Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Shelter in place

The last time I went on retreat at Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, VA, it was the tenth anniversary of 9/11. This time, the day after I returned from my retreat two bombs were detonated at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It’s inauspicious, but in a strange way the retreat prepared me for [...]

April 24, 2013 · Jen · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Uncategorized

My secret is I’m stubborn

This weekend I reached a milestone. I’ve written before about the fact that I’ve always been heavy. I’ve written before about the circuitous illogic I have used in the past to keep from pressuring myself to lose weight, or even just to take better care of myself. From those known quantities, I avoided …well, quantification [...]

February 10, 2013 · Jen · 12 Comments
Posted in: Uncategorized

Red in tooth and claw

Earlier this afternoon I saw a fox fight. I saw a good number of other natural, outdoorsy-type things as well, but I have to say the fox fight was the coolest. It’s been another strangely un-snowy winter here, maybe still making up for the ridiculous Snowmageddon winter four years ago. Or maybe just because the [...]

January 26, 2013 · Jen · No Comments
Tags:  Â· Posted in: Uncategorized

Another recipe!

I have another recipe to share! It’s not my intention to have a cooking blog, though sometimes I clasp my hands dramatically and lift my too-wide eyes to the heavens with the hearty wish that I had picked a damn theme for the blog. But I didn’t. So you get what you get! Today it [...]

November 27, 2012 · Jen · No Comments
Tags:  Â· Posted in: Uncategorized

In Which I Present A Recipe

My parents weren’t good cooks. They were very good providers, certainly, and we never worried about having our basic needs met. There was always breakfast, lunch, and dinner and I’m grateful for it. But they had no love of food, no creative spark. It really wasn’t cooking, what they did. It was heating food. The [...]

September 26, 2012 · Jen · 2 Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Uncategorized

Back from paradise

I love good travel writing, and that is probably tripping me up and keeping me from writing about Hawaii, which is silly. I don’t have to be Bill Bryson, I’d just like to write a few things. A few years back the plans for 2012 were different. My mother and father were planning a trip [...]

August 15, 2012 · Jen · One Comment
Posted in: Uncategorized

By the numbers.

My entire life, I’ve been heavier-than-average. I’ve had my times of adorable chubbiness (primarily before the age of, oh, seven or eight), my times of fatness, my times of chunkiness, my times of curvaceousness. My times of picking the language that not only describes my body but perhaps more appropriately describes how I’m feeling about [...]

July 10, 2012 · Jen · 2 Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Uncategorized

The other side of summer

A few years ago I read a short piece in the Washington Post on the Fifth of July. It’s the downhill slide of summer, was more or less the author’s point. The longest day is past. The hottest part is right here. Heat and sun glaze everything over, our feet kick up puffs of dust [...]

July 6, 2012 · Jen · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Uncategorized

A lost gem

My father didn’t believe that I should be taught to read before I got to school. He had learned to read when he was three, and by the time his class in school got around to sounding out Dick and Jane, the teacher just let him sit in a corner with Treasure Island while she [...]

June 6, 2012 · Jen · 2 Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Uncategorized

Goodbye, you arrogant bastard.

Monday night was the series finale of House. It also happened to be the night my book club was meeting, so I didn’t watch the episode until Tuesday. There was the hour retrospective beforehand that was really lovely, then there was the episode itself. I thought I might cry, but I didn’t, except for a [...]

May 24, 2012 · Jen · 4 Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Uncategorized


Array