I walked into my bedroom this morning to find my cat staring up at my armoire. Initially, I thought she was eyeing the diaper hanger bag that is now home to single socks waiting in limbo to see if they’ll ever be paired up with their match.

Though I’ve made it obvious in previous posts that I am not a poet, that doesn’t diminish my love of verse. In fact, I asked one of my daughter’s friends about a book she’s currently reading, and she responded, “It’s written in verse,” and my heart melted. I loved hearing those words from a 6th grader.

I made the mistake of watching Painkiller on Netflix. As was the case when I watched Hulu’s Dopesick, I was enraged at the truths revealed through these Hollywood dramatizations of Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family, and the opioid epidemic that has plagued this country for decades. Few families have not been directly impacted by the crisis. The ones who haven’t know someone who has.

My sister is a musician. We were a year apart in school, but I was light years away from her in talent. She played the trumpet and some piano, but her forte was singing. In 8th grade she wrote and performed a song for an end-of-year concert that brought the crowd to tears. 

It should come as no surprise then, that by comparison, I didn’t consider myself blessed with any notable talent.

My daughter and I were driving to an appointment last week on a gorgeous 60-degree day. 

“There are so many people out,” she noted.

“Spring is here,” I said. 

Even our dog is excited. She and I have been going out for walks every day. Much as I enjoy these walks, I’m reminded of the incident that happened a few years ago when I was out alone in my neighborhood. I was on a pipestem street, so in theory, there’s no reason for anyone who doesn’t live on the street to be driving on it. One of the homes was for sale, and coincidentally, as I ambled past, an on-coming car slowed and came to a stop. The driver, a young male alone in the car, rolled down his window as if to ask a question.

I’m not a poet by any stretch of the imagination, but sometimes—very rarely, I play with the genre just to satiate a little voice inside my head. I wrote this poem about a decade ago, and I’m sharing it here not because I think it’s great. Quite the contrary, actually.

My daughter was invited to join her friends at a new hot spot in my town, The Lazy Cat Lounge & Cafe. What a cute name, I thought. Then I started singing about dancing at the “Pink Pony Club.”

Dr. Stephen Covey wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People in 1989, and I recently picked it up for the first time in my life. One of the greatest takeaways for me is the recognition that in everything we do and everything we feel, we are making a choice. That means, yes, writer’s block is a choice.

I live in Massachusetts, and after spending the holidays with family who live in Virginia, I realized the disparate efforts to deal with cellphones and student distraction that are going on across the country. I also realized that parents–and I include myself in this because both my 11 and 13 year old have cell phones–have created this problem. In doing so, we passed the buck onto the schools leaving teachers and administrators to deal with the consequences.

Tis the season for thinking about resolutions, but my family of four has a long-standing promise that delivers fun all year long. It’s obvious that I’ll never be as interesting as YouTube, so I had to eliminate that competition with a ‘no devices at the table’ rule. Thanks to Cauldron Quest, Mantis, and other board games, my family creates our own fun.

I was in the middle of cooking dinner when I felt a sneeze coming on. Despite my best effort to still my body, engage my core, and tighten my pelvic floor as I’d learned to do in physical therapy, the ahhh-choo came and with it, a little burst of pee.