Hello all, and welcome to the second half of 2020, the year of yellow skittles and socks which slide down and curdled cream in your coffee. Everyone likes to talk about “the new normal”, a term which I deeply dislike, but which does seem to pretty much sum up the human race trying to figure out their lives this year. One of “the new normal” things we’ve all had to learn to deal with, with varying levels of graciousness and…
Dear Rachel, Oh, you dear, sweet, naive, innocent, little thing. It’s June, which means you’re just getting settled into life in the city, and still trying to figure out your roommate situation, and you’re slowly making a few friends here and there. The homesickness is setting in with a force, which you’re abating with frequent trips to NC wherever you can squeeze them in. Best of all, you’re still under the impression that 2020 is going to be an amazing…
It’s been a languid and sultry couple of days in New York City, the kind where you move slowly, sipping ice water and blowing a fan on your bare toes while you smile and look professional from the shoulders up for your zoom calls. Usually I don’t care for hot weather, but I’ve kind of been soaking it in these days and relishing my well-deserved shower every night. And did I mention I’m showering in my very own shower these…
I wasn’t sure what to call you at first. Fellow exile? No, that makes it sound like we’re being persecuted. Fellow displaced person? But we aren’t refugees. This extraordinary season we are living in makes me incapable of even addressing you properly, but regardless, I wanted to write to you.
I’ve been meaning to write this post for dayyssss. So far I’ve managed to… Look through the photos from the choir Christmas party Google my name Apply to a random job I certainly won’t get Look up tall people jokes Look up short people jokes Read a post about celebrities wearing dresses over jeans Listen to Leslie Odom Jr’s Cheer Up Charlie Watch old videos of my dance class and of when I went to see the Brooklyn Tabernacle Singers in…
Some time ago my acquaintance-who-I-pretend-is-my-friend did a book week on her blog, and when I mentioned how much fun that would be, she kindly created this bookish questionnaire for me! I don’t have a whole week of book posts for you just now (hopefully coming later), but as a person who has wasted entirely too many hours doing stupid Buzzfeed quizzes, I great fun filling this much-better-than-Buzzfeed-quiz out. If you want to participate, I’d love to hear you answer your…
March marks one year since I made the momentous move from my wee North Carolina town to Queens, NYC. On March 8, 2019, I was saying my soggy farewells to everyone who was gathered at the annual youth conference, then packing my damp self into the rental car with Abby and wending our way toward Virginia where we spent the night at a friend’s house before trekking the rest of the way to Queens the next day. Precisely one year…
Since so many of you are just dying to know what it’s like to sing in my lovely li’l choir (and by “so many of you”, I mean precisely one little cousin), I thought I might give you a bit of a rundown of what it’s like behind the scenes at the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. I like to think of myself as the Amish representation in this extremely diverse choir. Sometimes I think of my Amish grandmother, and how agog…
When my girls and I planned our little dashing trip to London last fall, I thought with secret longing of how close we would be to Oxford, but I didn’t mention it much because our trip was already very short and surely there was no way we could pack a second location in. But upon arrival, we discovered that most of us had the same Oxford itch, and really, it wasn’t very far by train, and frankly, how could we…
After nearly a year of living in New York, I thought it might be time to maybe do some adult things like changing my driver’s license to my NY address. Armed with determination and not much else, I made the initial foray into the DMV wilderness, only to promptly return home when I saw the lines were longer than the lines on pretzel day, and that I needed not one, but two, proofs of address, which I definitely did not…
I learned that if you want an eternal tube of toothpaste, just buy the worst charcoal toothpaste you can find. It will hardly foam, it will leave your sink and your toothbrush black and weirdly greasy, it won’t freshen your breath by much, and no matter how many months and months you use it, it will never ever run out. Ever. Money saving hack, so you’re welcome for that. I learned I’m not a huge fan of being thought pregnant….
My decade began and ended with a miracle. Around the start of the decade I was living in Honduras, terribly burned out and sad from years of too much loneliness and a few too many griefs. I decided to ask God for the impossible, and asked Him to move us back home in the spring, and not only back to North Carolina, but back to our old house we had left there. This was ridiculous for a variety of reasons….