Hickory Smoked Turkey

I'm a person who likes to dream.  I usually dream of owning a small bar with my sister and living in Northern Michigan in a log cabin, possibly on a cherry farm.  But, as a writer, when it comes to entering writing contests, I freeze up and talk myself out of it.  I convince myself that it would be a waste of $20 to enter the contest because I clearly won't win.  This type of thinking has never helped me in the past and I always tell my students NOT to think this way.  So, when I recently read an article about a woman who is giving her Maine inn away for $125 and a winning essay, I froze with excitement and negative talk.  However, at this point, I'm tired of the defeatist talk.  I may not have a good chance of winning the contest/inn, but shouldn't I try?  Because, how amazing would it be if I actually won?!?!?! So, this weekend I will begin working on the "inn essay" and I will let myself really dream.  If you'd like to donate a fe...

Today, while curled up in an afghan my mom made me, I looked at a photo of toast that my dad sent me.  It seems like an odd combination but that afghan and picture of toast reminded me that I need to slow down. I have a lot going on in my life right now.  And, while I tend to thrive creatively in chaos, I am feeling unnerved.  In the next 5 months I will move to a new state, leave behind a city full of friends that I adore, get a new job, get married, find a place to live, and somehow find a new writing community in a place totally foreign to me.  Besides getting married, I am scared and freaking out.  I am excited for all that is on the horizon but it seems completely overwhelming. So, when I turned to my dad's photo and my mom's afghan it struck me that what matters most are the tiny moments throughout a day that make up a life.  Yes, we have a lot to plan for, but you can only plan so much for the future.  What happens now i...

If you were to ask either of my parents if I developed my love for writing from them, I imagine both of them would say no.  In the past few years, my parents have come to mean something different to me, figures that I rely on more than I thought I would at the age of thirty-five.  After I made it through the years of adolescent angst and drama, I came out seeing my parents in a clearer light.  And, after I went through a tough break-up and moved away, I realized how lucky I am to have the parents I have. There has always been a joke between me and my siblings that our family is straight-up wacky.  From post-it notes of frustration that my parents leave each other on the cupboards to the predictable bickering that ensues every holiday, we shake our heads and sigh.  It's true that sometimes it can be stressful watching your parents argue over small things over the years, but I've also learned how to look at that stress with a comedic eye.  My parents have b...

I'm currently teaching two English classes and what I've learned so far about myself and my students has little to do with commas or sentence fragments.  In many ways, I am driven to teach more than writing skills, I am interested in showing my students a sliver of topics or ideas that they may not have been exposed to yet. Last Friday I gave my students 5 minutes to respond to a writing prompt.  I asked my students what they were afraid of and their answers varied greatly.  When they turned their papers in I couldn't help but read them right away.  At the start of the semester I was frustrated by their lack of motivation, their refusal to speak in class and their blank faces.  But, after  getting to know them a bit, I realize that their silence isn't always due to lack of preparation.  Sometimes my students are silent because they have much scarier and stressful things going on in their lives besides my English class. I have one student who is ext...

I fell asleep dreaming of Detroit. The lost manufacturing jobs and the papers my grandpa used to sell on the corner of Livernois Avenue. In other words, I fell asleep missing you.