Cozy and Maple

Category: personal

  • Why Do I Care If My Betta Fish Is Happy?

    Why Do I Care If My Betta Fish Is Happy?

    A year ago, if you had told me I would spend an evening researching whether a fish needed more enrichment, I would have laughed. It’s a fish. I have always been a huge animal lover, but to be honest, my preferences skewed far more towards mammals, especially dogs. Yet, here I was, staring anxiously at…

  • My Garden Is Going to Weeds

    My Garden Is Going to Weeds

    Note: I wrote this a few weeks ago but I’ve just now been brave enough to share it. Every morning I open the curtains. It sounds small when I write it down like that, almost laughably small, but there were seasons where even that felt impossible. But I open them anyway. The upstairs hall curtains…

  • The Texture of Ordinary Life and the Women that Notice

    There is a certain kind of woman online who has become almost impossible to distinguish from the next. The same neutral living room, expensive linen dress (that she got off poshmark!), the same “slow mornings.” The same sourdough rising beside a carefully placed wooden spoon. And listen, I am not immune to any of this.…

  • How To Have a Nineties Summer

    My husband was painting the back door and I was hanging around, bothering him and drinking an orange Ollipop. “There’s a trend going around social media,” I told him. “Everyone is talking about bringing back nineties summers and wanting to give their kids a ‘nineties summer.’” He hummed, probably struck speechless by my brilliance and…

  • My Makeup Bag

    My Makeup Bag

    There is something deeply humbling about being told you cannot wear makeup for seven days… and then realizing how much that actually matters to you. A few days before Easter, I had a cyst removed from my face. It was a simple procedure, and I’m very grateful, all is well. But, along with the aftercare…

  • My Favorite Painting

    My Favorite Painting

    From where I’m sitting, I have a framed copy of my favorite painting: A Huguenot, On St. Bartholomew’s Day by John Everett Millais. He’s recently come into renewed fame lately thanks to Taylor Swift for his painting of Ophelia, but my favorite is the lesser known one that hangs on my library wall, part of…

  • A Note on Not Being Boring

    A Note on Not Being Boring

    Years ago, before I had kids, I was up late talking with a good friend about hobbies.At some point she said, completely innocently, “Honestly, the only hobby I associate with you is TV.” I remember feeling stunned and honestly, a little sad. Was that really how I came across? Boring. Passive. Just someone who watched…

  • When the Puppy Broke Me: Lessons on Raising Resilient Kids

    I cried today, in front of my kids. Having a puppy is far harder than I realized, and shes just plain loud sometimes. If you know me personally, you know me to be a bit on the introverted side, and I like our home to be really peaceful and joyful. A barking puppy clangs just…

  • Musings on Valentines Day

    Musings on Valentines Day

    It’s the perfect cozy Saturday today. Rainy, a little chilly, lots of blankets, books, naps, fresh-baked beer bread…I love it. It’s also Valentine’s Day, and we have no plans to leave our house. My husband and I celebrated each other a few nights ago at a very swanky restaurant where I had a saffron risotto…

  • I Don’t Want to Write About Politics

    I really don’t. I want to write about backyard science and picture books and watercolor palettes that finally made me feel like myself again. I want to write about homeschooling at the kitchen table, half-finished math worksheets, and the way learning sneaks in sideways when you’re not looking. I want to write about slow, gentle,…