Giving Spring its Flowers
Call it false spring if you must, but last weekend I sat on my deck in 60-degree weather, sunshine on my bare arms, and that's good enough for me.
Kristen Martin
Weekly Journal 03.08.26
Babies, Australians, and potatoes
Still Waters Give RBF
Being quiet and reserved conflicts with widely accepted social norms. Even worse, as a woman, is to have a default expression that reads as dour.
Weekly Journal 03.02.26
The Grand Canyon, waffles, and podcasts
When Mom Gets Touched Out
The phrase "touched out" originated from mothers' aversion to excessive physical touch, by kids and partners alike, but for me it resonates for all kinds of sensory input.
Weekly Journal 02.24.26
Nonfiction, hospital shows, and Mediterranean chicken
Expansion and Contraction
This year, instead of a storm, I got trapped at home for two weeks by pneumonia. My world shrank to the size of my bedroom and, for some unpleasant number of hours, a gurney in the emergency department.
An Inauspicious Beginning
The triage nurse bumped me to the front of the pack when my heart rate measured 145, which is about the top of the range for someone my age doing aerobics. I had not so much as walked around the block in four days.
Climbing the Walls
It’s January in Oregon, and raining relentlessly. The Christmas decorations are gone, the tree and its ornaments boxed and in the attic. At this writing, my son is under the weather with a cough that won’t seem to abate, partly because he is asthmatic. We are treating the
The Year in Binges
2025 was a year of emotional streaming and emotional eating. My husband and I are both despondent and outraged over what’s been happening to our country, which may be one reason why he always comes back from the grocery store with cartons of ice cream. We snack a lot