Konmari: What I’ve Learned After Discarding

I’ve purposefully waited a few weeks to write about this, because after completing the discard phase of the KonMari method, I wanted to mull over the experience. It took me a little over 15 weeks to go through everything in the house, and it’s now been about a month since I finished. Here’s what I learned. Read More…

Baby

Here, on a wild hair-day, is Edith. Her name was actually chosen before I was pregnant. It was a name both Mike and I liked, and whenever we talked about what we’d do if we had children, the imaginary child was always ‘Little Edith’ – ‘When we have Little Edith we’ll bring her here,’ etc. So Read More…

Six Months

Today marks six months that we’ve been married. (Don’t worry, I’m not spending our six-month anniversary writing this. I wrote it in advance!) I thought, when we got married, that by this time I’d have some profound thoughts to offer, some deeply nuanced reflections – you know, ‘this journey’, ‘this wonderful adventure’, etc. To my Read More…

The Magic Formula of Dating

If you’ve come here looking for the final explanation of the confusing world of relationships, I’m sorry to disappoint. I don’t have the magic formula. However, I sort of believed in one. Not literally, of course, but when Mike and I were engaged, I kept having a funny feeling that ‘this was too good to Read More…

The Online Dating Experience

It’s always interesting to see people’s responses when Mike and I tell them we met online. For the most part, I think any stigma attached to online dating seems to have dissipated; even my mom (who might be expected to be the most cautious, at least proverbially) didn’t bat an eyelash because she’s seen plenty Read More…

Living within Limits

Last week I came down with the flu. For the first couple of days it was kind of fun to have an excuse to stay home and watch TV and sleep. But on the third day of fever I began to get bored and actually wished I could do some work or clean the house Read More…

Advice from My Mother

It’s Mother’s Day weekend here in the UK, so in honour of my mother and in keeping with my theme of reflection, I wanted to share some of the good advice I’ve received from my mom over the last couple of years. We’ve kept up an email correspondence ever since I moved overseas, but when Read More…

Relinquishing the ‘Friends First’ Relationship

I remember, when I was a teenager, the kindly encouragement from older mentor figures to remember that being ‘friends first’ with a guy was a good idea. I see now that it’s good advice to give a teenager, who might be prone to leaping head-first into an intense relationship totally inappropriate to her maturity level. Read More…

Reflections on Singleness

When I graduated without the ‘ring by spring’ so much coveted in my little subculture, I set myself up with a job and a nice apartment and was prepared for adventure. I’m afraid my impression of what that phase would be like came from a combination of my parents’ experience and old movies. I expected to be Read More…