October Joys

Posted on October 15, 2026 by Lori Finding Joy

The foliage is peaking, the air conditioners are out of the windows, and the heat is on at night. The fireplace mantle is decorated for fall, and we’ve made our annual pilgrimage to the local apple orchard for apples, cider donuts, fruit turnovers, mums for the porch, and pumpkins. We’ve been to the county fair, and done the corn maze at the farm. There is a giant inflatable Bluey in a spider costume on our porch. Halloween outfits are being planned, and I am doing mom math in my head trying to guesstimate how many trick-or-treaters we will get seeing as Halloween is on a Saturday this year. It’s fall, y’all.

***

We live quite close to the LL Bean mothership, which recently re-opened after a couple years of renovations. My social media feeds are full of their Boat and Totes, which I find simultaneously funny and annoying – I was lugging my school lunch in the small-sized ones 45 years ago, and these influencers act like they’ve just discovered them. What is new is the trendy embroidered phrases people are having stitched on their bags, and I have spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about what I wanted on my next bag. We went to check out the new fish pond and children’s area, and I wandered down to the bottom floor which has been turned into one big space for Boat and Totes. I really wanted a fig-colored one, a sort of brownish-plum color perfect for fall, but alas they were long sold out. I wound up getting an XL light blue one — but after all my pondering I couldn’t make up my mind on what to have embroidered on it. I wanted some sort of Swiftie saying, or a Noah Kahan lyric….but nothing fit the 10-character limit (including the word “shenanigans”). Technically it’s 10 characters per line, but I didn’t feel like spending another $10 or $20 more. But I knew that this tote would be mostly used in the summer, and goodness knows I like to spend my summers on porches, so this bag wound up with “Porch Life” embroidered on it. While not an exact Noah Kahan lyric per se, he mentions porches a lot on his last album so, you know, close enough.

Speaking of Noah Kahan, I’ve avoided the Hunger Games franchise entirely but he released a new song from the latest movie’s soundtrack. If it doesn’t resonate with you, then no one you have ever loved has died. “I carry you on with me, I promised you I would and I do…It feels good to say your name, it’s all I have now and a wonderful sound it makes”. Ooof. Last night our power went out for a little bit, and the little guy curled up with me and my flashlight asking all sorts of questions. “My daddy’s name is Erik, whats your daddy’s name?” I said Jeffrey and got tears in my eyes. “My Daddy would have ADORED you”, I told him. “He liked bulldozers and excavators and tractor rides too”.

***

Meanwhile there has been knitting! I finished the little guy’s Mithril sweater. “Mithril” is a fictitious notion from the Lord of the Rings and is a special type of metal, used as armor in a way? At any rate, this sweater is in fact like armor. I knit it in Peace Fleece, an aran-weight wool, and it is dense. I don’t think you could wear it under a winter coat without sweating to death. I washed and blocked it, and the yarn opened up a lot (also, this yarn has lots of detritus in it, tiny little sticks and pieces of hay, which also came out easily in the bath). It is too big — he’s just into size 3 and I knit a size 4, but he will get a couple of years use out of it. It will be perfect for wearing in the car, it’s not puffy or thick like a coat is and won’t interfere with his carseat straps.

As per usual, the minute I finally finished something I got a terrible case of start-itis (I want to knit ALL the things simultaneously). I immediately bought more yarn and cast on multiple things. Currently on the needles include a Sophie scarf, a roll-neck sweater for the little guy that will have a fire truck design knit into it, and another sweater for him that has some snowflake-ish designs around the yoke. I also unearthed striped sweater with an alligator on it that I originally started for my cousin’s son two years ago, just missing one sleeve, but if I finish it soon the little guy can wear it this winter. I also found no less than three shawls started and abandoned, another striped cardigan I started for my cousin’s little girl, and two baby blankets — all in various stages. But hey, I haven’t knit O anything in years and I’ve never knit D anything, and I have at least four abandoned carts with online yarn retailers full of yarn combos for them. I am going to give myself carpal tunnel again if I’m not careful.

My English paper piecing project got put down while I finished the sweater, but I picked it up again this past weekend. I like to bring this project to the girls’ tumbling classes as it keeps me focused on something other than them potentially breaking their necks. Don’t get me wrong, I am THRILLED that they have found something physical that they enjoy, but I find myself flinching a lot.

