Taking a road cruise during a pandemic provides an insight into other states in ways that national news cannot touch. I’ve been fortunate enough to be fully vaccinated and to make my way out west twice this year. I may not have chosen to make the trips, except I had to pick up The Beast (my truck) and Lycaenidae (my house).

Picking up The Beast took me southwest to Arizona and California. Lycaenidae required me to head northwest to Washington and Oregon. Both trips took me through uncharted territory across unvaccinated and unmasked lands. …

Deliberately downsizing to 192 square feet.

As a child, I shared a room with my mom. As a teenager, I had my own bedroom and bathroom. As I got older, I shared a room and bathroom with roommates. Then my husband. We added children to the mix, then more roommates.

Our living spaces changed with us. As our needs evolved, our collections of items grew, too. Until one day in 2003, I took a look at our too-packed crawlspace and realized we didn’t need to save boxes of baby clothes and toys. We would never use a crib or pack-n-play…

What really matters?

Children feel a surprising amount of pressure to know what they are good at or what they want to do when they grow up. I know that I did. I remember being a too-young eight-year-old when an adult asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I could never answer that question without feeling diminished because the questioning adult dismissed my dreams.

I loved moving my body in space and making it do impossible things, so I thought being a gymnast would be fun. My family didn’t have the resources to send me somewhere…

But I’m okay.

I couldn’t tell you the exact moment, the specific instance, when I realized that I was losing hope for the human race. There are far too many occasions that flash through my memory.

Mostly, though, it comes down to today.

Every day, I woke up with a certain amount of okayness with the world. Then I start reading the news. Or Twitter. Or a friend mentions something in passing. Or a random maintenance person comes to my door and angrily tells me they don’t need to wear a mask while they work inside my breathing space.

For…

Don’t worry, everyone is quarantining.

In July 2020, my husband and I moved from a house to an apartment.

We’d made the decision to put the money from our house sale into a more national bank. Even before Covid, managing our banking needs while out of town was difficult. A national bank promised extra employees and better service no matter what was happening outside.

We made the appointment to open a new bank account and were met at the door by a masked man who knew his stuff. He handled the extra-large check, our new bank accounts, and the safety…

As of 2021, in the US, a family of four making under $27,000 is considered to be at the poverty level. (That’s two parents working full-time, making around 6.49 an hour before taxes.) The average rent is $1098. That leaves roughly $13,500 for that family to pay for food, clothing, and healthcare. Or for those who like math — $9.25 a day per person to survive on. Assuming, of course, that anything about their lives is average.

Self-help money gurus inundate media with ideas about saving pennies by avoiding purchasing that $6 coffee drink or skipping eating out. …

I didn’t order that.

Lately, I’ve been on a spending tear for my tiny house. The packages have piled up to my armpits in the garage the apartment complex graciously added in for storage. The boxes also regularly clog the diminutive closet that the landlords pretend is a package hub.

With timely regularity, I receive emails stating, “You’ve got a package.” Inside the emails is info about how many packages have arrived. A six-digit number also gatekeeps your entrance to the chamber of secrets. For grins and giggles, they also provide a nifty picture of your package. The image doesn’t…