Tru’s best friend came over along with her mother, who is also one of the best people I know. AK signed me up for the domain name and started messing with the layout. Annie brought early birthday present bar stools and put them together with the little girls. I had pasta sauce and real meatballs going, both of which I learned to make from Claire and Nathan. We turned the Oscars on without sound for Tru and Kendall to marvel over the deep front plunge and perfect hair.
Manny had spent a mostly sleepless night at his best friend’s house and had wrapped himself up on my bed nearly unable to cope with his fatigue. He fell asleep briefly and as I tried to wake him up, he cried out in panic that he was not ready for school.
The big boys alternated between basketball at the park and basketball on the screen.
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I have been wrestling with the adage “bloom where you’re planted” when the fact is, I’ve planted myself in relative comfort. I mean– what choice do I have but to bloom? Food on the table. Partner who is kind. Friends who are generous.
We have made some uncomfortable choices. A casual poll of the children reveals that they are most certainly not living their best lives. To fix this for them I would have to fix myself, the phones they do/do not own, and the amount of cured meat they could consume in a week. But mostly myself.
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All love goes to AnnKatrin and Ann for taking this website thing off of the list. They are not responsible for its current design glitchiness: that is all me. My wise friend told me: “this website thing will be good. People may need a softer entry into… well. You.” She’s not wrong. So I give you a website with my name, a header that’s full of public school cake, and the last few years of sporadic posting. The 10 plus years of sewing/quilting/rambling archives live on, but are currently private. I’m trying to sort out what to do with all of that. I was writing to record the days and my guess is that I’ll try to sort and bind them for the kids in some way.
Thank you for following me here.
Melissa Frantz 
I love your writing so much. Thank you for sharing your life through your writing. You are a gift.
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I hope if you do find a way to organize your old content for the kids you share how. I also have an old blog and am not sure what to do with years and years of content when I had time (pre kids of course) to write about every endeavor I embarked on (mostly crafty).
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I am always grateful for your words and your courage, when they challenge and when they uplift, though I find they often accomplish both. I don’t always comment or jump in on discussions and posts because I’m metaphorically shouting across the road from a different party in a different place with a different (and also similar) set of complicated cultural biases and privilege, but I am always reading. Thank you for writing.
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