Finally, I found out that I do not actually have an extra gallbladder! It’s a long story, but I met with the surgeon and after much discussion I decided I would prefer to have a CT scan before going straight to surgery. Turns out that was 100% the right decision, because what I *actually* have is a cystic duct with some stones in it. Since I have no symptoms, we do nothing right now – but if it starts to become problematic then rather than surgery, they will deal with it endoscopically and laser the stones into bits. I am still convinced they sent the wrong ultrasound pictures to the surgeon, though, as there was clearly a gallbladder on them. This short paragraph does not accurately convey the week of confusion and rage I experienced between seeing the CT report say “no evidence of gallbladder or gallbladder remnant” and a phone call from the gastroenterologist insisting the CT was wrong. I wanted to say, “dude, if I had a nickel for every time a man insisted he was right about something…” but I refrained. At some point I will have a long conversation with my PCP about getting referred to a different gastroenterologist, but that’s for another day. The point of joy being, no surgery!

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One of Those Ladies In A Line

Posted on September 10, 2026 by Lori Finding Joy

Reference: The song “Ladies In A Line” by Sara Bareilles (lyrics quoted below).

My first guitar teacher, who I will not identify because he has a very distinctive name, once spent half a lesson talking about his obsession with Sara Bareilles (SB). I didn’t mind, really, it gave me a reprieve from playing an F chord (still can’t), and as luck would have it a few years later he wound up marrying someone named Sara, who bore a passing resemblance to SB.

SB has a new album out, all about grief, and this may be a blog about finding joy but the truth is that the other side of joy is often grief. I’m not sure you can have one without the other. Like, can you grieve something or someone that didn’t once bring you joy? In contrast, there is a Portuguese word, saudade, which is more about longing for someone or someplace that is absent. I thought about this word a lot while we were trying to have a baby, when I felt like I was missing something that I never actually had, but maybe could down the line? I’m probably mangling things, since my Portuguese started and ended with obrigada, but it was a weird time in my life.

These days I’m too busy and tired to remember much of that time, but SB’s new album has a song called Ladies In A Line that all too vividly brought back those days of doing IVF. I’d leave our house early, driving through the windy roads of Concord and Lexington, past Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, and past old battlefields in misty morning light, fog just starting to lift and burn off. Every other day I’d make this trip, just to have vials of blood taken, and then some days an ultrasound (the not fun kind, if you know/you know). This was all preceeded by thousands of dollars of medication showing up at our door on ice, shots two or three times a day, one in particular that burned like a bee sting, another one an actual drug used to treat cancer. I still can’t quite believe they put me/my husband in charge of giving me shots. A nurse at the IVF clinic gave Erik a quick tutorial, but honestly his stint as a veterinary assistant was more helpful.

Ladies in a line
Waiting for the fine-tipped needles
Craving just a tiny piece of good news
Doctors have ideas
Tell you nothing is for certain
That medicine′s amazing
But it isn’t perfect

It isn’t perfect, as we discovered. The house we were renting at the time had a spare room, painted in wide pink and white stripes, and I had visions of bringing a baby girl home to that room. During our first round of IVF I had horrible insomnia, and would often wind up in the spare room watching Doc Marten, of all things. It’s a long-running series, and so by the time we knew that round of IVF had failed I was only about half-way through. 11 years later, I still can’t go back to it. And ironically, about a hot minute after I finally did wind up pregnant our cats started catching mice in the kitchen on a daily basis, so we moved out of that house anyway.

Empty arms
With lists of names
The cruel truth
Of starting late
Life was asking
Other questions ′til now

Starting late was definitely part of the problem (some other issues indicated that I probably couldn’t have gotten pregnant without IVF anyway, even when I was younger). I spent my entire childhood making lists of names I would give my imaginary kids, fathered by whatever crush of the moment I happened to have. Always a long name first, and no short names, and no alliteration — ie, no first names that started with the same letter as the last name. (Ironically, decades later I would break two of those rules, giving my daughter a short first name and a long second name.) But then, as an adult, doubt and fear crept in. My mom always told me that if I had a baby I would lose it, and I never played with dolls so maybe I had no maternal instinct anyway? And I was terrified, TERRIFIED of actually giving birth. Despite my doubts, I ended an engagement in part because my then-fiance was adamant about not wanting children. Years later I would wind up in an ER in I-don’t-even-know-where Tennessee, and they thought I was pregnant. I was so relieved that I was not, that I realized the relationship I was in was probably doomed and I started plotting my return to Maine. Sometimes I used to wonder what would have happened if I had been pregnant, but now I am fairly confident I would have wound up a young widow trying to support said imaginary child by myself. Bullet, however sad, dodged.

And then years of being single, asking other questions, mostly wrong questions. Spending my weekends reading and sewing and hiking. Alternating between being content and being filled with angst about not having a family of my own. Watching everyone else I knew marry off, have kids; some on their second marriages already.

