance and how to fix a toilet), and then, at the end, the exhaustion of early parenting. I did not feel like a hero. I felt like a sponge, absorbing a lifetime’s worth of skills in between trying to save up for a house and learning how to cook.

It’s only now that I believe I have the resilience to manage most situations with competence. This is a small example, but just last night, I was fixing dinner for the family. Forrest walked in to find me cooking, measuring food, doing calculations (for my kids’ insulin dosing), setting the table and also holding a conversation with my teenager. He remarked that he was both impressed and a bit scared to get in my way (as well he should have been - our kitchen is not large).

Over the past few years, I have watched my friends start new businesses, take up new hobbies, get degrees, rebuild after divorce, and navigate health diagnoses. They’ve all come out stronger, if a bit battle scarred. I’ve been constantly impressed by their strength. More than that though, I’ve been impressed by their tenderness. They’re not brittle or resentful. They are able to bring a lifetime’s worth of compassion and kindness to their new endeavors.

That’s not to say that I don’t know people who took a more linear trajectory. Who had a dream and set their minds to it and moved forward, step by step, until they reached it. That type of determination is admirable. I know many of those people too. Heck, I’m married to one. Forrest seems to have been born with the ability to figure out most situations. More importantly, he’s pretty sure if he doesn’t know how to figure it out immediately, he can try a few things and the solution will appear. Most of the time, he’s right.

But for the rest of us, those of us who spent a decade blindly building skills for a life we would one day have. Who collected knowledge and experiences as though they were spare napkins, not sure when or how they’d come in useful. Who found, one day, that they had become - that the mishmash of life had coalesced and the wondering and worry had melted away.

This book is for us. The flowers that bloom in December. The Hellebores.

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Margins and Motivation

You think, whew, it’s all finalized and edited and proofed…and then you have to dive into the world of fonts and margins and page number placement.

Yesterday I stopped by the pharmacy to pick up some prescriptions, and while I was there, I grabbed some scotch tape, blank Christmas cards, and a spare pair of scissors. (Where do all of those scissors end up, anyway? Probably with the spare socks and my chapsticks.) As she was checking me out, the cashier said, “Oh, I see you’ve made it to Phase 2 of Christmas shopping!”

I’ve never felt so seen. Because it’s true isn’t it? Christmas shopping isn’t just that is it? It’s the selecting, the shopping, the wrapping, and finally the giving. And while I really do take true joy from each of those parts, if I forget about them, they tend to eat up time that I usually had planned to spend somewhere else.

The end stages of publishing a book are a lot like that. You think, whew, it’s all finalized and edited and proofed…and then you have to dive into the world of fonts and margins and page number placement. If I’m being honest with you all, I really don’t care about page number placement. I’m sure some of you do and I admire that attention to detail. All I care about is that they exist and are in the right order.

But all this self-publishing business means that I have to. So I force myself to for as many hours a day as I can and then I escape. Back into the world of plotting and writing, poring over maps from a hundred years ago and figuring out whether the word “spook” is historically accurate term for an undercover agent in the early 1900s. (It’s not, in case you were wondering - the first recorded use I can find is from 1942.) And while that might not seem so fun to most of you, please remember that some people like thinking about book margins for fun, so I guess it takes all kinds.

I’ve spent the better part of a year trying to spend as much of my time doing the work I like and as little as possible doing the work I hate. Which might sound childish or even lazy. Of course you don’t want to do work you don’t like! Who does?

But I’m using the word “like” here very specifically. I don’t mean work that is easy, comfortable or simple. I mean work that is meaningful, consequential, and productive. Kneeling in the rain planting bluebells is work I like. Trying a dozen different words to find the right one is work I like. Cutting out a hundred paper snowflakes to help decorate my daughter’s classroom is work I like.

So when I spend all of this extra time I didn’t expect working on margins and fonts, I have to remind myself that it is meaningful. This is the culmination of a year of work. It is consequential. Believe me, if the margins are off, it will annoy you and maybe you won’t know why, but it will. And, if I give the task the necessary time and focus, it might just be productive.

I probably still won’t like it, though. Oh well. It’ll be worth it.

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Plot Puzzles

“Until, one moment, a moment I can’t quantify, when the whole puzzle turns. It all gets easier.”

