family

What It’s Supposed to Feel Like

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~ Diary of a Kitten Addict ~ Leave a comment

I don’t normally do this. I think about it, but I don’t ever follow it through to fruition. But, for some reason, this just feels right. It feels like something I need to do. I don’t know why. The topic of this writing certainly doesn’t need my accolades or praise or support. It has done just fine on its own for five seasons. And surely, the 5 people (hi mom) that will read this aren’t going to suddenly jump off their couches and stream this show, so again, it will make absolutely no difference, and yet, I feel compelled to write it.

Maybe it’s because I just finished the season finale of the fifth and what I believe to be the final season of the show. Maybe it’s because I cried through the last two episodes (you’ll find no spoilers here). Or maybe it’s just because a good show, like a good book, sometimes gets you and you get it. You feel something shift deep within you, and when it’s over you have this Babe moment and find yourself whispering to the credits, “that’ll do pig, that’ll do.”

For the record, I have also felt this way after watching Breaking Bad, Justified, and Ted Lasso. And I have loved, LOVED many other shows. Psych, Parks and Rec, The Boys, It’s Always Sunny, 30 Rock, Raising Hope, My Name is Earl, and Dead to Me. I’ve been known to mourn the non-renewal of shows like Stumble, Kaos, and Trial and Error.

I guess I’m telling you all of this for context. It gives you some insight into what makes me tick and what I enjoy, but it also paves the way for the understanding that what follows is not because I think this show is the greatest show ever written or produced. It’s just a show that is, in my opinion, great. But great is difficult to define.

Great is what we use to describe something that is better than the majority of our mundane lives. Great can describe a meal. It can describe a song. It can describe how we are feeling today. Great is nuanced. Great is complicated. Great is subjective.

I just finished Hacks. Or at least I just finished the season 5 finale of Hacks. I don’t know if there will be a sixth season. I’ve done no research on the topic. I won’t go further because, again, you’ll find no spoilers here.

But I do want to talk about it. Because if you haven’t watched it yet, I want you to reconsider, add it to your list, and sit down this weekend and start binging it. That’s a luxury I wasn’t afforded, as I watched it in real time, waiting (im)patiently each week for the next episode to drop.

I’ll be honest, at first I thought Hacks was sort of obnoxious. The two lead characters were over-the-top in their personification of each role. Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) is a diva. Selfish. Ridiculous. Striving. Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) is annoying. Selfish. Ridiculous. Striving. The rest of the cast just serves to point out that very obvious plot.

The writing and humor kept me tuned in, and after a few episodes I started seeing beyond the characters and started feeling the story. I don’t know when it actually clicked. Something worked for me after the first episode or I wouldn’t have watched the second. But somewhere over the past five seasons, I became invested. I became attached.

It wasn’t mindless drama or comedy that I watched for 30 minutes or an hour while scrolling my phone. It wasn’t background noise to fill space. It was a show I watched. And paid attention to. It was so much deeper and wittier and profound than what it marketed itself as. On the surface, it’s a show about an aging female comic who hires a young writer she is constantly at odds with. Sure, there were times during those five seasons when I was annoyed with both of them, but it was designed to evoke that response.

As the episodes and seasons progressed, the raucous humor woven throughout the show was enough to bring me back each week. There wasn’t an episode that didn’t have me laughing out loud. But somewhere along the way I realized I wasn’t watching it for the jokes anymore. I was watching because it understood something about people. Beneath all the ridiculousness, the sharp one-liners, and the constant sparring between Deborah and Ava was a story about ambition, loneliness, connection, and all the messy contradictions that come with being human.

Maybe that’s why I love books and television so much. I’m not particularly good at feelings. Emoting makes me uncomfortable. Vulnerability makes me cringe. Real life rarely comes with subtitles explaining what everyone is thinking. But sometimes a story will hand me a moment and I’ll find myself thinking, “Oh, that’s what it’s supposed to feel like.”

I think a lot of us spend our days trying not to feel too much. We distract ourselves, scroll our phones, stay busy, and keep moving. What I loved about Hacks was that it made me laugh, hard, deep, tears-in-my-eyes laughter, but it also made me pay attention. It made me think. And in a world where so many things are competing for our attention, that kind of understanding feels surprisingly rare.

And if that isn’t my definition of great, it’s probably as close as I’m going to get.

Somewhere along the way, Deborah Vance stopped being selfish and ridiculous, and Ava Daniels stopped being annoying. They became something much more recognizable: two women striving, fighting to be heard in a world that has a bad habit of silencing female voices. What initially felt exaggerated and absurd slowly began to ring true. The larger-than-life personalities, the impossible situations, and the endless obstacles weren’t there to make the story unbelievable. They were there to make it visible.

In that sense, the show feels almost Dickensian. Improbable characters with enormous personalities and complicated histories find themselves thrust into each other’s orbit and are forced to learn how to coexist, challenge each other, and occasionally save one another. It becomes a story about growth and understanding, about friendship and ambition, and about discovering something unexpected at the end of a road neither person intended to travel.

The situations may be extraordinary. Most of us will never be denied a performance at Madison Square Garden, nor will we find ourselves under a gag order for eighteen months. Yet somehow the emotions underneath those moments feel familiar. The details are different. The struggle is not.

I hate when a television show tricks me into caring. I hate when I find myself clapping at the screen, shouting advice to fictional characters who cannot hear me, or getting misty-eyed over people who do not actually exist. Yet there I was, doing exactly that.

I was cheering for Jimmy and Kayla to stand up and fight for themselves. I was quietly rooting for Deborah and Ava long before either seemed capable of admitting what they meant to one another. By the final two episodes, I wasn’t watching a comedy anymore. I was watching people I had come to care about find their way through the mess.

Maybe that’s why it hit me so hard. At 48, I have spent enough years watching people leave, come back, reinvent themselves, disappoint each other, forgive each other, and occasionally surprise each other to know that happy endings aren’t really endings at all. They’re pauses. They’re moments where, for just a second, the noise settles and everything feels right.

I hope there’s a sixth season. I’d watch every minute of it. But if there isn’t, that’s okay too. The ending felt right. Earned. Complete. When the credits rolled, I sat there for a moment, smiling like an idiot through my tears, feeling grateful that something so unexpectedly wonderful had crossed my path.

And all I could think was:

That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.

And yet… here I am.