The depths of this are changing
Reminds me of the ocean floor
Just swimming where they tell me to
‘Til I can’t swim no more
The thing that keeps me going
Is a quiet kind of faith
That what is meant to find me
Will find me anywhere I am anyway

The depths…I endured some incredibly painful procedures, some really hard conversations with doctors, and then the unexplainable anguish when it didn’t work. In the midst of all this, my dad dying of cancer. And yes, you do as your told: here’s your plan, the schedule, the medication dosage, you just live by the list of instructions because you’ve paid way too much money to question anything now.

I’m not sure I had much faith by the time we did our third round. I think I was resigned at this point – either we would have a baby, or not. We made some hard choices that time, but it worked, and when our daughter was born I did come to see quite clearly that what (or who) is meant to find me, will find me. And then, years later, my other two children would find me, albeit in quite a different manner. Ironically, after all those years of dreaming about names I didn’t even get to name my two youngest!

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Late Summer Ramble

Posted on September 1, 2026 by Lori Finding Joy

Soundtrack: Noah Kahan, of course, and then this song by Courtney Barnett that I had to look up and listen to after I heard it on the radio because “always getting in my own way” and “questioning all the choices that I ever made” are things I have been saying to myself quite frequently lately. (Parenting is hard, y’all.) Also “I wanna finish what I start” because I have up and started yet more projects that will more than likely wind up half-finished, in a box to collect dust for the next twenty years. (Also, this song – “pride like poison”, ooooof.)

Projects: Still trying to finish the little guy’s sweater, having missed his birthday deadline. I also started water coloring, which I am SO bad at but needed to demonstrate to a child with perfectionist tendencies that being bad at something at first is not something shameful and practice is important. So, onwards I go. And I have a stack of books and a couple of side writing projects, plus my guitar is throwing me guilty looks every time I walk past it.

Mostly, though, I fell down a rabbit hole of hand-sewing, because I fell into a rage about AI and so in protest I guess I’m going to hand sew a whole quilt because AI can’t? I’m honestly not sure what excuse I landed on, but it seemed reasonable when I started. There’s this thing called English paper piecing (or EPP), which involves using paper templates you hand baste to fabric and then hand sew the pieces together. I tried this once, years ago, but the paper templates I bought were slippery and it was just too fiddly. Two weeks ago I got my haircut and wandered into a new(ish) fabric store nearby, and found some iron-on paper templates. I bought a pack of 50, expecting them to last for months, and within a week was back buying more. It is wildly addictive, sewing these 1.5 inch hexagons, so much so that I’ve mustered quite a stack of finished ones. You sew 7 of the hexagons together to form a flower, which measure about 7.5″. If my math is correct (and that is a big IF) I need approximately 70 flowers, or 490 hexagons, to make a throw-sized quilt. I have maybe 20 flowers now completed, in varying degrees of quality. I watched a lot of online tutorials by people who sew these together using a whip stitch, but I find a mattress stitch joins the hexagons in an almost invisible manner. I had a few charm packs and some fat quarters of the “Sanctuary” fabric line by Tilda that I am using, which for reasons I can’t explain reminds me of Taylor Swift’s Folklore album, and while it would have worked better with a larger hexagon I’m rolling with what I’ve started. Progress, not perfection.

In the midst of this, school has begun. I am already deep in the weeds trying to make sure that both girls have a successful year. I have already cried multiple times, once on the phone with a vice-principal. Advocating for your kiddo is just so hard, but I learned last year that if I don’t make a fuss nothing changes. My oldest is going into 4th grade, one of my personal favorite years because I had the amazing and unparalleled Tony Waldeier as my teacher, and oh how I wish she could have had him. He read us a chapter or two of The Hobbit every day after lunch, and took us on forest walks, and talked to us like people with opinions and feelings; it was magical. He was only 58 when he died, another Vietnam vet lost too soon from cancer.

On the bright side, Ted Lasso is back, and thank goodness we pay for ad-free AppleTV because honestly the political ads are already incessant. I used to be much more political, but motherhood has been all-consuming for me. However, this year made me so mad I actually did something and wound up as a delagate to the Maine Democratic Party’s convention to elect a replacement to Platner. If you know me in real life, you know that I was livid over Platner from the get-go, and thought he should have stepped down long before he actually did. I was a big fan of Dr. Shah, and thought he would have made a wonderful senator, but alas. I think my dad would have liked Troy Jackson, at least the former logger part as Dad logged too, and so far the stuff they have dug up on Jackson pales in comparison to Platner. I guess we’ll see what shakes out of Jackson’s tree, but so far throwing a water bottle and having a lobbyist for a son doesn’t phase me much.

