Strategic Serendipity

I am not a purist when it comes to reading. I count books I listen to on audible.com as books I have read.  I encourage my child to listen to books on audible.  We often get the paperback so he can follow along, but it is not required.  In my house reading is for fun and learning. We listen to books together as a family in the car and many nights when we come home, he asks to keep listening to his book instead of turning on the tv.  It is a constant challenge to find books we will both love. We just finished one such book together on audible.   Ben Garrod’s A Grown-Up Guide to Dinosaurs is an amazing family listen!  Don’t be fooled by the title, my seven year-old was completely engaged.  It was easy to listen to in small 15-minute drives and the production quality was good!  The author includes pop-culture references to Jurassic Park for those who only know dinosaurs from there.  We even learned a few things the movie got wrong! If you are a parent who has seen every episode o

This is a hard post to write.  I have been dreading July.  My dad would have been 85 this month.  For those who don’t know me, I worshipped my dad.  But just about one year ago he entered the hospital.  He would be released to assisted care and fight like hell to get out of there.  A hole in his lung would send him back to the hospital in September.  He would fight like hell to get out of there, too.  Surviving a surgery the doctor told me he couldn’t.  But he wouldn’t be released.  So as July starts and everyone celebrates our country’s independence, my sense of dread grows. From July through September I worked, fed my son, visited my dad, slept, and repeat.  You will notice cooking and cleaning we’re not mentioned in there.  Laundry was washed, but I only folded dad’s and that was because he liked things folded.  I figured he had earned that.  In October when he died, my world fell apart.  I worked and took care of my son, but that was really autopilot.  Laundry got done and fold

All my life I have been a voracious reader.  I love series and can binge read them with the best.  When I found out I was pregnant at 40, I was elated.  I threw up every day the whole pregnancy (but it was so worth it) so when I struggled reading, I thought it was just from feeling sick.  After my son was born, I was all about him, feeding him, feeding myself, and sleeping. Maybe showering.  So I still didn’t notice anything. When I went back to work, in a job that required reading, it was a struggle.  I told myself I was just tired.  Three years in, though I started to worry.  I got a job where I was commuting three hours a day, and turned to audible.com and books as the best carpool buddies ever.  After six months of that commute, however, I moved five minutes from work and my reading sharply declined over the next year. So in 2016 I made a New Year’s Resolution to read more.  I found a reading challenge to help me search for books and partnered with other reader friends. I rea

You've seen the tests on Facebook that help you figure out which Disney Princess you are.  Because we want to be a princess, right?  Honestly, lately I feel more like the meme that shows Cinderella running down the stairs at midnight and says "all she really wanted was a new dress and a night out."  Or maybe the one that expresses our discontent that wild animals don't really clean house for me on a regular basis. Don't get me wrong.  I grew up on Disney.  I listened to my books on record of every story they had and would turn the page when Tinkerbell rang her bell.  I watched Wonderful World of Disney every Sunday night.   In high school I had a season pass to Disneyland and spent my 16th birthday there.  I still have the Tigger I got that day sitting in my room.   In college, I had my Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast VHS tapes constantly going while I was studying.   I owned all the VHS tapes, then all the DVDs, and a bunch of Blu-Rays b

When life kicks in and you start wondering where the day, week, month, or year went, it is time to slow down. (C) DeAnn Malone 2019 In our fast-paced society, this can be a real challenge.  Last year, I bought a camera and started taking photography classes.  I hadn’t ever used anything but a point and click camera or a cell phone.  I was intimidated at first by all the setting and rules for when they use them.  Over the course of 11 classes in 13 months I have fallen in love with photography.  And not just because of the priceless memories I have in photos of nature and my son.  What I found was a way to slow down. You have likely read all the studies on the benefits of meditation.  I tried it, I really did.  I WANT to master it.  But I really struggled.  Yoga has eluded me, too, so far.  I refuse to give up.  But in the meantime, I can go to the local gardens and spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to get a picture of a flower or a butterfly absolutely perfect.  I can bl

How much alone time do you need? There seems to have been a cycle to my life where I go from a lot of alone time, to next to none, then back again.  When I was six, I was a latch key kid of a single mom who worked three jobs.  When we were together, she was tired in a way I could not understand.  I loved my time alone listening to Disney fairytale books on my record player and following along in the book.  I would turn the page when Tinkerbell made her sound.  I swear it is how I learned to read and to love reading.  But I would also get so lonely. Fast-forward to college and there were always so many people around. You weren’t ever really alone for long.  Summers were as much decompression as recharging my brain. Then I lived alone as a single person in DC. I had friends and volunteered a lot outside of work. But long weekends often consisted of a good audiobook while I worked on a quilting project. There were times that I was lonely and felt I was missing out on a piece of l