~ Diary of a Kitten Addict ~ Leave a comment

A quick note before you dive in.

After writing what follows, someone pointed me toward the work of Joan Didion, who once said she wrote “entirely to find out what she was thinking.” I had never heard of her, but in digging, she’s written some interesting pieces that are worth reading.

Anyway, apparently, that’s what I did here.

This isn’t an essay with a solution. It’s more of a trail of breadcrumbs, starting with a series of crime novels I’ve been listening to lately and wandering through memory, culture, and the strange realization that sometimes the only thing that changes is the person doing the noticing.

It may not answer anything. It may even make me look like a bit of a schmuck for admitting I don’t have the answers.

But I stand by it.

So, I’ve been listening to a series of crime novels written in the 1990s. They were written by Harlan Coben, someone I first discovered through the Netflix mini-series based on his work. I typically enjoy his books. I love a good whodunit and a twist, and Coben still seems able to pull off twists in a way that many authors have lost the ability to convey.

I use the Libby app because it’s free, and I stumbled across a twelve-book series centered on Myron Bolitar, a basketball phenom turned sports agent. They’re fun. Fast-paced. Written in a time full of nostalgia and references that a teen of the 1990s immediately recognizes and understands. Full of sarcastic dialogue and improbable plot twists. The kind of books you listen to while driving, chopping vegetables, or pretending you’re about to clean the house. I often joke that I think I’m getting dumber just by listening to them, yet I don’t stop. I am a sucker for a series, and since the same narrator reads them all, I’ve come to know Myron, Win, and Esperanza by voice and mannerism. It feels comfortable.

Except.

Every once in a while the main character makes a joke or an observation. Usually about a woman. Occasionally about a person of color. It’s the kind of joke that was clearly meant to be harmless. A quick comment about a woman’s body. A cultural stereotype tossed in for flavor. The narrator assures us: don’t worry, he’s one of the good guys. It’s always framed in an “aw shucks” or completely casual context. And because we love Myron and know Myron is one of the good guys, we don’t blink.

Except… in 2026, I do blink.

I find myself thinking, “wow that’s sexist” or “damn, that’s pretty racist”. Not because it’s shocking. Because it’s familiar. Because thirty years ago, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all.

And that’s the strange thing about time. The words didn’t change. The book didn’t change. The character didn’t change.

But the world did.

And I guess I did too.

I was born in 1977. It doesn’t sound that bad in my head when I say it. I mean, I’ve been filling out my date of birth on documents since I could write and had to complete forms. To me, 1977 is just a fact. But when I stop and think about it, and when it was recently pointed out to me while reading to a class of kindergarteners, 1977 was indeed a long, long time ago.

I don’t like to think of myself as old, but at 48 I should start accepting that reality. Statistically speaking, I’m probably past the halfway mark now. I am, in point of fact, middle-aged. Possibly even a little beyond.

When I was young, younger than I am now, that is, I remember visiting my dad’s mother and his sister for Thanksgiving and Christmas. There was a strange dynamic there. There still is, honestly, but I won’t go into that now. What I do remember is that every Christmas or Thanksgiving we would brace ourselves for the N-word being dropped at least once in conversation.

Not by me.
Not by my siblings.
Not by my mum or dad.

Despite his upbringing, my dad does not use that word or reference it even casually. I feel it’s important to go on record about that. Which is also why it was so shocking when my paternal grandmother or aunt would drop it casually into otherwise innocuous conversation. One time a discussion about Brazil nuts sent us spiraling. Another time it was about licorice snaps.

My point is simple: my grandmother and aunt were/are racist.

When we were younger, we tried to gloss over it. My parents would talk to us in the car on the way home, explaining why we didn’t say that word and why it was wrong. They would remind us that Grandma was old, that she came from a different time, yada, yada, yada.

As we got older, the conversations shifted. They focused less on excuses and more on the truth. Grandma was racist. You couldn’t fix her. But you didn’t have to accept it. Grandma is gone now. My aunt is still around, but honestly, I haven’t had to hear a racist comment at a Christmas dinner in almost fifteen years.

So I guess… thank God for small favors?

I wish I could tell you exactly where this story is going. But honestly, I’m not entirely sure.

It started by listening to some crime novels written in the 1990s. I noticed a few jokes that made me blink. That blink somehow led me to my grandmother’s kitchen table, sitting through Christmas dinners where words were used that we were taught never to say.

And now here I am in 2026.

A time when race and sexism are still issues. Not always in the same ways, and not always in the same places, but present enough that we can’t pretend otherwise.

Maybe what I’m really trying to understand is the how of it all.

How culture changes. How people change. How some ideas disappear almost completely while others hang around stubbornly like old wallpaper you can’t quite scrape off the wall.

Twenty or twenty-five years ago, a joke in a crime novel didn’t register.
Ten or fifteen years before that, my grandmother could say something casually at the dinner table that made my parents wince.

And yet… here we are.

The books from my past haven’t changed.
The memories haven’t changed.
Honestly, the conversations haven’t changed either. If anything, they feel louder now, more fervent, more pressing.

But something in me has.

Maybe that’s the strange part of getting older. You start to notice the slow drift of culture in ways you never did when you were younger. The jokes that once slid past now snag your attention. Words that once floated casually through a room suddenly feel heavier than they used to. Not because they changed, but because the context around them did.

And yet the strange thing about progress is that it rarely arrives in a straight line. Some things disappear almost completely. Other things hang around stubbornly in the corners of our culture, resurfacing when we least expect them. A joke in a crime novel. A memory from a Christmas dinner. A headline from the news.

I don’t have an answer for this.

I know that I often read headlines or Facebook posts and ask out loud, “How is this still a thing in 2026?” I know T asks the same question, because sometimes he’ll suddenly exclaim from across the room, “Oh my God, how is this still possible in 2026?”

What I do know is that my tolerance for veiled racism or sexism has waned. What used to be uncomfortable silence, a quiet acceptance of a joke, is now much more likely to be a heated response: “Don’t say that.” Sometimes even, “What is wrong with you?”

I spend most of my days around young people. Kids who are growing up in a world that is, in some ways, more aware than the one I grew up in. They ask questions we didn’t ask. They challenge things we accepted without thinking. Sometimes they get it wrong. Sometimes they swing too far the other direction. But they are paying attention in a way my generation didn’t always know how to.