Meanwhile, we went camping again – this time I was insane enough to let the 9 year old bring a friend, so we were even more outnumbered than usual. The friend is lovely, and no trouble at all; the problems came from our 8-year old being the third wheel. And all the little guy wanted to do was follow them around; “I want my girls!” he would cry as they raced away from him on their bikes. Honestly, he just kills me. And then I got hives, which randomly happens to me a lot lately, and alas all the campground store had was Benadryl so I was FORCED to take a nap and leave my husband to keep the peace. Later we took the inner tubes down a short section of the Saco River, which I would do again if a) the water was higher and b) I did not have a squirmy 3 year old sitting on my lap. Said squirmy boy lost one Spiderman Croc in the river, and then threw the other one in for good measure. *sigh* Luckily, my husband was able to grab one of them and by the time I reached the take-out point, my daughter was standing there with the other shoe in her hand. Mind you, I spent the whole time in a bout of internal panic, because I grew up hearing the legend about a Native American curse on the river that each year 3 white people would die on the Saco. (My Facebook family and friends indicates I was not alone in hearing this.) I must have appeased the gods that be, because we (and all our various and sundry items) all made it out unscathed*.

And today is September, and I spent the afternoon at a surgery consult because I may or may not still have part of my gallbladder (the rest was vacated back in 2013), and I may or may not need to have what’s left removed. I have no idea the name of the surgeon I saw but he was awesome, actually had a sense of humor and thought it was hysterically funny when I told him “you know, this is completely ridiculous and all started with toenail fungus”. The original surgeon’s notes indicate he got all of it, and nothing showed up on the original ultrasound, but now there is something there that strongly resembles a gallbladder. The surgeon told me in no uncertain terms that I did not grow a new one, and that I probably did not have two, but honestly with my gene pool I think anything is possible.

*life jackets were worn by the littles, and honestly next time I will wear one myself – the current is no joke.

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Sweeping Porches

Posted on July 22, 2026 by Lori Finding Joy
  1. We have been camping. I say “camping” in a quite tongue-in-cheek manner; camping used to mean hiking into the Pemigewasset wilderness in NH or staying in a remote site up at Baxter State Park, but now means renting a cabin and a golf cart at a cartoon-themed franchise campground with a pool and a water park. The things we do for our children.
  2. The kids had a grand old time. The little guy loved the golf cart – too much, frankly, as there were several times we caught him trying to drive it (the key was kept well out of his reach). The girls loved the pool and the water slide. I loved the porch, where I actually got to periodically hang out and knit and read. I actually got my oldest to play Uno with me, until she got mad when I won 5 games in a row and decided she’d rather watch Moana for a bit. I made my husband buy the annual six-pack of Stella Artois (we don’t really drink) and we never even opened it. I’m not going to say it was restful — whoever said vacations with kids is just parenting in a new location was spot on — but it was a nice change of scenery. (And yes, I swept the porch while singing Noah Kahan lyrics like “I’ll leave the porch light on” and “I’m important if it’s only for letting dogs out, sweeping porches, to make me nothing, take me way back”.)
  3. I was looking for something I wrote awhile ago, and while digging through my drafts I found a bunch of essays I wrote back in 2021 through a class at GrubStreet. I’ve taken a number of their “Six Weeks, Six Essays” classes over the past…gosh, almost 20 years! Some in person, when I lived in the Boston area, and then online since moving back to Maine. I love those classes, but I can’t find a way to carve out time to do them as they are typically in the evenings (dinner and bedtimes) or on the weekends (sheer kid chaos in all directions). I always love reading what I write in these workshops, despite knowing they are not in any way, shape or form publishable. Maybe this fall there will be something I can plug into again.
  4. This weekend was the agricultural fair in the small town I grew up in, and we almost always go. This. year made me sad because Aunt Linda wasn’t there, and usually she’d sit and talk with me and let the little guy eat her ice cream. The kids had a good time though, the girls like to see the animals and still enjoy the farm play area. The little guy just wanted to ride the kiddie tractors. I got some fried scallops which he ate, thinking they were chicken nuggets. Adding fish sticks to the grocery list!
  5. Monday I had the day off from work, which I thought I was going to spend catching up on laundry and doing at least one of all the things I never get to do like practice guitar, write, read, sew, and/or knit. Alas. The 9-year old was beyond overtired and refused to go to camp, and so I wound up running errands with her all day instead. *sigh* It feels selfish to want my own time, and yet my sanity depends on it. Also, I know in my bones that there will come a time when I will want nothing more than to spend a day with my girl, and she will be too busy with her own life, so I need to soak up this time while I have it. Either way, Friday (my next day off) cannot come fast enough.

