For a long time, my solution to overwhelm was a brain dump. I needed to get that stress-tornado out of my head and on to paper so that I could create a plan of attack. Just the process was helpful, but it was hard to know where to start fixing. Usually, by the time I…
For many years, winter and I were not friends. I would get terrible winter blues and struggled with the cold. It made me cranky. Our windy old Victorian was so architecturally interesting and so, so terribly drafty and miserable. It was built in 1905, and remodeled many times. The last time, right before we bought it,…
My name is Kara, and I stink at playing. For more than 10 years, this fact has haunted me. It’s the one piece of advice my aunt, who has like 39 kids, gave me: “Just get on the floor and play with them,” she said. And I tried. For years I really tried to enjoy…
Someone asked me recently if my kids ever just wake up cranky. And I wanted to say, “Oh my good-golly-gosh-are-you-kidding-sister, YES.” I wake up cranky. Sometimes all of us wake up cranky. Or tired. Or out of sorts for one reason or another. It happened on our first day of school this year. Thank goodness…