I am proud of their actions and their reactions. I cheer them on as they strive to make this world a better place than the one they were handed. They give me hope, even as I’ve come to understand that change is slow and mechanical, often arriving only as tiny shifts in the cultural current.

And still, hope and reality don’t always sit comfortably beside each other.

Sometimes this world makes me feel hopeless. I rant and rave about it behind closed doors. I cry myself to sleep at night over injustice and hatred that I don’t understand. I get up each morning and go to work and do my job, and I keep telling myself, you’re just one person.

I live and die by that excuse.

I’m just one person. I am doing my best.

But maybe, just maybe, if all of us “just one persons” took a moment to recalibrate and ask questions the way our children do, maybe change wouldn’t be so slow.

I don’t know.
I’m just one person.
And no one really reads this blog anyway.

I keep listening to the Coben books because they’re free and easy and fill a space, a silence in my world when I need a distraction from thoughts like these.

Maybe I’m the problem.

I’m okay with acknowledging that. I’m okay with my flaws. (And that’s progress in its own way, right?)

I just wish I knew what to do.

I know what I should do.
I know what I could do.

Tomorrow I’ll probably press play on the next chapter.

But I’ll still cry myself to sleep.

Inherited Roads

~ Diary of a Kitten Addict ~ Leave a comment

This started as a Facebook tribute to my dad on his 79th birthday. It began to wander into a narrative as winding as the roads we’ve traveled and the lives we’ve lived, and I thought, well, some things are bigger than Facebook.
Because how do you fit a lifetime of stories, sarcasm, and shared miles into a single post? Maybe this one just needed a little more room to stretch its legs, unfold its map, and find its way home.

Happy 79th Birthday to my dad: proof that genetics are wild and wonderful things. Scientifically, I’m 50% Jack and 50% Sandy (I think that’s how it works, but I’m no scientist). If you know me well enough, or look closely, you can probably pick out which pieces belong to which half. Most people think I take after my mum, and in looks, humor, wit, and occupation, I do. I don’t look like my dad, and my personality, well, that’s all Sandy.

I was the firstborn, which means I came into the world with the full, undivided attention of two brand-new parents. That lasted about thirteen months, until the twins showed up and the spotlight had to stretch a little thinner, or, on most days, disappear entirely. To this day, the family joke is about who is Mom’s favorite (spoiler alert: it’s Ryan), but I’ve always known, and still know, that I am Dad’s. Not in the spoiled or sugary “Daddy’s girl” kind of way, but in the quiet, unspoken kind that lives in the spaces between shared jokes and long drives. Ryan and Jenny might disagree, but that’s okay, they’re just jealous.

My dad is quiet and grounded. He doesn’t command attention or draw a crowd, not because he can’t, but because he doesn’t need to. He’s steady, thoughtful, the kind of man who listens more than he talks. But when he does speak, you should listen; it’s usually something important or something crudely funny you won’t want to miss. (Or, if you ask my mum, sometimes a little bitchy, but you can’t be perfect all the time.)

I’ve always been able to draw the lines between my father and me; our shared love of stories, our passion for travel and getting lost, our comfort in quiet, wild places. But if I had to pinpoint the moment that line was firmly drawn, it would be my solo trip to Colorado.

When I got to Denver and Fox Rental Cars, I bought a road map off the counter on a whim. An honest-to-God, unfold-it-till-it-rips, paper map. I didn’t need it; my phone sat on the dashboard, smug and certain, whispering turn-by-turn directions. But I wanted it.

The guy at the counter looked at me quizzically. He had tried to sell me extra insurance and a hardier 4×4 vehicle when he heard where I was headed, but all I wanted was that dusty map. My dad always had maps tucked into the seat pocket of the car, their edges soft from use, highways traced in pen, towns circled for reasons long forgotten.

When we traveled, it was always an honor to be the kid who got to hold the map and look for exits on highways where we could stop to eat or pee, and find our next stop. Maybe that’s where it started: my need to see where the road goes, to trust my own sense of direction even when I’m not entirely sure of it.

When I got into the car, I pulled a highlighter and pen from my bag (#educatorlife) and traced my route from Denver to Grand Lake on the map. I placed stars next to possible lookouts and scenic stops along the way. Then I set Google Maps to my hotel in Grand Lake and was off.

Throughout the thousand-mile journey around Eastern Colorado (Grand Lake was just my first stop), my dad was with me every step of the way. He’d text me randomly about alternate routes I might take or places he’d been that I shouldn’t miss. He shared stories and directions like breadcrumbs, as if he were quietly riding shotgun.

No one in my immediate family has an iPhone, so it was up to my friend Scott to track my location and AirTag, just in case I was eaten by a bear or fell off a cliff. Something my dad has worried about since I was old enough to walk and, therefore, climb over guardrails for a better look. In that, maybe we differ, or maybe it’s just age. Jack hates when I don’t stick to the trail or get too close to the edge.

I suppose I didn’t inherit a highly developed sense of self-preservation from either of them, which both my parents continue to lament.

There was one day in particular. I was still in Grand Lake, fresh off a weak attempt at snowshoeing, my first time. I literally took decorative (but real – they said I could use them) snowshoes from the wall of the hotel and set off with no direction or education on how to use them. Self-preservation and common sense be damned. 

Solo in Rocky Mountain National Park, I ended up buried to my neck in a snowdrift, convinced I was living out some Stephen King–esque scene and wouldn’t be found until summer when the snow finally melted. My head, sticking out of the snowmelt and mud, half-eaten by wildlife, a sad note scrawled in blood on a tissue stuffed into my bra: maybe Get busy living, or get busy dying, or simply, We all float down here. That’s all it would say. My final tribute to the world, a borrowed line from Stephen King and proof of my lack of creativity, but deep love for great literature and one-liners. (I know my dad is smiling and shaking his head as he reads this… even if it is dark.)

After that, I decided exploring from the safety of my car was the smarter option. (Second spoiler alert: I got out. It wasn’t pretty, I wasn’t happy, and I had snow lodged in places I didn’t know existed, but here I am.) I pulled out my trusty map and highlighted a few places I wanted to see. I found myself on roads with no names, no lines, no paving, and definitely no signs. I just drove.

I chased an eagle into someone’s driveway trying to snap a photo. They chased me off with a shotgun in hand. I found a quiet reservoir where an osprey fished for nearly an hour, and I sat watching, camera in hand, capturing shot after shot. (Did I mention my dad gave me my first real camera?)