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Bless Your Heart

Posted on June 25, 2026 by Lori Finding Joy

And here we are in June, still mainlining Noah Kahan (with an odd smattering of Kate Bush, particularly Jig of Life which was apparently written from the imaginary viewpoint of an Irish woman hallucinating while drowning?), and still feeling my age. School finally gets out this week for the girls, and then they begin an insane summer of daycamps which will leave me driving up and down 295 multiple times a day. The lilacs have gone by, but the wisteria is making up for it. My peonies did not bloom at all this year, which is an odd mystery. It’s the first time in years; I can only assume the buds got hit by a late cold snap as the plant looks otherwise healthy.

Ruminations: the small town grapevine being what it is, I learned that someone I grew up with is moving to the south. This automatically threw me back to the years I lived in Memphis. Now that I’m a parent, I cannot believe my parents let me go (mind you, I was 27 years old and I wouldn’t have listened anyway), and I also still cannot believe the utter insane drama that happened with my then-boyfriend over those years. There’s a Taylor Swift line about knowing everything at 18 and nothing at 22 — and in retrospect, I knew everything at 19 and nothing at 27. At the very least, my 19-year old self knew herself much better than anyone gave her credit for, including me.

ANYWAY. I have complicated feelings about the south (and this particular person, but that’s a whole other story). The end.

This is supposed to be about finding joy, which I admit has been sparse these days. We finally had court for our foster son a few weeks ago, and without getting into the weeds he will be remaining with us for the forseeable future. This comes with its own challenges, mind you, but I can’t even tell you how physical the relief was for me. I didn’t know what I was carrying until I put it down, you know? (Maybe that’s why I’m listening to a song about drowning.) But I also didn’t realize how I’d been neglecting myself. It sounds trite, there’s so much blah blah blah about self-care and all that, but I have been SO deep in the weeds with all three kids over the past few years that I don’t even know who I am anymore. I did remember that I like to read, and so I’ve been devouring books over the past few weeks. The Spy Coast was great (and I just started the sequel yesterday), as was The Things We Never Say. I also read The Collected Regrets of Clover which was good, although starting it the night before my BFF’s dad’s funeral and then finishing it while one of my kids was at grief counseling was probably not a great idea given the subject matter (the main character is a death doula). And now I catch myself fretting over things like who is going to write my obituary (because so many of them are SO badly written) and worrying that someone will choose music that I hate. The temptation to sit down and script the whole thing is so control freak of me…

I also started knitting a sweater for the little guy. I worked on it at the courthouse while waiting to testify, and the security guards joked with me that I could knit a blanket because it was taking so long. This is at least the 5th sweater I have started for him, maybe I will finish this one. The pattern is a pull-over, it’s the Mithril sweater by Lisa Chemery (you can find it on Ravelry if you wish). I’m using an dark green aran wool that I find pleasant to knit with; I find that knitting with thin yarn and small needles makes the tendonitis in my right arm act up. I’ve been reading more than knitting, but I have a few months before we break out the woollies again.

The big leap for me is whether or not I can get set up to sew again. My oldest daughter took over my sewing corner so she could set up a kennel for all of her stuffed dogs, and at this point I don’t even know where anything is. It will take some time to find my way back to this, but I really want to. One of my coworkers does beautiful embroidery, and I’ve been inspired to try that again – at least it is portable, unlike my sewing machine. I used some of my birthday money on a new LL Bean Boat and Tote to be my “analog” bag – ie, a stash of things to do that do not require technology such as my book, my knitting, my journals, some card games – and I can easily add some hand-sewing projects in there. I have a smattering of days off this summer and I am hopeful that me and my bag will have some adventures along the coast. Or honestly, at this point I’ll be happy to just sit on my porch and watch the wisteria grow.

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An Aging Wolf (who lost the taste for blood)*

Posted on May 7, 2026 by Lori Finding Joy

*Lyrics stolen from Noah Kahan’s song Orbiter

It’s May, I turned 55, I think there is an AARP card in the pile of mail I have to sort through, and there is a half-gallon of chocolate ice cream missing somewhere in my house. Did the 9 year old eat it all and hide the evidence, or did the 2 year old stick it in his little shopping cart and deliver it to parts unknown? I have no idea. (It was partially consumed so I know I did not leave it at the grocery store or in my car, and I know it was returned to the freezer.) Also, two out of the three kids are sick (one with Flu A despite getting a flu shot) and also my husband is sick. I got Flu B awhile back and am really hoping I dodge this one, as I have very little PTO left for the rest of the year.