I’m an avid puzzle doer. No jigsaw puzzles, although I’m happy to sit down with a tv show in the background and try to fit some pieces together. No - word puzzles. The kind you get at the drug store in a flimsy newsprint book, usually labeled something like “Variety Puzzles” or “Puzzles 4 Less Super Pak”. During Covid, you would rarely find me without one of them, and my kids learned which kinds they enjoyed as well.

My favorite part of doing puzzles is the moment when it all turns. I often do the Sunday crossword and it always starts the same way. First, you fill in the ones you know without a doubt - the actor’s names or book titles or acronyms. Then you go square by square, figuring out the ones you think you know, then checking and double checking your guesses against the other clues.

But there’s always the trick clues. Most Sunday crosswords have a twist. Sometimes it’s a play on words. Sometimes it’s a funky way of writing out the answers where they turn up or down halfway through. Sometimes, when the creator is being really devilish, they have a square that contains more than one letter or a symbol or something. And so I hack and hack at the conventional clues and eventually figure out the trick but still, it’s hard going.

Until, one moment, a moment I can’t quantify, when the whole puzzle turns. It all gets easier. The answers that I had only guessed at are now confirmed. I’ve gotten the hang of the trick. And even those actors’ names or book titles I don’t know are easy to figure out.

I love it. It’s like riding downhill on a bike.

This is the feeling I love about writing a book, too. One of the hardest parts about writing a book is figuring out how all the pieces go together. How this plot and that character arc need to intertwine. How this hanging thread will weave into a final scene. How the theme I started with will play out across the storyline. To me, it feels like one big puzzle.

A lot of people think that writing is about making works sound pretty, about making pictures in people’s imaginations. And those words are important, but only insofar as they work to earn their place. Those words are the tools you use to tell the story, to show the characters, to communicate the theme. And they had better work for you, not against you.

We’ve all read a book where the author is a little too in love with the sound of their own voice. I think we all have different tolerances for poetic language, but I think even the most metaphor-loving amongst us can fed up when we don’t feel like that poetry is doing anything for the story. Intricate descriptions of settings that are only used for scene. Long, winding characterizations that are immediately betrayed by a character’s actions. Extensive pontification by an author who has a message to share and is not going to let you get away without hearing it.

We’ve all been there. I’m sure there are still parts of my books like that, no matter how hard I try to restrain myself. Just like my crosswords, success only comes when you get the right answers in the right words. It’s not enough to know a synonym for “smart” - you’ve got to know a six-letter word ending in “R”. And if you’re not “clever” enough - in writing or in puzzling, the pieces will never fit together properly

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Pruning

“This year, unlike years past, I’m finding myself gravitating towards my autumn garden more. There’s something about stepping away from my screens, my books - even the thoughts inside my head - stepping away from all of that is appealing to me.”

Although I think about (and write about) gardening a lot, I hope I’ve made it clear that I am by no means an expert gardener. In fact, I often plant something, entirely forget about it, and then find myself delightfully surprised by an unexpected harvest! It’s one of the things I like most about outdoor gardening, how most plants can pretty much keep themselves alive as long as you make sure the soil has enough nourishment.

My other main failing as a gardener is that I tend to lose enthusiasm and fail to finish out the season. By the time October or November come around, I’ve spent so much time weeding, harvesting, and then figuring out what to do with all that harvest that I don’t have much motivation to do things like pruning. Or pulling out the dead plants. Or keeping my garden from looking like an overgrown graveyard of last summer’s hopes and dreams.

It doesn’t help that in my area of the world, the line between still growing and “no, really, that brown thing is dead” is a bit blurry. I still have flowers on some of my plants. The apples are still happily hanging on the tree branches. And our snap peas are still green! So when it comes to things like pruning back raspberries, which all the books say I should be doing right now, it’s a little hard, because two weeks ago my kids were still eating them. Are they really dormant? Or should I let it go a few more weeks?

But in a few more weeks it’ll be really cold and miserable here, perfect for curling up by the fire with a book and less perfect for crouching on the ground with some garden shears. Suffice it to say that my end of season gardening game could use a little work.