There were hours where I didn’t see another car, and I didn’t care. I was free. The world was mine. And in those moments, I would find myself whispering to Moosen, “Oh, Jack would have loved this.”

Out there in the Rockies, windows cracked to the cold, I realized I wasn’t driving alone. I was following inherited roads, his steady hands on the wheel in the way I trace a ridgeline, his patience in the way I wait for the osprey to dive, his caution tugging my sleeve when I lean a bit too far over the guardrail or cross it all together. Maybe I don’t have his face, but I have his miles. And they fit.

The truth is, my dad and I have always traveled in parallel lanes. He taught me that work is a kind of motion too, something steady and honest that keeps you grounded while you chase whatever horizon calls your name.

He was a teacher by degree, but true to Jack-fashion, he obeyed no man or master. He struck out to make his own way, his own fortune, his own company, and he succeeded. Proof that if you work hard enough, and long enough, you can build something lasting. He’s still working today at his company that’s as old as I am. I wish he wasn’t. I wish he would just retire (again). I’ve told him before, Go then, there are other worlds than these. But even the words and wisdom of Roland Deschain don’t convince him. And I get it, deep in my soul, even when I don’t want to admit it, I do get it.

The company is as much his baby as his three children are. It’s his name, his reputation, his life; countless, thankless hours poured into something tangible and valuable. It defines him the way my work defines me. It’s why he answers emails at all hours, finishes quotes on deadlines, and works on vacation. I understand it because I do that too.

But legacy and creation aren’t just in what we build or where we go; they’re in what we tell and imagine. And my dad could imagine. It’s the stories, he had one for everything, that showed off his particular brand of genius. When he told them, you could see him come alive, winding up and taking off into something bizarre and fantastic, and sometimes, well, a little scary.

This was the man who used to tell us that tunnels, of which there are plenty when you grow up in Pittsburgh or travel through West Virginia and Virginia, were filled with Noop-Nops.

If you’re wondering, no one actually knows what a Noop-Nop is. But what I can tell you, with absolute certainty, is that they live in tunnels and other dark places. They have wings like bats and furry bodies; the adults can get pretty big, two or three feet tall, with sharp fangs and razor-sharp claws. If you’ve read From a Buick 8, you can see them. For the record, that book came out long after Noop-Nops were invented, Stephen King just put a face to them…at least for me.

To avoid them, you have to follow the rules. When entering a tunnel, make sure your headlights are on, your doors are locked, and your windows are rolled up tight. Sure, you’ll hear them, the tapping and banging on the car as you pass through, but if you follow the proper safety procedures, you’ll make it out the other side unscathed.

Maybe that’s where my love of scary stories really started, not with The Boogeyman or Cujo, but with the Noop-Nops. My dad invented the monsters, but he also taught me not to flinch when the dark got loud.

He had me read The Boogeyman when I was about ten, and I’ve been a horror junkie ever since.

What people who don’t like horror don’t understand is that it isn’t about the gore or the fright; it’s about the possibility. The unknown. That’s what keeps you turning the page, coming back again and again. There’s something primal about being scared; it reminds you what it means to feel everything all at once. It wakes something ancient in you, something that refuses to sleep. It sharpens your senses, pulls you back into yourself, makes your palms sweat and your heart race. For those moments, you are completely present.

When you close your eyes, the nightmares that follow are worth the fear, because you wake up exhilarated, grateful, and so incredibly alive. Fear, after all, is just curiosity in disguise. The same instinct that makes you turn the page also hums beneath your skin, a magnetic pull toward whatever waits just out of sight.

I think that’s what I really got from him, not just the map habit or the camera or Stephen King, not even the wanderlust itself, but the compass. The quiet, internal one that says, go see for yourself, and the equally quiet one that says, get home safe, check under your bed, and close the closet door. He gave me the discipline to plan a route and the nerve to ignore it. He taught me that hard work is just another kind of journey: you show up, you keep moving, you learn the road as you walk it.

In those gifts was also wonder. The kind that makes you look twice at the sky, pull over for an osprey, or read just one more chapter even when you’re scared. He taught me that life isn’t meant to be tidy or predictable; it’s meant to be lived. To take the road with no lines, the tunnel filled with Noop-Nops, the story that keeps you up at night. To love fiercely, work hard, and laugh at the absurdity of it all.

And maybe that’s what it really means to live and love and inherit a story. It’s not the paths we’re handed, but the courage to travel them. The map might tear, the ink might fade, but the compass, his compass, still points true.

Always home.

This Is Forty-Eight… Forty-Nine?

~ Diary of a Kitten Addict ~ Leave a comment

Another trip around the sun, another year older, and somehow, it still catches me off guard. Birthdays don’t make me sentimental anymore; they make me aware, of time, of motion, of all the ways I’ve changed and stayed the same. Forty-eight feels too young to feel this wise, too old to feel this curious. But here I am, somewhere in between, still learning what it means to live wide open.

Thank you to everyone who took the time yesterday to wish me a happy birthday.
Hard to believe I’m forty-eight… wait, forty-nine? No, forty-eight. I think. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.

Sometimes I panic when I think about things like, “In 2030, we’ll install new social studies standards.” Not because of the standards, but because of the 2030. I can still remember partying like it was 1999 when it actually was 1999.

I remember being ten, with parents who were forty, and thinking they were ancient. Now, with parents who are seventy-eight and seventy-nine (I’m forty-eight, nailed it; my mum is thirty years older than me), I think about how young they still are and how much time we still have left to travel and explore.

I no longer measure time in minutes and seconds. In frat parties or nightclubs or boys. I think in weeks, months, and years. About retirement plans and portfolios. Menopause and hip replacements. I curse at my phone, send words instead of memes, and laugh because, well, here I am, the person my parents warned me about. The person they swore I’d become.

I went from wild and carefree to achy and crotchety seemingly overnight.
I turn down the music when it’s raining too hard because I can’t see well when it’s too loud. I brace for the “oof” every morning when I crawl out of bed, my knees, hips, and back punishing me for the years I punished them in sports, and in stupid (but also fun) things like Spartan races.
I track BOGO sales at grocery stores and make meal plans instead of eating leftover pizza I found on my dorm room floor or tacos I found under my pillow.
I still love unsensible shoes, but I only wear them when it’s sensible.
I haven’t yet started calling the front desk when the room next door is too loud, but I might have knocked… politely… on the wall once or twice.
And I definitely don’t have TikTok.

