Out in the world

For the first time in far too long, I have a story out in the world! You can find it here or listen to it on your favorite podcast app (please note: it is currently audio only). It’ll only take eight minutes out of your day so please give my fun little solarpunk story a listen if you can!

Another thing that happened for the first time in far too long? I got out. I booked a last-minute hotel room, packed up the kids, and went to Portland for the weekend. (Maine, folks. I went to Portland, ME.)

We hit up the children’s museum and the Portland Museum of Art for their family day event; we had dinner with one of my rarely-seen sisters one night and my quirky-in-all-the-best-ways college roommate the next. The kids ran around playgrounds and made friends in the hotel pool (my 6 year old’s sole hotel requirement). We even survived the obligatory Trader Joe’s run on a Sunday afternoon!

The less fun stuff: my toddler only allowing me one single 1.5 hour stretch of uninterrupted sleep over two nights (the rest of my sleep averaged maybe 45 minutes between interruptions), some bad food turning into four days of stomach misery, and the start of a cold that had me canceling Sunday breakfast plans with a high school friend I’d been looking forward to all week. Somehow, the trip was still worth it and I’ve made notes for the next time to hopefully let us both stress less and do more of the things we want.

Cabin fever has been a background hum in my head since before the pandemic hit. Portland is only a three hour drive south, yet this weekend was the farthest south I’ve been in five years. Five. Years. And I can’t tell yet how much the trip helped because I’m still recovering, but it definitely helped.

Bonus: doing passive story research for a future project! Combine that with finding out my story went live while trying not to lose my kids in the children’s museum Friday afternoon (pretty on-brand for me in so many ways) and the weekend came out pretty successful writing-wise, too. So in one brief trip, I managed to combine writing, parenting, and wanderlust, which frankly feels pretty damn superhuman.