But this year, unlike years past, I’m finding myself gravitating towards my autumn garden more. There’s something about stepping away from my screens, my books - even the thoughts inside my head - stepping away from all of that is appealing to me. It feels a little like pulling up the drawbridge on my life. Like not inviting in the voices that mean to manipulate, enrage, or hurt me. Like creating my own little echo chamber where all I can hear are the birds, the occasional car passing by, and the snip snip of my clippers.

It’s hard to prune away those branches that gave such good fruit last year. It’s sad to cut the browning perennials now to the ground. But if I don’t, those root systems will keep feeding dead branches. The plant’s grown will be stunted, it will flower poorly and fruit even worse. There’s a wisdom in getting rid of old growth so that we can let our resources go to where possibility awaits. As the year comes to an end, it’s only right that we gratefully let go of what served us in the past, and start redirecting our energy towards what will serve us in the future.

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Relentlessness and Gratitude

I feel like I live with the constant combination of relentlessness and gratitude. The crap keeps coming and coming and yet there is so much goodness in my world.

Author’s Note: I wrote this last week but waited to post because Black Friday is our Christmas Tree decorating day but I still wanted to have something up…all of that to say, if the weather timeline is funky that’s why! And I hope you had a good Thanksgiving!

I’m sitting in a coffee shop writing this after one heck of a week. For those of you not in the know, the PNW had a giant windstorm earlier this week, and pretty much the whole county lost power. It’s three days later and there are still a hundred thousand or so people in the dark. And there’s another, smaller storm coming this afternoon, so as soon as I’m done with this, I’m heading out to a probably half-stocked grocery story to buy lunch meat and cereal so we can have food for tomorrow if we lose power again.

It all feels a little relentless right now.

And also I feel like I should be grateful. We were among the first to get out power back, just 24 hours later. I suppose that’s the benefit of being on the same road as four schools and a fire station. And my kids went back to school today when so many around us have a third day off because the buses can’t get around safely and the schools are cold and dark.

I feel like I live with the constant combination of relentlessness and gratitude. The crap keeps coming and coming and yet there is so much goodness in my world. And it’s not that I’m tired or out of gas or depressed. It’s that I have whiplash.

Two days ago, my little family was all huddled together in one room, where two of us played a board game, two of us read quietly and one of us fell asleep on the couch (hint: the sleeping one was me, and yes, the tweens did take photos of me drooling.) My kids are older and so willing to just read and relax all day. But I had a cold; all I wanted was a cup of tea and some warm soup. Still, the weather broke and power came back in time for our food to be saved and dinner to get made. But I got to spend the next four hours frantically getting laundry and dishes done in case something happened and the power went out again.

This is life, I understand that. But I think it’s also the season. My kids are growing up fast and I’m having the same feelings of relentlessness and gratitude. This weekend, instead of doing small gifts from every famliy member to every other family member, we decided to do a secret santa within our family, so that each person can get one larger gift that they really want. Since then, I’ve received no less than three carefully hidden notes, each asking me what I want, and each with a piece of candy. I’m doing very little and they’re creating this magical little tradition all by themselves. I’m so thankful.

And also, this morning, one of the twins said something like, “Oh, when I go to college…” and I’m not really sure what the rest of the sentence was because I am not even joking when I say my eye started twitching at those words. It is too damn early for her to be talking like that. Except it’s not. She’s old enough to start envisioning a future for herself. I want her to dream and work towards those dreams.

So how do I live in this world where I feel like I’m playing whack-a-mole? My daughter jokingly said, when I mentioned my twitching eye, that I should try to enjoy the moments while they’re here and not borrow trouble for the future. Then we both laughed hysterically. Because while that might be all right for some, that’s not how I’m built. Nor is it how I want to be built.

I think, instead, the key is in leaning into the relentlessness. I’m not totally sure if this is true, but I’m told when piloting a boat, it’s easier to navigate waves if you turn to face them perpendicularly. Being hit side-on is dangerous and disorienting, but if the prow is facing the wave, it can do its job and cut through the water.

Whatever is coming is going to come, whether or not I want it to. But when I see those first signs of trouble - when the lights flicker or our child says, “Yeah, I want to go to college far away…” - I can steer into them. Into the fear, into the discomfort, into the cold and yes, into the dark. And then, eventually, into the gratitude of a storm safely weathered.