Sometimes I stumble across old photos from college, me in my purple plastic skirt, that shiny green jacket (also plastic) I thought made me invincible, and I wish I could tell that girl how beautiful she was before the world convinced her she wasn’t. How thin she was. How unbreakable she’d turn out to be.

I wish I could tell her that strength doesn’t come from holding everything together; it comes from falling apart and finding a way back. That every wound, even the ones that felt fatal, would scab over and diminish in time. That the broken hearts and tear-soaked pillows, the stupid boys and stupid girls and cruel words, would one day shrink down into stories she’d tell with a laugh.

I wish I could tell her the world wasn’t ending every time someone ghosted her, or when she cried herself sick over someone who probably sells insurance in Ohio now and hasn’t explored the Rocky Mountains alone. That those sleepless nights were wasted on people who didn’t deserve to know her favorite songs. That those long nights waiting for the phone to ring were keeping her from hearing herself instead.

And that those wounds, now faint scars, would become the very fabric that built her. How every break had taught her to bend. Sturdy, imperfect, a little frayed in spots, but hers and hers alone. The kind of fabric that softens with time yet still holds up after every wash. The jeans you still wear from high school. The T-shirt that almost smells like him. The thread that runs through every version of herself, binding the girl she was to the woman she became.

If I could, I would pull that thread tight, trace it back to where it started, and I’d find her again, the girl who didn’t yet know what she was made of. I wish I could tell her that one day she’d grow up, be respected, earn a doctorate, and realize the people she once tried so hard to impress no longer even exist in her memory.

I’ve said before that while I have regrets, I don’t live with them, and that still holds true. They’re memories, not weights. Reminders, not anchors.

At forty-eight, I feel lucky to be where I am.

I have a handful of really good friends, the kind who’ve seen me at my worst and still answer the phone at two in the morning if I call in a panic… or a rage… or just because I’m bored. They send me pictures of otters, leave voice memos of themselves singing on my birthday, drop off authentic All Dressed chips on my doorstep, send random memes about leaves and how much the bitches love them, show up at my dissertation defense at eleven o’clock Netherlands time, still cut and style my hair, or jet off for a weekend in Vegas that we still don’t talk about. They visit me in Charlotte when they’re passing through, or maybe just to curl for the weekend, and leave little gifts on my desk because they thought of me and my ridiculous obsession with all things cats.

I have a best friend. The kind who calls when I’m too sad to talk, sits in silence while I cry, and only hangs up once she knows I’m in bed. The kind of friend who travels with me, who knows my darkest secrets, my worst impulses, my deepest fears, and still always shows up. She calls me on my shit but never judges me… at least not too harshly… and she always calls me back.

And I have a partner who celebrates me, ignores my tantrums, and indulges my weird whims. Who takes trips with me on the off chance we might see moosen. Who sometimes makes a steak dinner better than anything Ruth’s Chris or Morton’s is serving up, and who always drives me to the airport when I’m off on another adventure, kisses me goodbye, and reminds me that he loves me.

I’d go to the mattresses for all of them without a second thought, because, frankly, several of them know where the bodies are buried and because without them, I’d be lost.

I have a family that is mostly intact. I’ve felt the loss of matriarchs and patriarchs, of beloved uncles and family friends I once thought of as surrogate parents. Each loss has become a reminder of family itself, of love, of togetherness, of how deeply we belong to one another even as the seats around the table begin to empty.

Despite my general optimism, I’ve started to live more in the now, because I’ve grown acutely aware of borrowed time and the absence of any guaranteed tomorrow. I sometimes wish I’d understood the meaning of family when I was younger, but I’ve come to learn it’s something that has to grow on you over time, like moss… or maybe fungus. You have to grow old to understand what old means. You have to experience loss to comprehend the hollowness it leaves behind. And you cannot fully understand love until you’ve stepped out of the light it once provided. But each loss, in its own way, brings you closer to those who remain in the void and learn to share that space with you.

But through it all, I know I have a place to call home, even if it isn’t brick and mortar or tied to a single point on a map. Sometimes family is forty-seven text notifications bitching about the Penguins’ power play.

Home, like family, isn’t always simple. Love and belonging come with their own messiness, their own friction. Because comfort doesn’t erase complexity. Family, like time, teaches in layers; some soft, some sharp.

I’ve also felt the strain that politics and pride can bring to a family, and I’ve lamented the silliness of those silences. The stubbornness that builds walls where laughter used to live. Yet even those moments have carried lessons. I no longer see myself as a child at the whim of adults trying to mold me, or as an adult bending to other adults who believe they still can. It’s a strange dance. The old and the young, elders and youngers, respect and mutual understanding. Learning to be cautious and kind, yet steadfast, confident, and self-advocating. It has taught me to love without question or condition, and to forgive, but never to cave.

The same lessons have found their way into every other corner of my life, especially my work.

I have a job I enjoy and take pride in, work that still challenges me, that still matters. The kind of work that sometimes keeps me up at night and wears me thin, yet always reminds me I’m part of something bigger than myself, that my days are spent doing something that outlives the hours it takes.

I’ve finished my education as far as degrees go, but the learning hasn’t stopped, it’s just changed shape.
Now it looks like airports and conversations and quiet mornings where the lesson is simply being present.

I travel. I wander. I wonder. I explore.

Not to escape, but to keep learning what it means to be alive in all the small, ordinary ways, because the world keeps getting bigger the older I get, and each place teaches me something new about who I was, who I am, and who I’m still becoming.

Because no matter how far I go, the journey always circles back to me. Every new horizon holding up a mirror, reminding me that growth isn’t just about the miles traveled, but the grace earned along the way.

I still sometimes cry into my pillow, and I know heartache doesn’t fade with age, but I also know it isn’t the end of the world. It just shifts the landscape. And it’s up to me to decide how I want to walk it.

To all the little girls and boys out there, the ones who think thirty or forty is old, just wait. It really does get better with age. You get better with age.

If you have a dream, chase it. If you want to go somewhere, buy the ticket. Money is something you can always make tomorrow, and things just gather dust. Real living happens at the intersection of let’s do it and holy shit, I’m terrified.

So do it scared. Live life on the precipice between caution and the wind. That’s where the good stories come from anyway.

