Burnt Sage & Blunt Truths

There comes a point in every move when you stop living out of boxes and start putting your life back together. The furniture gets arranged. The kitchen begins to resemble a place where actual food might be prepared. The bedroom stops looking like a temporary holding area for exhausted humans and starts looking like somewhere a person might willingly spend eight hours unconscious. And where one, octogenarian cat (in cat years) vomits loudly every night.  And slowly, ever so slowly, the place starts feeling like home. We're getting there. The apartment is finally shedding that live-in college dorm room aesthetic. You know the one. Everything technically has a place, except nothing is in its place, half your belongings are still packed, and you have to move three things just to get to the one thing you actually need. It's less welcome to our home and more welcome to the aftermath of a particularly aggressive game of Tetris. But progress is progress. The bedroom is coming togethe...

I have just uncovered the real secret history of witchcraft . Forget moon phases. Forget Mercury retrograde. Forget the complicated correspondence tables. Witches are cranky because their familiars are fucking cats. And cats do not observe human concepts such as sleep , quiet hours , personal space , or the structural integrity of plastic bags. What I experienced last night was apparently: 12:00 AM: One cat begins an aria entitled THE DOOR IS CLOSED AND THIS IS AN OUTRAGE. 2:00 AM: Another discovers plastic. CRONCH CRONCH CRONCH. 4:00 AM: THE THUNDERDOME OPENS. Two cats who have lived in the same house for approximately three weeks decide that tonight is the perfect night to settle several ancient territorial disputes dating back to the Mesozoic Era. 4:17 AM: Screaming. 4:19 AM: Hissing. 4:21 AM: Running approximately 900 miles per hour across the house. 4:22 AM: Something falls over. 4:23 AM: Silence. You think, Finally. 4:24 AM: MRRRRROOOOOOOOW. And somewher...

Somewhere between “In Transit” and “Good Luck” There is a special kind of modern frustration that comes from watching a piece of mail disappear while your tracking number continues to insist that everything is perfectly normal. You know the routine. You hand something to the United States Postal Service. It gets a tracking number. You watch it move. Then it arrives in Memphis. And apparently, Memphis is where time and mail go to die. I personally know someone who waited 34 days for a certified letter with tracking to reach its destination. Thirty-four. Days. A certified letter is not supposed to require an archaeological expedition. And yet here we are. Now, before somebody starts screaming that one person's experience doesn't prove the entire Memphis postal system is broken, you're right. It doesn't. And I have receipts for hundreds of people who have experienced the same exact thing.  But it does raise an interesting question when that experience exists alongside year...

  Sleepless in Monette It is 5:15 in the morning in Monette, Arkansas. The house is quiet—or as quiet as a house containing four cats, several humans, and enough collective irritation to power a small municipality can reasonably be expected to be. Everyone else is asleep. Sensible people are asleep. Even the sun has declined to participate in this nonsense. And then there is me. I am awake, staring into the predawn darkness while my brain conducts another emergency meeting that absolutely could have been an email. Did the check ever exist? Was it actually mailed? Where is the money? How many bills are waiting patiently—or not so patiently—for funds I was assured were already “in the mail”? At this point, “the check is in the mail” has joined “I’ll call you back in ten minutes” and “someone will get back to you shortly” in the Museum of Things People Say When They Want You to Stop Asking Questions. Admission is free. The gift shop accepts imaginary checks. I have been in Arkansas fo...

 I do not like this. I really, truly do not like this. I have been stuck in this house for nearly three weeks with limited money, no transportation freedom, and no meaningful relief from the grinding sameness of it all. I have watched Netflix until even Netflix seems concerned about me. I have made lists of things I cannot buy, places I cannot go, and plans I cannot put into motion. I have attempted to keep four cats from staging a furry reenactment of the fall of Rome. I have rearranged thoughts, counted days, stretched supplies, and tried to construct meal plans from whatever happens to be in the kitchen. Not What would I like to eat? Not What sounds good tonight? But What do we have, and how many meals can I force it to become? There is an enormous difference between those questions. At first, I thought I was simply bored. Then I realized boredom was the least of it. This is what happens when choice disappears. When you cannot get in the car and go somewhere because go...

I want a three-bedroom, three-bathroom house on an acre. That seems like a reasonable request. Three bedrooms for living, writing, and storing whatever the cats have decided belongs to them. Three bathrooms so nobody has to negotiate with Dakota through a closed door. An acre so I can step outside without learning the neighbor’s preferred brand of coffee through their kitchen window. In Arkansas, this is a house search. In Seattle, this is apparently a request to be adopted by a tech billionaire. As of August 2026, the median home sale price in Jonesboro was about $235,000 . In Seattle, it was about $874,000 . That’s roughly 3.7 times as much for the median home, before I’ve even had the audacity to ask for an acre. Those are citywide medians, not prices for identical houses. An acre in Seattle makes the comparison even more absurd. For a more relevant Arkansas example, a Jonesboro property listing describes a three-bedroom, three-bathroom house of more than 3,100 square feet on one ...

 I can overlook ugly carpet. I can paint over walls the color of old mustard. I can even live with a kitchen designed by someone who apparently hated both cooking and human movement. But if I pull up to a house and the neighbors are flying MAGA flags, I’m going to keep driving. People will say, “It’s just a flag.”  So were the Nazi flags, if you believe that logic. That is what flags are for. They tell you what someone wants you to know about them. A garden gnome tells me you enjoy whimsy. An Auburn football flag tells me you make questionable decisions on Sundays. A MAGA flag tells me something I would rather learn before signing a thirty-year mortgage. I’m not asking every neighbor to agree with me. I’ve lived among people with different politics all my life. We can disagree about taxes, road repairs, and whether the town needs another Dollar General. We can wave across the fence and complain together when the trash pickup is late. But I’m buying more than a roof and a patc...