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Floriography

There is something so appealing to me about the meanings we humans give to the smallest of things.

For The Hellebore Society (which comes out January 10th!), I spent a lot of time researching and thinking about the Victorian language of flowers. For those of you who don’t know, the language of flowers, or floriography, was a practice done in the late 1800s/early 1900s where people would send messages to each other in the form of bouquets. Different flowers/foliage meant different things. So, arborvitae meant “everlasting love'“, azalea meant “be careful”, and yellow acacia meant “secret love.” Sent together, that might communicate, “I love you forever but we have to be careful and keep it secret.”

We still retain some of these meanings - red roses symbolize true love, while yellow roses are for friendship. Even if you didn’t know that, you probably kind of knew that red roses are more romantic than yellow. Some flower meanings have developed since then, such as the red poppy representing those soldiers who have died, which was popularized by the poem In Flanders Fields.

I’m not sure why floriography became so interesting to me, nor why it became such a part of my book. By the time I get to the end of the writing process, I’ve picked up and put down so many ideas that I don’t always remember how I got to where I am. But what I do know is that there is something so appealing to me about the meanings we humans give to the smallest of things.

I’m a gardener, which means that I spend a fair amount of my winter months thinking of what I’m going to plant. And although I’ve always leaned toward vegetables, flowers have a way of weaving themselves into any garden. Whether that’s as natural pest control (nasturtiums and marigolds) or as attractions for pollinators (bee balm and clover) or even as herbs that happen to flower (sage and lavender), flowers are always around. And in the Pacific Northwest, with our mild winters, the stubbornest of flowers stick around long past when you’d expect them to disappear.

So, I began to get used to them. And to learn which ones worked here and which ones didn’t. And which ones worked too well and started taking over everything. (I’m looking at you, California poppies). So I suppose it was no surprise that when I started writing my next book, I had flowers on the mind. And now, when I plan my garden for next spring, I’m not just ordering yarrow, gladiolus and bluebells. I’m also thinking about “healing”, “strength of character”, and “loyalty”…and smiling about how humanity always makes even the most mundane of things that much more interesting.

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November Storms and Little Choices

I want to sit in that darkness for a little while. I want to let it settle into me.

It’s the time of year when I start looking at pictures of beach resorts and dreaming of vacations in far-flung locales. Halloween, with all its spookiness, is over. And it’s not yet Christmastime, when holiday lights shine out through the 4:30 darkness. (and if’ you’ve ever visited here, you’d know that no one does Christmas lights like people who live in the rain 24/7.)

It’s just a dark, sludgy time. And yet, there are still so many things to be done. I’ve been working full-bore on this book, trying to get the cover finished and manuscript uploaded and navigating about a million technical annoyances that all come down to things that are invisible if they’re right and glaring if they’re wrong. (For example, the indentations for text messages in a book. Are they normally indented? Are they indented on both sides? Have I found every text message I’ve written in an 86,000 word manuscript that I’ve read more than twenty times now? I don’t know, but I sure hope so!)

I know I’m complaining but it’s not a complaint. It’s an exhalation. The world feels so dark and yet, I need to care about the little things. The big things are so very far out of my control, but the little things are manageable. So I make the dinners and check the grammar and text the friend and plant the bulbs.

I used to believe that it was in affecting the little things that big changes could happen. Maybe I’m getting older or the world has changed but I don’t think that any more. I don’t know how big changes happen. If I did, the world would look different, because I’d be out there pushing on those levers with all my might.

Instead, I’m at home, checking to make sure I used semicolons correctly.

This might sound depressing, like something written as my world literally gets darker. I suppose I could jumpstart that festival of lights. Pull out the Christmas decorations and start baking cookies. I know people who do and I appreciate them.

But here, I want to sit in that darkness for a little while. I want to let it settle into me. The reality that each of us can only do so much. That no matter how many lights I put up, the sun goes down before I even start making dinner. No matter how many Christmas carols I sing, the rain comes pouring down. No matter how many cozy evenings around the fire I have, the world seems sadder than it did.

