Burnt Sage & Blunt Truths

 People love to tell you how beautiful Washington is. They show you the mountains. They show you Puget Sound. They show you ferry boats gliding across blue water while orcas magically leap in the distance. What they don't show you is Everett. I've spent nearly two years here, and if you ask me what I'll remember, it won't be the scenery. It'll be the staggering cost of simply existing while watching a city slowly surrender to disorder. This isn't an attack on the people who are struggling. They're often victims of circumstances far bigger than themselves. This is about a city where ordinary, working people pay extraordinary amounts of money for the privilege of stepping over someone else's crisis on the way to the grocery store. I pay more than two thousand dollars a month for a two-bedroom apartment. Two thousand dollars. For that price, you'd expect clean streets, responsive services, safe public spaces, and a sense that the city is improving. Inst...

  There comes a point in adulthood when you realize your entire existence no longer fits in the backseat of a Chevy Impala. Neither does it require six semi-trucks and a convoy worthy of a military exercise. (*side eye to you know who, I see you over there.....) Somewhere between those two extremes lives an ordinary life. Mine. As I prepare to leave Washington, people keep asking me the same questions. "Can't you just mail your books?" "Ship your clothes" "Why don't you just donate everything and start over?" NO. Then it's.... "How much can your car hold?" The answer is... enough for the people I love. The Rogue will carry me, Dakota, my special co pilot who will remain anonymous until we return to Arkansas, two cats, (until we hit KC then it will be 4) our luggage, medications, important documents, and enough snacks to survive an interstate invasion of gas station food. The rest? That's what moving containers were invented for. I...

  The Intrepid Stamp Explorer's Guide How to Help Me Find Rubber Stamp Treasure Mission Objective Find vintage rubber stamps and send photos before buying (unless they're ridiculously cheap). 🏴‍☠️ Rule #1: Buy Lots, Not Singles (unless that single meets certain criteria, see below) If you find: Shoeboxes Totes Plastic bins Estate sale craft rooms Grandma's stamp collection STOP. Take pictures. These are often where the hidden gems live. 📸 Rule #2: Send Three Photos Please send: The whole lot. A close-up of the stamp faces. The side of the wooden blocks showing the company name. Those little side labels are GOLD. 🚨 Priority Companies (THE LIST) If you see ANY of these... Text Angela immediately. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ PSX House Mouse Penny Black Laurel Burch Lost Coast Designs Stamp Francisco Sherrill Kahn PEANUTS DISNEY WARNER BROTHERS Vintage Bears! SNOOPY!!! A bit of PSX Fodder for you to feast your eyes upon.  ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Hero Arts ...

  I met a lovely person on a plane recently. We had a genuinely enjoyable conversation. We talked about life, social media, work, all the usual things people chat about when they're trapped in a flying aluminum tube together. Then came the line. "I'm kind of TikTok famous." Oh? My ears perked up. Did they have a million followers? Were brands throwing money at them? How was the creator fund working out for them?  Did people stop them in airports asking for selfies? No. Dude. They....had.... About 1,500 followers. I stared out the window for a minute because I wasn't sure if we were experiencing turbulence or if reality itself had shifted. Friends... What in the Kentucky Fried Delusion has happened to us? Since when did fifteen hundred followers become fame? I've got around 1,800 followers. Do you know what that makes me? Someone with around 1,800 followers. That's it. I'm not famous. I'm not an influencer. I'm not an internet celebrity. I'm...

  I just got back from the Fourth of July weekend in Arkansas, where we celebrated my granddaughter Gracelynn’s first birthday. One whole year. I do not know who authorized time to move that fast, but I would like to speak to a manager. She is perfect, of course. She carefully dissected her birthday cake with her fingers like a tiny forensic scientist. No wild cake-smashing chaos. No face-first dive into frosting. Just careful inspection, methodical sampling, and then—because I am blessed beyond measure—a cakey high five. That’s right. I got frosted. Some people get jewelry. Some people get flowers. I got a sticky baby palm full of birthday cake slapped into my hand, and frankly, it outranks most gifts I’ve ever received. She already does the goofy hand-over-mouth noise thing I taught her, completely unprompted. That means Grandma has officially made an impression. Next up: fish lips. I have a Jim Carrey rubber face and a sacred duty to pass on the ridiculous. She also learned to g...

  I'm getting real tired of hearing people tell me to "slow down." Slow down? My life has been moving at a glacier's pace for almost five years. Five years of appointments. Five years of waiting rooms. Five years of scans and bloodwork and "let's wait and see." Five years of putting things off. Five years of being too tired, too sore, too busy surviving to actually live. I've spent years watching everyone else move forward while I learned how to schedule my life around medical appointments, side effects, and recovery. I've learned how to cancel plans. How to sleep sitting up. How to measure my energy like it's a precious resource. And now, when I finally have a little fire in my belly, when I want to write, create, list vintage stamps at midnight, start projects, dream about the future, and maybe—just maybe—run toward something instead of merely crawling away from disaster— People tell me to slow down. No. Respectfully, fuck that. I have slow...

  A few days ago, I found a yarrow plant on the side of the road outside Oak Harbor. Not in a nursery. Not in a carefully curated garden center. Not with a cute little tag telling me how much sun it needed. On the side of the road. Traffic had backed up, and there it was. Dakota reached out, yanked the thing out of the ground by its roots, wrapped it in a wet paper towel, and tossed it into the car. That should have been the end of the story. Any gardening expert worth their salt would probably tell you that being ripped out of the earth, hauled around in a vehicle all day, and stuffed into a temporary pot with a snake plant is not ideal growing conditions. Yet here we are, and tell that to the yarrow.  The yarrow is thriving. Not surviving. Thriving. New growth. Upright stems. No dramatic wilting. No passive-aggressive yellowing of leaves. No plant version of filing a complaint with management. Just growth. And honestly, I can't stop thinking about it. Because some things are...