Daily writing prompt

What food would you say is your specialty?

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I can eat all the food, don’t worry.

Oh, wait, are we talking about cooking? Mmmmm, yeah, so I don’t really cook. I mean, I try, don’t get me wrong, I try really hard. Especially at Thanksgiving. But you really never know what you’re going to get when I’m in the kitchen.

Over the last few years I’ve managed to perfect a homemade macaroni and cheese recipe that my family now claims isn’t any good. I can brine and rotisserie a turkey like nobody’s business. I make Libby’s pumpkin pies without crust so we don’t have to deal with gluten and I don’t have to try and make a gluten free crust that doesn’t burn or taste like cardboard. I make a dish of yams with oranges that is so decadent we sometimes have it at other times of the year to remind us we’re alive.

And for your average evening meal I make an InstaPot white chicken chili that no one wants to eat because it took so many trials to perfect it.

What I’m saying is, I’ll gladly hire someone to do our cooking for us as soon as I can afford to do so.

Daily writing prompt

What makes a good neighbor?

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Growing up in cities and suburbia, I never really knew my neighbors unless they had kids that went to school with me. There was no one to borrow a cup of sugar from or to sip lemonade on the porch with. And no one seemed upset by it.

It wasn’t until I bought my first house at 31 years old that I began to make an effort to know my neighbors. There was the elderly Scottish lady on one side of me who owned a Scotty dog, as though she had a sense of humor, which I would later find out she did not. There was the brilliant and retired woman a few doors down who chain-smoked some lesser known brand of cigarettes, Pall Mall maybe, drank Bud Light (and only Bud Light), and walked the entire neighborhood every day waving hello as she went and occasionally inviting me down to hers for a 5pm night cap.

That was it.

At 31 years old I knew two neighbors, and that for the first time in my life.

It wasn’t until I moved to a small town (1,500 people) in the mountains that I started knowing not just my neighbors but everybody. In a town that small everyone knows everyone in the space of a few months, a handful of library visits, a trip or two to the local watering hole.

I began to learn all about what it really means to live in a community. I volunteered with multiple organizations, swallowed my fear with a shot of whiskey and performed in the local melodrama to raise money for local scholarships, and co-created a garden tour to raise funds for the school garden.

It turns out that being in a community takes quite a bit more time than you’d think. It’s rarely about borrowing a cup of sugar and usually about giving up several nights a week to organize and strategize and make something magical happen.

I used to think being a good neighbor meant keeping the weeds and the music down, keeping the grass mowed and the garbage cans put away. And that’s certainly a fair part of it. Especially in the city and suburbs, there’s an art to being a visually good neighbor.

Now though, I think being a good neighbor is more about recognizing how we’re all connected, finding ways to help, doing what you can for the people around you so they can do for the people around them, and so on.

We talk a lot about paying it forward at the Drive Thru line, and while I’m a huge fan of that too (sprinkle kindness everywhere), I think there’s so much more to being a good neighbor. For me, being a good neighbor means offering your time (sometimes that’s all we have to offer). It means showing up to help pick the apples when they come ripe, lending an ear, and bringing a hot meal during a tough time.

It’s our time that we need to find a way to sprinkle everywhere.

Daily writing prompt

What skill would you like to learn?

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At one point I had the full home canning kit. The one everyone seems to have at some point in their life, the one that clutters the thrift store shelves for years until it comes back around to being in vogue, or until a pandemic hits. Needless to say, my kit was in pristine condition. All the pieces had been washed, dried, and loving put away for future use. A future which never came, at least, not for me. Not then.

We’ve been living in this new-to-us house for over two years now. There is no home canning set in the cabinets. I was gifted with a bounty of apples and pears though, wondering whatever to do with them all. Wishing that canning kit was in the cabinets while also recognizing it was perhaps not quite the time to start learning, with the fruit already waiting to be used.

A quick Google search said all I needed for pear sauce (think applesauce with pears) was a pot, a splash of lemon juice, and a blender or mixer; three things I happen to have on hand. And so I learned to make pear sauce. All was poured into quart sized freezer bags and frozen. All was cleaned up and put away. All took much longer than I’d have anticipated and tasted much better than anything I’ve ever tasted before.

Perhaps next year, I’ll be ready to can rather than bag. Perhaps.

Daily writing prompt

What could you do more of?

