This morning while I ate breakfast a strange man walked by the cinnamon rolls wearing only boxers and a T-shirt. I couldn’t help but stare. Part of me wanted to take a picture.
Now, I’m really not into men in boxers. I thought maybe I just wasn’t seeing right, and that after a few cups of coffee maybe the site would make sense. We do live in an age of jeggings, skorts, and other portmanteau crossover fashions that a fella from Indiana just can’t quite understand.
But I suppose this is just a normal occurrence of dorm life in Allen Hall at the University of Illinois.
Still, I stared. Was he wearing…
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Last week I Skyped with a class at the Notre Dame Academy in Park Hills, Kentucky, that read WHERE AM I WEARING? I’m always happy to Skype with classes reading one of my books. I often do these Q&A sessions for $0, but payment comes in many forms.
Last night after returning from two days in Ferguson seeding a Facing Project, a package from the class was waiting on me. There were pajamas for the kids because I shared that each night after bath I have Harper check the made in label on her pajamas. There was a moleskine with an awesome quote followed by a message from Amanda Staggs, the class’s teacher.
Every gift was thought out and full of meaning. It’s…
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“It’s my birthday!” Harper announced in our bedroom at 2 AM.
Today Harper turns 6. And you gotta respect her enthusiasm for the day and for life in general. A month from now, I’ll be 36 (I’m Harper +30), and I’ll want to sleep in on my birthday
But I’m younger now than I was before she arrived.
I read children’s books about talking animals and magic. We’re also making our way through the Harry Potter series.
I color, still not very well. There is something really meditative about it.
We pick on Annie together.
We crack toot jokes more than we should.
We play hide and seek and tag.
We go on bike rides.
We giggle.
We sing duets from Frozen.
We have dance parties.
We play video games. About a year ago we started playing…
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Betty holding our son Griffin.
Annie’s grandma, Betty Ludwick, recently passed away. She was 93.
She listened and she loved. She humbly led a life that led others to listen and love. If you spent five minutes with her, you felt like one of her grandchildren. That’s why I was so honored to read the tribute below written by Betty’s three granddaughters at her funeral.
Stephanie, Emily, and Annie did an amazing job writing this. It is touching and funny, and most of all it’s Betty. Even if you weren’t lucky enough to meet her, I think you’ll enjoy it.
In Memory of our Grandma, Betty Ludwick
March 10, 1921-November 13, 2014
By: Stephanie Pfefferkorn, Emily Taylor, and Annie Timmerman
If you knew…
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My hair wasn’t brushed, neither were my teeth.
I wondered down zombie-like to the hotel’s continental breakfast. My eyes weren’t really working yet, but it wasn’t hard to discern that Temple Grandin was sitting in the lobby on the phone.
If you aren’t familiar with Temple Grandin, she’s sort of a patron saint of the autism community. Born with autism, Temple has been able to make an impact seeing the world from a different perspective. She was played by Claire Danes in a movie and is a rockstar speaker at events across the country.
SHE IS A BIG DEAL, especially to parents like me with a child on the autism spectrum.
I didn’t want to…
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(This story originally appeared on the blog of the Indiana Authors Award.)
I carry a gold nugget in my wallet. A slave owner in Burkina Faso gave it to me.
The bus ride that took me from Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, ended at a flooded road and a trip in a tiny dugout canoe where the oarsman joked about crocodiles. From the canoe I got in a taxi that didn’t have brakes. The driver stopped the car using the “Fred Flintstone” method – sticking his foot out the door and dragging it along the road.
We arrived to the town of Poura, Burkina Faso, at dusk. There were no rooms to be had. The proprietor of the town’s only hotel had taken all of the keys with him on vacation. Fortunately,…
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The sun poured through the glass walls of the library and made me even more aware of the fact I was wearing a hot and itchy suit.
“Man this suit is hot,” I said to Jessica Brockmole, one of my fellow Emerging author finalists at the Indiana Authors Award. She socially appropriately acknowledged my statement.
And then I went on.
“I don’t normally wear suits. Actually, borrowed this one.” If only I had stopped there. “My suit doesn’t fit any more. I started doing CrossFit about a year ago and my butt got bigger.”
The more dressed up I get, the more socially awkward I become. It’s a law that is as true as gravity to me.
(In a suit at the wedding of a former…
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I was scrolling through Facebook, wasting time, not expecting to see a picture of a picture of me on a Jumbotron in Times Square. Why would I?
But there it was…
“That’s cool,” I thought. “Probably photoshopped, though.”
The Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Author’s Awards had shared the photo. I haven’t officially mentioned it here on my site, but I won the Emerging Author Award. (I should write about that later. It was an awesome evening and honor.) The photo featured Norbert Krapf, the regional award winner, Michael Shelden, the national award winner, and me . . . in a suit . . . a borrowed suit.
I never wear a suit.
I had to ask if this…
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Our kids get a bath every night whether they need one or not.
Bath times are extra special at our house. I think that’s why we wash our kids every night.
Our five-year-old daughter, Harper, and our three-year-old son, Griffin, don’t play together much during the course of the day. Griffin has autism and is in “Griffin Land” most of the day.
“I don’t know why Griffy won’t play with me, but I still love him,” Harper said one day, summing up her relationship with her brother.
You try not to compare your kids to other kids. You try. But you do. Watching special sibling bonds develop in other kids and not seeing them in your own is tough.
But bath time is time for Harper…
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Trying to win the Photo Contest at Wells County Public Library
You can go to West Africa to meet cocoa farmers (although not advisable at the moment with the ebola outbreak). You can write a book about your experience meeting farmers on four continents. But none of this guarantees that your stories will reach the hearts and minds of readers.
For that a little help never hurts.
Last week I had the pleasure of visiting Wells County Public Library in Bluffton, Indiana. They used my book WHERE AM I EATING? in their One Book, One County reading program. Basically, they pick a book, get a ton of copies of it for their patrons, and start a community-wide conversation around the book. If…
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