***

Even without most of the house sick, some birthdays hit harder than others and this year felt like speeding into a brick wall at 80 mph. Fifty five. I am fifty five? It cannot be possible. The Facebook messages felt more poignant this year for some reason. There was Greg, whom I’ve known since I was 4, and I’m pretty sure the last time I saw him was twenty years ago when he was an undertaker and we were at my Aunt Ruthie’s funeral trying to catch a cat that had trotted its way into the church. There were other people from grade school and high school and college and old jobs; my family members and my husbands family members. But I did not get my early morning Happy Birthday text from my Aunt Linda this year, because she passed away in March, and it all makes me wonder who won’t be here next year. And always, another year my father didn’t see.

***

One Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, fresh off the 9-year old informing me I needed to listen to someone other than Taylor Swift, I found myself with about five loads of laundry to sort and fold. I plunked myself in front of the TV and with nothing else on, I watched the Noah Kahan documentary on Netflix. I’ve not really been into his music; I mean, I like what I have heard on the radio but I never dove in. After watching the documentary I dove down deep. Comically, I thought it would be good for me to find new music that didn’t remind me of anything or anyone but, ha, turns out anxiety disorders and angst-ridden relationships are practically universal themes. I saw an interview where Kahan said “If something really bad happens and its raining out, listen to this album”. Yesterday, in fact, it was pouring out and I had it cranked in the car all the way home.

I think my favorites right now are We Go Way Back, Doors, Orbiter and Lighthouse, the last two being bonus tracks, but I have this chorus from Dashboard stuck in my head because it has a great scream-in-your-car chorus:

Look at you go, crossin’ state lines with your shadow
Tryna run away
Change your zipcode
Turns out that you’re still an asshole

As someone who has moved countless times, this hit a little hard. We’ve been in our house almost 7 years and it’s the longest I have lived anywhere since leaving for college. And, I’m not going to lie, if it weren’t for a 3% mortgage rate and the fact that our little guy doesn’t have permanency, I’d probably be looking at real estate listings. (Or applying for Canadian citizenship, which I can apparently do since my great-grandmother was Canadian; one of my cousin’s has submitted her paperwork so I am waiting to see how that shakes out.). I keep asking my husband to find a job that will make him (and therefore, all of us) live in Europe somewhere, but so far that hasn’t panned out. I have at least 12 more years of working, and possibly 15 years more of parenting (I mean, that never ends, but you know what I mean), and especially after this past winter a change of scenery would be nice. In the meantime, I shall howl at the moon whenever possible.

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Baggage Claim

Posted on April 15, 2026 by Lori Finding Joy

Songs in my head: “Nightswimming” by REM and “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star. The first because it’s used in an episode of Shrinking, which I recently watched, and it takes me back to sitting on balconies in Memphis, evenings heady with the scent of magnolias and jasmine, drinking wine, and listening to the cicadas (and this song). It’s one of my favorites, possibly one of the best REM songs. Kind of weirdly, I sang it to O and J when they were babies, except that musically it really does feel like a lullaby.

The latter, because — same. Memphis, cicadas and wine. I can’t believe that was over 20 years ago.

***

Present Day: I spent all of Friday and most of Saturday up in Bangor at a foster care conference. It’s been at least 3 years since I traveled by myself, possibly 4, and it was weird. As a card-carrying independent introvert who did everything by herself for decades, it never occurred to me that I could get used to traveling in a pack. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed getting take-out from Chipotle and eating it in my pj’s all by myself, no child perched on my knee sticking his hands in my food, and I did not miss having to referee some kid conflict every sixty seconds. I slept in a giant bed by myself, though fitfully (despite running the fan all night). But I had to drag my own bags to and from the car, and I had to eat (a terrible) breakfast by myself, and I missed being woken up by the almost-3 year old crawling in next to me happily announcing “I wake up! I see Mama!”

(I swear, my kids calling me “Mama” is one of the best sounds ever. Well, really it’s more like “Mumma” but we’ll roll with the conventional spelling.)

Also? Bangor is not far from UMO, the university I thought I would transfer to so I could be with my high school boyfriend (who would, a decade later, become the Memphis boyfriend) — until I broke up with him mid-way through my freshman year of college and decided NOT to transfer after all. I was also worried that going to UMO would just be a repeat of high school, because so many kids from my high school wound up there. Last year I had lunch with Marci, someone I grew up with and went to UMO herself, and she said she rarely saw anyone from our hometown, so perhaps I was wrong. God knows how many years of therapy I’ve done and I still have people from back then who just have the ability to make me feel badly about myself. (And then I keep running into them anyway, because the universe is out to get me, I guess). Or maybe I’m the bad penny in this story – “in my defense, I have none for never leaving well enough alone”, to quote Taylor. More likely none of it matters one way or the other; contrary to the side of the internet who thinks the Hadron collider shifted timelines, I fear this timeline is set — like it or not.