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This idea of soaking in an ice bath, of taking a Polar Plunge, of standing in a cold shower for as long as you can stand it has me obsessed. I read every book I can find on Wim Hof, a fascinating man who believed we all ought to be naked and freezing to enjoy our best health (yes, I’m condensing rather brutally and with a touch of snark). Outwardly, I let the obsession go, inwardly, I’m trying to convince myself to take a cold shower.

It comes up again when Brandon Carter writes a blog about cold showers, a blog I can’t find now but that may still exist in the internet ether. And because I’m a great believer in the Universe putting before you what you need, I pay attention. Clearly, there’s something to this cold shower thing I’m supposed to be tuning in to.

When I begin my new exercise routine of using an elliptical every day for thirty minutes, I come off the machine bright red in the face, soaked in sweat, and so hot. All the hormones of a forty-four year old woman who’s done nothing but sit in front of a computer and type for four months are clashing inside me and producing some alarming results.

I’ll never stop sweating, I imagine, and it becomes the perfect opportunity to take a cold shower. I start the water at a lukewarm temp that will actually entice me in rather than keep me out. I slowly turn the knob cooler as I finish washing hair, then a touch cooler as I finish soaping up, a touch cooler for a final rinse.

It’s not an ice bath, it’s not Wim Hof in my shower, but I’m getting there. And it’s not as horrific as I’d imagined, although I am still waiting for all those fabulous health benefits to become obvious.

Daily writing prompt

How often do you walk or run?

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I saw an ad for a Wonder Woman run with a puffy blue jacket the participants get for running. It had the WW logo on it and I wanted it. “I could be a runner!” I thought to myself, before remembering that I am not a runner.

I’ve tried running multiple times in my life, always for fitness, never for pleasure. Still, I hold out for the experience of the runner’s high. All I ever get is a red face, a lot of sweat, sore shins. The image of myself as a runner persists, somehow.

The first time I gave up running was right after my brother had seen me running and told me he never knew I was a runner. Me neither, cause I’m not, I thought to myself. What I said out loud was something like, “why not? Anyone can run.” He took up running shortly after and just as quickly stopped. Our genetics bringing us closer than ever, two people who love an idea of ourselves but finally accept who we are.

It seems I only ever discover myself through what I am not. I am not a runner. I am not a veterinarian, a slam performance poet, or a finance person. I am not a Californian.

Perhaps I am a memoirist. That is my current attempt. May we always be attempting to discover who we are, even if it’s by discovering who we are not.

Daily writing prompt

What daily habit do you do that improves your quality of life?

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“I’m down to a pack a day,” she brags, exhaling a long stream of smoke and a longer stream of hacking coughs that leave me feeling like I’m about to throw up.

Apologies, but that’s my first thought. Something to do with how the prompt is written. *shudder*

With that out of the way, however, I have one daily habit that seems to belong in the “something I’m doing right” column, and I’m told over and over again that this is so. Despite feeling like it’s what I do because it’s my only option, I’m going to share it with you because it may be helpful.

Every morning, I wake up between 4:30am and 5am, not because I’m a morning person and not because that’s my favorite time of day (especially in winter). I wake up at 4:30/5am every morning because it’s the only time my entire family is preoccupied and doesn’t need me and I can have time to myself, for myself. For ease we’re just going to say 5am going forward. Let’s dive in.

Getting up at 5am means I get a minimum of one hour to myself, possibly a little longer if I’m lucky. It means I have one hour every day to show up for myself and my work. I quietly get out of my warm bed, throw on a sweatshirt, and clamber onto the couch, putting my feet up on the ottoman so I have a lap for my laptop. I pull on a blanket, open the computer, and start typing. I write every day for a minimum of one hour or 1,000 words. That is my daily goal and I don’t get to do any of the other things I could be doing with a sleeping household until that 1,000 words is met.

Once they’re done, however, I can then have my coffee, play some Wordle and Spelling Bee, check out other people’s posts and read an ebook. I have so many incentives waiting for me to finish that 1,000 words that it doesn’t feel like a chore, but a gift. And something about still being semi-asleep helps keep my inner-critic from rearing her ugly head and the words tend to flow out smoothly.

They say, “You can’t edit a blank page,” so I try to give myself something I can work with every day. These 1,000 words don’t always end up in the book, sometimes they become a standalone essay or a blog post or a Patreon post, but they’re never wasted.

What’s your best daily habit? What’s your worst?