Because that’s the secret no one tells you about getting older, it’s not about slowing down; it’s about finally knowing when to jump.

Mismanaged Mischief

~ Diary of a Kitten Addict ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story, or blog, or poem, I don’t know what is, started as a text a friend. But it had legs and substance and I kicked it around a bit until it become this idea…this…perhaps…so one night, when I had some time, and needed a distraction, I decided to write it down. But as I polished it, I realized that I needed a disclaimer, because, well because anything we put out there just does these days…

I know fireworks aren’t great. They’re bad for pets, bad for veterans, bad for the planet. They cause fires and injuries and air pollution. Trust me, I know. And it’s something I wrestle with every year. So if, after you read this, you still want to chastise me, go ahead. I get it. I won’t complain or stop you. I know the risks. In some ways, I’m a total hypocrite. I signed a petition to ban them in Big Bear Valley to protect Jackie, Shadow, Gizmo, and Sunny… so yeah, you get to do what you need to do.

But… this isn’t a love letter to fireworks.

It’s about something older. Deeper. More personal.
Louder, in a way.
Quieter, too, I suppose.

It’s about love and magic, being young, growing up, and all the feelings I have as a middle-aged woman in the thick of all the crises I’m supposed to be feeling and probably a few I’m not. About how sometimes I wish I could take it all back. A mulligan. A do-over. Another shot at 20… or 30. And how sometimes, I wonder if they feel the same. What if they got a do-over? A shot at redemption? What if they made a different decision?

I wouldn’t be mad.
Hell, I wouldn’t even know.

It’s about the stuff we don’t talk about at dinner.
And how, sometimes, in the right kind of darkness,
that ember beckons…

Mismanaged Mischief

Uncle Jack brings the big ones,
from some backroad stand in South Carolina
or maybe West Virginia,
the kind of place where warning labels fade in the sun,
and the whistle of a soft, sibilant s through missing incisors
makes she’s a beaut sound so much like Randy Quaid
you want to die from the perfection of it.

I don’t know.
I’m not there.

I’ve never been invited to witness the purchase.
But in my imagination, I’ve seen the displays,
boxes called Bamboozled, Honey Badger,
and Fresh Hot Bacon.
And I can picture,
in the most horrid, stereotypical fashion,
the man peddling large, incendiary devices
to my almost 80-year-old father.
And I always wonder:
is this the year someone loses a digit?

The real show will be just past dusk,
almost full dark,
when the sky softens into those pink and blue hues
the tourists take photos of.
You can set your watch by the retreat of the damp curtain
of coastal tides and winds
that lift just enough to let you breathe,
but still press against your skin
so you don’t forget:
Summer makes you earn the night.

His transformation though, that comes early.
Long before dusk or touristy Instagram memories.
I’ve never actually seen it,
but I know the signs.
Him shifting, edging backward through time
toward adolescence and carefree reverie.
It starts with a punk,
something I always call a pongee stick,
which makes him laugh every year.
I can see it burning against the dark grass,
a single ember in the shadows of almost-night.
That’s my cue to remind him
to be grown-up,
but it’s always too late.

Suddenly, he’s twelve again,
lobbing black cats at our feet,
cackling when we flinch,
tucking bottle rockets into our empty beer bottles,
tilting them skyward with the precision of chaos.
His eyes burn with youth,
mischief once gotten and long passed,
the echo of it,
a flare that won’t last.

They start moving toward the end of dock,
a wagon and small children in tow,
our only cue to get in or get out,
History has taught us to watch from the yard,
Because at least once,
he’s sent a mammoth screamer into the sound,
where some poor fish,
just swimming by and minding his own business,
met his fate,
bobbing like a question we couldn’t answer,
surfacing to threaten the fragile line between should we or
shouldn’t we.

I guess we’re all in,
we find our seats,
and suddenly the tell tale HISSSSSSS of the first wave
erupts into purple blooms and silver rain,
green comets that crackle and fly haphazardly,
red chrysanthemums that shatter into stars fall around us.

The crowd oohs.

The kids gasp.

The sparks fall in slow motion,
some of them too low
or too close,
I wonder, are the gasps awe or oh?
The displays from the island
and up and down the coast mirror ours,
and if you sit in just the right place,
it’s like watching fireworks in stereo.
And just like that,
We are all twelve again.

I no longer sit on the dock,
under the action.
In my old age, I’ve opted for a safer,
more respectable seat in the yard.

But I never stray far,
the vigilant eldest daughter,
Keeper of Mismanaged Mischief,
Queller of Fun.
I make sure,
I can still hear him.
I can still see him.

He laughs like someone
who’s forgotten to be tired.
And for a moment,
so do I.
And it’s so easy to get lost
in the pageantry of it all,
the opulence,
the awesomeness.

I look at my father.
See him.
Eyes lit with color,
mouth open in a boy’s laughter
I rarely hear anymore,
a laugh that time,
and age,
and responsibility
have folded into a box
labeled special occasions only.

I want to scream,
WAIT!
We aren’t ready yet.
It’s not time yet.

But in the dark,
the pongee stretches out,
licks the final fuse,
and the finale brings us to our feet,

I have nothing left to protest.

It’s over.

A lingering smoke cloud
and the faint smell of sulfur in the air,
the only trace
that the veil between is and was
had unraveled.
Just long enough to let him through.
But time erases,
and magic fades,
and just like that, he’s gone.

And the boy I never knew,
goes quiet again.

The squeaky wheel of the wagon returning
lets me know I’m right.

And it hits me,
maybe it isn’t fireworks we’re talking about at all.

Onward, Always… mostly

~ Diary of a Kitten Addict ~ 1 Comment

I started writing this five years ago—something I planned to read at the 50th anniversary party we had in the works. But a global pandemic had other plans and crushed both our gathering and my beautiful Canva invitations in one fell swoop (I still have them).

I found the piece again a few months ago while combing through some old files. It was titled “Geez, Jack,” and curiosity made me open it. I’d honestly forgotten I’d even started it. But I knew right away: I needed to finish it by April 11.

As I reworked it, updated the timeline, and started searching for a title, I laughed out loud when “Pack the Car and Beat the Kids” rose to the top—because honestly, that would be on brand. But sixty years of love deserves a little more reverence.

So instead, here’s a tribute to the chaos, the steadiness, the laughter, and the legacy of two people who somehow raised all of us without entirely losing their minds.