And speaking of timelines: I’ve been thinking a lot about the book “A Swiftly Tilting Planet” by Madeline L’Engle, part of the “Wrinkle In Time” series (also known as the Time Quartet series). I’ve read it so many times I could probably recite whole passages from memory. Basically, Charles Wallace and his sister Meg wind up going back in time to fix some “might have beens” in order to prevent nuclear war. Why was I reading this at age 10 at the height of the cold war?! Ooof. But I keep feeling like someone from the future needs to figure out how to do this, fix the might-have-beens and right the wrongs…’cause we’re in deep, y’all.

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Just…breathe?

Posted on April 7, 2026 by Lori Finding Joy

The Wailin’ Jenny’s version of Take It Down by John Hiatt has been stuck in my brain all week. I don’t know why, other than it’s lovely (though sad, obviously).

***

Covid, then a few weeks later pneumonia – but then the flu. My lungs are just trashed at this point. I’m barely functioning, what I am able to do is solely due to prednisone and nebulizer treatments. I am not sleeping well, partly because of the coughing and partly because of the prednisone. The prednisone is making my face puffy, whether it is the actual medicine or the fact that steroids just make me want to eat all the things, I’m not sure. I also managed to pull a hamstring this weekend, just by getting off the couch, and my sides hurt so badly from coughing that I have a pillow handy to hold over my stomach, just like I did when I had a c-section. I cannot underscore how much I want this winter to be over, to sit on my porch with the lilacs and be able to actually breathe.

Speaking of c-sections, my oldest child – the one I actually birthed! – turned nine. Nine! Eight was unexpectedly and irrationally hard, but over the past month we’ve seen some great progress so I am hopeful we are turning the corner. Third grade was hard for me too; I went to a regional school where I was the only girl from my town in my class, plus that was the year I started walking into walls and they figured out I couldn’t see so I had to get glasses, and Kevin Powell got detention for calling me 4 eyes. Our teacher was a former Army nurse who was insanely strict, but she had a soft spot for me (because I was well-behaved) and wound up guilting my parents into letting me get a cat. It was a black and white cat I named Sam, who came to a tragic ending when my aunt’s twin brother ran over it. I cried so much my mother swore we would never get another cat. (Spoiler: there were several cats after Sam.)

Also? my aforementioned aunt died a couple of weeks ago, and I’m still sad about it. She was the best, she would (and did) do anything for anyone, and gosh, we chase so much in this life that is not meaningful. My aunt did not chase these things, instead she showed up for people in a myriad of ways that might have seemed small but were absolutely not. Also, I think my aunt was 22 years older than me, which seemed a lot when I was a kid but, oof, the idea of possibly only having 20 years left is terrifying, especially when you have small kids. Time is speeding by, and while I will never regret my kids it is hitting me hard that they will most likely spend more of their lives without me than with me. I hate the idea of ever having to leave them, and yet that’s the natural order of things. And yet, I got 44 years with my own father and he still missed my entire “second act”: I was married all of ten days when he died, and he never got to see me be a mother, never got to meet my kids. There are no guarantees, is what I’m saying, and we have to make the most of whatever time we have left. Get busy living, indeed.

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Grace and Poise

Posted on March 6, 2026 by Lori Finding Joy

I’ve always been a bit of a klutz. It started in third grade when I would walk into walls, as if I couldn’t see them, and then it turned out that I actually was so nearsighted I *couldn’t* see them. Glasses definitely improved things, but not completely. Back in high school my friend/coworker Anthony used to smirk at me and say “grace and poise, grace and poise” every time I tripped over a mop bucket or yet again burned myself on the pizza oven. He didn’t say it in a mean way, though; it was actually sort of endearing – we ended up dating briefly in college so it wasn’t like he hated me. He just liked me, at least in part because I never took myself that seriously as to be embarrassed over much. He was ridiculously funny, mind you, and my sister and I still laugh sometimes over his antics; she has a hilarious story about taking him to the old Jordan Marsh basement store in Boston one time. Alas, it was definitely a situation where the friendship got ruined, and it’s too bad, but it’s all ancient history at this point.