All I can do are the little things. Make the dinners my kids love. Check the grammar so I can properly communicate the stories in my brain. Plant the bulbs so that next spring, the bees will have the nectar they need. I don’t have any illusion that those will turn into big things. But I do know one thing: those little things add up. They add up to a home filled with warmth. They add up to a community of people who read and talk about books. They add up to a garden that is full of life, even in November.

That will have to be enough. It will have to be enough to create pockets of sanctuary in the midst of darkness. Not trying to deny or pretend that it isn’t November. Not trying to ignore the rain. But providing a shelter, a haven, a respite from the storms. One little choice at a time.

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Next Book: The Hellebore Society

In case you hadn’t heard, my next book is coming out on January 10th, 2025! But I thought it might be good to get all the details in one place so…here you go!

In case you hadn’t heard, my next book is coming out on January 10th, 2025! But I thought it might be good to get all the details in one place so…here you go!

What book is this?

It’s called The Hellebore Society and it’s a modern fantasy about four friends in their forties (say that three times fast!)

Is this a Mud Witch Sequel?

No, it’s not. I am currently working hard on Mud Witch 2 (real name still to be decided) but I’m still in early stages of research and drafting. If you want to check out my Instagram page, there will be lots of content about the research I’m doing on that, since I’m spending a lot of time on it right now. Here’s the link to that: https://www.instagram.com/thedillawaydiaries/. Just be aware that this is my professional instagram page, not my personal one, so if you follow me personally, you won’t see that content.

How can I get the book?

It will be available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle.

When can I pre-order?

I’m still finalizing little details like, you know, the cover, but as soon as you can preorder I will put a link on my website, on my Facebook, and on Instagram.

What’s it about?

Twenty years ago, four friends went out to a bar and came home the newest members of a magical society. They can barely remember that night, but the secretive Hellebore Society didn’t forget about them. Now they’re forty, and Mel, Talia, Josie and Kate have been called into action. Someone’s been using stolen technology to break into the world’s most secure locations, and it’s their job to stop them. Luckily, the Hellebore Society’s got a garden full of extraordinary plants to help them out. But twenty years is a long time. Old hurts and new frustrations threaten not just their friendship, but their mission. Can they overcome their quarrels in time to catch the thieves? And more urgently, can they also make it to daycare before they get charged extra for late pickup?

The Hellebore Society is a fantasy that that tells the story of four women working to recover stolen magical artifacts…and possibly the parts of themselves they didn’t realize they’d lost along the way.

Why did you write this? (And not a mud witch sequel like we wanted?)

To be honest, I started Mud Witch 2 immediately after I launched the first one, but for some reason, I just got stuck. So I set it aside and started writing what I call “my midlife crisis” book. I started looking around at all the extraordinary women around me and thinking about how dumb it is that we hear about teenagers and young adults saving the world when most of us don’t reach our full vitality and competence until long after we’ve said goodbye to our 20s. My brain started asking…what would it be like to take someone who wasn’t some ingenue and ask them to save the world? So many younger people aren’t sure of themselves and that plays out in their story. But these women, they know how to get stuff done…what would that look like? And how would their lives change?

Why is it called The Hellebore Society?

I named this book (and the Society) after the hellebore, which is also known as the winter rose. It doesn’t bloom in spring, or even summer, like most flowers. No, most hellebores don’t even think about blooming until November or December. And that made me think of a lot of the people I know, including myself, who didn’t find what they wanted to do or even who they wanted to be until later. There’s something special about a person bringing half a lifetime’s worth of experience to their endeavors. It’s richer and fuller and also, somehow, less frantic and harried. I like to think there are a lot of hellebores out there in the world, just waiting to bloom.

If you have any other questions, put them in the comments below and I’ll do my best to get to them!

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Garlic

I plant a lot of things and some of them never germinate, or get choked out by weeds, or fail to thrive in inhospitable soil. Gardeners don’t usually get bent out of shape about it.

Yesterday a planted a lot of garlic. What I wanted to do was harvest a lot of garlic and then plant some more for next year, but last summer’s garlic wasn’t ready yet. You see, it was supposed to be planted in fall but, because of life, it got planted closer to spring. And now, all these months later, it’s not ready.

I don’t know if it ever will be.

Perhaps the mistakes of the past will stay buried in the ground, stagnating until finally they get thrown into the compost. I plant a lot of things and some of them never germinate, or get choked out by weeds, or fail to thrive in inhospitable soil. Gardeners don’t usually get bent out of shape about it.