Mostly.

They’ve been together for sixty years—five years of young love, scribbled poems, and dreaming out loud… followed by fifty-five years of marriage. A lifetime, really.

They met at Clarion University—young, curious, and entirely unaware of the life they’d build together. My mum thought he was the richest man she’d ever met. Why? Because he’d eaten in a restaurant once and owned a sport coat. And in her world, that was pure glamour.

My dad? He was a hopeless romantic from the very beginning. He wrote poems to her in the margins of his class notes, passed them in secret, folded like treasure—and then tucked them away to be found on her 75th birthday. He loved her then the way he still does now—with gentle consistency and a wink of mischief.

They came from different worlds. Sandy was a good girl—hard-working, well-behaved, always chasing good grades and never stepping out of line. Jack was a loner—quiet but stubborn, following no one’s rules but his own. She grew up in a big, loud, messy family. He came from a stricter, harsher household where love wasn’t spoken often. Each of them was searching for something—something steadier, something new. She found a quiet rebel with a crooked smile and a kind heart. He found a woman and a family he could love—one that loved him back.

They were both education majors. My mum, Sandy, was born to teach—patient, fierce, and full of heart. My dad, Jack, not so much. He worked odd jobs, took what came, and held our family together on a patchwork of effort and determination until he started his own company. And then he was gone a lot—traveling for work, chasing something steadier for us.

Our childhood vacations weren’t picture-perfect. They were tacked onto his business trips to exotic destinations like Corpus Christi and St. Louis. Someone was always picking their nose, climbing over a railing, not touching someone else, or refusing to wear pants—and that was just in the photos. We cried to be carried, got speeding tickets in St. Louis, threw up at every rest stop, accidentally set the dunes on fire, and broke down more times than I can remember. Once, we even roasted hermit crabs on the car floor driving home from Corpus Christi.

We were the Griswolds on vacation before that shit was even cool.

We slept on cots in crowded bedrooms, melting in the wet Florida heat. We camped in a pop-up that had to be carefully balanced at night or it would tip. We laughed when my brother got stuck with the “table” as his bed in that old camper. And we fought over the way-back seat like it was prime real estate. We learned the phrase “beat and pack,” and we knew exactly what it meant.

But no matter where we were, the Easter Bunny always found us, and Santa always knew to leave our presents—even when we weren’t home.
And somehow, that’s how the meaning of home was built.

Home wasn’t just a place.
It was an idea.
It was a world.
It was something we could leave and still belong to.

The world was big, and they wanted us to see it—but we always came back.
We could always come back.

They planted seeds that rooted.
And they held.
They’re holding still.

We were poor by most standards. Hand-me-downs from the church, from neighbors. But we didn’t really notice. Or maybe we just didn’t care. We had each other—and that was everything.

As we grew, the business took root. Mum went back to the classroom (and became my fourth-grade teacher, which deserves its own award). We started taking vacations to the beach—a real vacation, the kind you take on purpose. We packed boogie boards (the cheap, white Styrofoam kind) into the Suburban and stopped twenty times to rearrange them because the squeaking was making Jack insane. We still broke down at toll booths. We still threw up at rest areas. We still fought over the back seat.

We continued to grow. And as we became teenagers—and awful—they did their best to temper our behavior, love us unconditionally, and set boundaries we were absolutely sure to ignore. They told us, “One day, you’ll thank me,” and quietly told themselves, “One day, they’ll thank us.”

They were right. Eventually.

They taught us how to drive. How to play ball. How to be kind to those around us who were different or had less. They attended every game. Every practice. And they bravely said goodbye as, one by one, we graduated and left home.

And when their season of raising kids began to quiet, they didn’t slow down—they just shifted gears.

They traveled back and forth between our schools to watch us play, pick us up, celebrate our birthdays. Sometimes they even showed up when we didn’t.

They never missed a thing. Not one graduation. Not a birthday. Not a communion. Even for the kids that weren’t technically “theirs.” They just showed up. Always. Even if it meant driving all night between events.

They still do.

Now, at 77 and 78, with the kids grown, moved out, married, and raising children of their own, they’re road warriors—taking long, meandering road trips just because. They turn opportunity into adventure and “seek the great perhaps” better than anyone I’ve ever met. They travel the world with too much luggage, curiosity, open minds, and open hearts. They don’t worry too much—or too little—and sometimes that cavalier, caution-to-the-wind attitude drives me crazy.

They go to Steelers games and wave their terrible towels like they’re still in their twenties. They cheer at hockey games. They play bar trivia like it’s life or death. They finish jigsaw puzzles faster than I can open the box.

It’s been sixty years of laughter, grit, faith, and fierce loyalty. Sixty years of a love that was never flashy, never loud, but always steady. Always real. Over time, they developed their own language—inside jokes, whispered prayers, and unspoken understandings.

You can read a lifetime in one look.

And yeah, sometimes I call them the Bickersons. Sometimes I say, “We put the fun in dysfunctional.” Sometimes I joke with people, “I love my family—especially my dad—but he’s more like a hostage.”

But the truth is, what they have—and what they’ve built and endured—is rare. It’s precious.
It’s pretty f’n amazing…

They gave the world me (you’re welcome), and my siblings (pretty cool, I guess). And when that work was done, they set out to fill every corner of that world with the kind of love that stretches—onward and always.

Together, they built a life layered with meaning—raising children who question everything, who love deeply, who argue passionately, and who believe in possibility, because they were raised by two people who did.

Now, they spend most days doting on their grandchildren—who are growing up inside the story they started, who will one day inherit it, and who will, one day, write their own.

They are the kind of love that endures.
The kind that makes room for change.
The kind that still holds hands when no one’s looking.

Happy 55th Anniversary, Mum and Dad.
Your story reminds me to hope.
To laugh often and forgive quickly.
To wander and to want.
And to always say yes to the trip—even if it’s to St. Louis.

The Bridge Between Them and Tomorrow

~ Diary of a Kitten Addict ~ 1 Comment

My parents are my unsung heroes.
They are 77 and 78 years old, and today they laced up their sneakers, grabbed their signs, and marched for justice and freedom—not for themselves, but for the future.

They spent their Saturday standing in the sun—
my dad holding a sign that said Hands off my grandkids’ future,
my mum in a t-shirt about how practical jokes become elected officials.