However, the “grace and poise” has stuck with me all these years; every time I do something dumb I automatically think “grace and poise”. Thursday morning I was faced with the fact that the two-year old’s snow boots were still sopping wet from the puddle he jumped in the night before, and his rain boots were nowhere to be found. I was running late, of course, so I put him in the car minus his boots and drove him to daycare. I dropped him off and told them I was making a quick trip to Walmart and would be right back (they lock the doors promptly at 9 am). At Walmart I parked, went to hop out of the car and managed to spill my emotional support Diet Coke all over myself. Grace and poise, I thought; grace and poise. I raced into Walmart, grabbed some Spider Man rain boots for the little guy, and on my way to the self-checkout I spied a blue striped dress on a clearance rack. I impulsively grabbed it, paid, dropped the boots off at daycare, and then raced home to change out of my Diet Coke soaked pants. It wasn’t until I walked into work half an hour later that I realized that the dress was akin to the sort of dress that a Mennonite or Amish woman might wear and it looked ridiculous on me. *sigh*

Also: those stupid rain boots were $26.

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My Winter Song to You

Posted on January 28, 2026 by Lori Finding Joy

Song of the moment here. I used to listen to this years ago while taking the commuter train into Boston, traipsing in the snow from home to train station, from train station to the office, and then back again. It’s a weirdly hopeful song despite sounding terribly sad. Seems fitting for these days.

***

It’s been a rough couple of months all around, and the only reason I have time to write this is because I went and got Covid. Months of wishing I could stay in bed all day, through pneumonia (November) and a sinus infection (December) and all the requisite holiday magic that only a mother can make — and now, here I am, stuck up in my daughters’ room because it’s the least complicated place in the house to “quarantine”. I say that in quotes because at least once every 30 minutes one child or another barrels through the door demanding something. I love them, but when I am sick I just want to be left alone. There is no alone with small children.

(Here comes one now, I can tell it’s O because of the stomping on the stairs. I can tell when it’s D because she yells all the way up the stairs. I can tell when it’s the little guy because he calls Mommy? Mommy? and takes twice as long to get to the door because his little legs are short.)

My problems, however immediate to me, are nothing compared to those of the world. I kind of don’t even know what to say anymore. I have this one intense memory of my dad, years ago, talking about Vietnam (he did 2 tours of duty in the Army) and that it never should have happened, and then all sorts of other things in history that never should have happened, and we all have a duty from stopping those things from happening. It made a lot of sense to me when I was younger, with no family of my own to care for. I thought adults who weren’t involved in civic duty were lazy or uncaring. I couldn’t imagine not protesting or marching in the streets. Now, in my 50s, quite unexpectedly married with 3 small children (at the moment, anyway, foster care is full of surprises….)? People, I’m tired. I’m busy living. I don’t know why our laundry seems to breed during the day while I am at work, I don’t know how we lose so many toothbrushes, and I have utterly no idea what to make for dinner. I turn on CNN just long enough to turn it off again, I’d rather read about atrocities than have them replayed on a screen in my living room. I honk the car horn in support of protesters that line Route 1, so much so that the little guy always asks me to honk the horn when he is in the car with me, and it’s hard to explain to a 2 year old that we only honk when people are waving signs we agree with — or when some jerk tries to cut you off. “Honk honk!” he demands, and sometimes if we are far enough away from traffic or houses I will honk just to make him happy. I think to myself, I’m raising two children that are not biologically mine; is that civic duty enough? Am I doing my part already? But what good is it if I am raising them to be part of a world that is evil and cruel and that wants their friends sent back to countries their parents fled in order to give them better lives?

I feel pretty helpless at the moment, to be honest. And afraid, because there is no doubt that once they are done targeting immigrants and people of color, they are coming for women next. They’ve already started. This isn’t the world I wanted to bring my daughter into. And I don’t know what to do about it. And I have Covid, during a snowstorm, so here I am tappity-tapping away to the wind, while somewhere in the house the girls are fighting over who-knows-what and a cat is digging its claws into an abandoned knitting project. I want to dig my claws in to something too, in between piano lessons and foster care meetings and juggling everyone’s various doctor and dentist appointments. And don’t even mention summer camp to me; why I have to worry about this in January is a whole other rant.

***

I’m also irritated that I couldn’t have waited a week to get sick, partly because of the big snowstorm hitting us as I type, but also because both Bridgerton and Shrinking have new seasons coming out later in the week. I did watch as much of the latest season of Shetland as available on BritBox, and can I just say I don’t know if there is a more perfect theme song to any show, ever? It’s so beautiful and haunting. Last night I couldn’t sleep (oh the irony) and watched oodles of TikTok’s of these 2 midwesterners who hiked the Appalachian Trail this year. Ten years ago I thought this was something my husband and I would do one day, but it’s unlikely at this point. Also, I’ve seen pictures of the Knife’s Edge on Katahdin and nope, nope, nope.

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