So yesterday, I planted next year’s fall garlic. It’s the right time of year, the rain stopped for an hour, and thanks to Forrest’s hard work, the dirt was easy to work and full of worms and humus. Everything came together perfectly. I have high hopes for this garlic.

It still might not work out.

We had a beautiful lavender bush when we first moved in, which died off one year. Since then, I have been trying to get lavender going again. I’ve planted it a dozen times - from seed, from plants - it doesn’t matter. We have the perfect climate for lavender - out on the peninsula there are acres and acres of lavender farms. But every year, no matter how much I fertilize, care for and try to make it work, it doesn’t.

Now, garlic is a lot less finicky than that, but there’s something about planting something that is a bit of a gamble. Gardening is a lot of work and often it’s done in less than pleasant circumstances. At the end, more often than not, there’s a harvest, but every gardener I know can tell you what didn’t work in their garden this year. Or what they’ve tried to grow a dozen times and never quite been able to coax into fullness.

But we keep doing it, don’t we? Digging a trench in the muddy dirt, separating stubborn cloves and shoving them down into the dark. Covering them over and then…waiting. Hoping that whatever work we’ve done is enough. And then, if harvest time comes and it’s not, we till the bed again, add some compost, and take another chance.

Because there is always, always, always next spring.

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Playing Catch Up and Cutting Back

“Most of all, I started to unpack the lies that most of us tell ourselves. About how we’re lazy if we don’t do enough, or, worse, about how we’re better than everyone else if we do more.”

I’m a little behind today. On almost everything. It was a late night with a house full of kids and I know I’m not the only parent who’s playing catch up today. But it doesn’t feel good. Right now it feels like there are too many projects on my desk and too few hours in my day.

The reality is that, in an earlier stage of life, this would have been a normal occurrence for me. But in the last year, I’ve cut back. I’ve forced myself to no longer expect productivity at the cost of my health. I’ve listened to all the instagram posts about self care and prioritizing and delegating. It seems like such common knowledge that at first, you might wonder why it took me so long.

Slowing down was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. To brag a bit, I’ve done some pretty hard things in my time. But nothing like this. Nothing like letting go of the idea that the value of my day was measured in the things I got done. Nothing like learning how to ignore the probably well meaning but ultimately hurtful questions about how I was spending my time. Nothing like learning to accept that I might never be able to operate in the same capacity as I used to.

If you’ve been wondering, the health issues I’ve referred to are somewhat diffuse and also confusing, as so many health problems can be. But suffice it to say two things happened at once: an old neck injury began worsening with stress, which moved what had been a decade of migraines into periodic spells of vertigo. And second, my cortisol levels dropped, a lot, and wouldn’t go up and down the way they were supposed to. At first glance, less stress hormones might seem like a good thing, but cortisol is what helps us respond to situations. And without enough of it, I just didn’t have what it took to rise to whatever occasions I faced. My amazing doctor explained it by basically saying that when you’re in crisis mode for as long as I was, eventually our bodies just…can’t anymore.

For the first time in a long time, I found myself pretty much housebound. I couldn’t drive with the vertigo and the cortisol thing meant I wasn’t up to much more than my regular parenting and household stuff. But the funny part is, I was actually okay with it. I was happier housebound than when I was trying to keep up.

Things are getting better. I did a long, hard course of physical therapy for my neck. I got rid of pretty much all obligations beyond caring for my kids. I did some hard work on reducing pain through all of those annoying mind-body things like meditation. And most of all, I started to unpack the lies that most of us tell ourselves. About how we’re lazy if we don’t do enough, or, worse, about how we’re better than everyone else if we do more. About how what we do decides who we are. Because there were days that the most I was up to was walking from a chair in the living room to a chair in the garden. I couldn’t bend over, I couldn’t stand for very long, and I definitely couldn’t stare at a screen and write.

But you know what I could do? Be there. Call my friends. Listen to my children talk about their days. Think up ideas for new books, books that would be written when things got easier. For as much as I’m trying to play catch up today, life is easier now. And I also know that if I never catch up - if things fall by the wayside - that will be ok too.

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