They marched for freedom.
For justice.
For a tomorrow they might not live to see, but refuse to give up on.

I don’t have children of my own.
I have a niece, a nephew, and a chorus of cousin-kids who orbit close enough to feel like gravity.
They weren’t born to me, but they belong with me.
I’ve cheered them on, watched them grow, held their tiny hands and big feelings.

And I have the thousand students who’ve passed through my classroom and heart across 24 years of teaching.

Family isn’t always about lineage.
Sometimes, it’s about proximity and heart.

These ARE my kids.

And my parents marched for them.

I am who I am because of who my parents were to me when I was growing up.
They weren’t perfect.
They weren’t my best friends.
They usually said no.
They were something more.

They gave me a framework for courage.
They taught me to pay attention—to ask questions, challenge injustice, and stand my ground even when my knees trembled.
They showed me that kindness isn’t weakness—it’s a decision you make over and over again.
That your voice matters, even when it shakes.

Even when it’s silenced.

That ordinary people can do extraordinary things—quietly, consistently, and with stubborn hope.

And I have tried to build something from it.
Something others can walk across.

And today—decades later—they’re still out there showing up.
For my kids.
For your kids.
For our world—the one they still believe in, still carry hope for.

That’s legacy.
That’s love in motion.
That’s the kind of inheritance that matters most.

Not all inheritance comes through a will.
Some of it marches beside you,
sunscreen on, homemade signs in hand,
calling out, “Hands off their future.”

That’s what I got from them.
Not money.
Not land.
But courage.
Conviction.
Movement.

And the kind of love that doesn’t sit still when the world needs it.

That’s the legacy—and the inheritance—I carry forward.
And I take every step with purpose—
to honor them,
as a promise to carry the weight when they are no longer able.

And it’s the one I hope I’m passing on, too.

We are the bridge between them and tomorrow.

On growing old.. and other stuff…

~ Diary of a Kitten Addict ~ 2 Comments

I think, as we grow older and then even older still… As we move through those stages of grief, “I’m almost 30”, “I’m almost 40”, “fuck, I’m almost dead”… I think we start to notice the passing of time as an actual marching. Time (or the lack thereof) becomes something you can feel. Time becomes something you can almost hear. It is that steady “boom, boom, boom” that hits you deep in the bones. You can feel the pulse in your arches and in your toes, it mutes your ears and makes you feel like you are listening to life underwater. It stops you in your tracks and you spend a dizzying few moments recalibrating and acclimatizing to the world around you.

I think, we start to realize how important it is to remember and connect with the people who knew you when you were young and when you were you. How else do we explain having 951 friends on Facebook? And I’m not talking about the you that grew and grew up. Not the you that learned, and fucked up and recovered. Not the you that has now settled into a groove that includes baby aspirin and fish oil. Not that you. Not the you that haunts your dreams and wakes you with “what if”. Not that you. Not the you, when there was a you, that had the world in front of them and choices to make… choices that now are life and the status quo… that now define YOU… And still, that you, the one that always persists and is always there, lurking, just beneath the surface, that comes at you with more choices: Is this the life you chose? Is this what you want? Is this all there is? Is this milk still good?”  

I think, we spin our wheels and fight the current, but just like salmon coming to spawn, we too come home. We become our parents and we grow old (the thing we fear most as children). But we also realize that our parents, they gave all to have us, they had dreams and lives and choices to make, and they chose us. And be it out of kindness or couth they never mention it. The other paths. The other possibilities. The other lives. And then you realize that every possible road was only possible because it was carefully and concertedly cultivated for you. Because someone else gave that to you. 

I think, you decide to choose the next road wisely and with intention and deliberation. You decide, this time will better, more brilliant, more WHATEVER… so you can honor that. So you can BE that. And then you realize that you don’t have to be more, not for them, you’re enough. You learn you can atone for the stupid shit you did, or you said when you were 14 and angry and thought you knew everything. When the worst thing in the world you could be was your parents. When you didn’t know or understand them. When you didn’t know what they are or who they are. When you were young, and dumb, and so woefully without worry or care. You will always carry that guilt, but you know, they’ve forgiven you.

I think, eventually, it all comes to pass. All of it. The triumphs, the falls, the absolute abysmal moments that make you ashamed to this day. You know the ones, that you don’t talk about at Christmas or when the family finds themselves all together because of death or birth or some other ritual we pay homage to. Those moments we talk around and laugh about carefully. Those moments that will always remind you of your past indiscretions and failures. But all of that…All of it… It. Comes. To. Pass. You find forgiveness and grace in acceptance. You find laughter in the impossible. You find stories and moments and memories in the midst of the most unlikely of places. You finally learn to understand, and then you finally understand. And if you are lucky, you learn to embrace what has been in front of you all these years. You learn that it’s all so much bigger than you. You learn that giants and fairytales have human and humble beginnings. You learn that life isn’t finite but it is final. And despite it all, you learn to smile.

For Leo

~ Diary of a Kitten Addict ~ Leave a comment

There is a silence now,
it hides in plain sight within the fervor and the chaos
of our so-called lives.
It is deep, and dark and it eddies like the creek
behind my childhood home
banging off gentle rocks that wish it well
and have seen the passage of time counted in eons
rather than moments
and knowing that time will pass longer still
they remain rooted and unmoving in their resolve.

The silence calls in shimmers of golds and muted pinks,
I turn my face toward the dying sun
determined to fade and emerge somewhere else.
I wait, hoping for the sigh I imagine it will make
as it slowly slides into oblivion and
wonder, does it see us as we see it. And,
on the other side of the universe is
a person is waiting for the moment
when the light touches their face
signaling their day may begin.

In these silent moments,
I think of my childhood.
The excitement of bikes upturned on a cul-de-sac,
their owners lost to adventure and mischief
skipping stones and toppling towers,
damming mighty rivers into deep pools,
our power too great for this world,
hiding from those who would bring reality to our doorsteps.
A place we wouldn’t have to see until the streetlights called us home.

As the silence takes hold
I feel the ebb and flow of time only mountains will remember.
Lost between worlds,
all that was and all that could be lurks just out of reach,
teasing the periphery and threatening to cross into sight.
A haunting kaleidoscope churns and swirls as I fall further down.
The wisdom of my nephew calms the tumult and brings me peace,
“one day, my dreams will wake up with me”.
And though I sleep, I wait for the sun to call me.