Month in Review: January 2026

January 2026 in Review

January started quietly, with some time off for the New Year and very little fanfare. After the pace of December, the month felt slower and heavier. We dealt with a mix of winter weather and health stuff, but also had some fun!

📊 Month by the Numbers

• Weight: ⬇️ 6.6 lbs
• Runs: 0
• Books Read: 2 
• Blog Posts: 14
• One Minute Memoirs: 4
• Savings: ⬆️ $160
• Debt: ⬇️ $393.70

Highlights

• A real winter arrived: January brought a massive snowstorm — over a foot of snow — which meant school cancellations, working from home, and a reminder of what winter used to look like here. It’s been years since we’ve seen that much snow at once. It was... not fun.
• Health took center stage: It wasn’t my best month health-wise. Between multiple doctor appointments, a clogged ear that required flushing, and a frustrating uptick in migraines, January felt heavier than usual and required more patience than I would’ve liked.
• Busy calendar for the boys: Between another Bingo night (football themed!), a school math event, and a school carnival for Holden, the kids’ schedules stayed full even in the middle of winter.
• Caleb’s Solofest debut: Caleb was selected by his band teacher to participate in his first-ever Solofest, where he played the French horn. A big milestone for him and a proud moment for me. He got an excellent score!
• Birthday celebrations: Caleb turned 11 and celebrated with Get Air and Texas Roadhouse, plus a 3D printer that quickly turned into a replacement saga. I turned 37 and went out of town to mark the occasion.
• Musical of the month: My aunt and I saw Spamalot. She loved it. I absolutely did not. You win some, you lose some!

📚 What I Read

A slower reading month, but I still managed to finish two books.

• Room for Rent by Noelle Ihli ★★★☆☆
• The Tenant by Freida McFadden ★★★☆☆

🏅 Favorite Book of the Month: The Tenant 
Books Read: 2
Yearly Progress: 2 / 100

🎬 What I Watched

• The Pitt (HBO Max): I now anxiously wait for Thursday nights to watch new episodes. It feels very old-school, like when you had to wait week to week instead of binge everything at once. This show is SO GOOD! (current)
• ER: I started this after catching up on The Pitt because I love medical shows and I needed something to fill the void! I’m about halfway through season one. I don’t love it yet — it’s a little slow and definitely dated — but I’m sticking with it. (s:1 e:1–11)
• Grey’s Anatomy: I started another rewatch. It’s still my comfort show. (s:1 e:1–3)
• Cult Behind the Killer: The Andrea Yates Story (HBO Max): A short documentary series that wasn’t great overall. I learned a bit more about the case, but it didn’t fully work for me. It kind of felt like they were reaching a bit with the cult angle. (complete)
• Handsome Devil: Charming Killer (Paramount+): An excellent true crime series. Easily one of the better watches of the month. (complete)
• The Deepest Breath: A fascinating documentary about free diving.
• Skyscraper Live: A nerve-wracking live Netflix event where Alex Honnold free-solo climbed a 101-story skyscraper that I watched with the boys.

Extras

• Loved: Celebrating Caleb’s birthday, hearing him shine at Solofest, and setting up spreadsheets to organize my life.
• Sucked: A rough health month with multiple doctor appointments, a clogged ear, and more migraines than I’d like.
• On the Menu: Holden and I baked a cake for Caleb's birthday, which Caleb then proceeded to not even eat (not a big fan of sweets... how is he my child?), plus lots of birthday freebies for me: McDonald’s fries, a Crumbl brownie, and a free bundt cake from Nothing Bundt Cakes.
• Made Me Laugh: Holden, on the phone with a friend who lives five minutes away: “You haven’t had dinner yet?! What time is it in your area?”

Coming Up Next Month

• Kid events: Another Bingo night and more school events with the boys.
• Theater night: My aunt and I are seeing Wicked, one of my favorites that I've seen several times. Fun coincidence: Caleb is seeing it the same night on a school field trip.
• Looking ahead: Hoping for fewer health hiccups and a smoother stretch overall.

What I Learned

Not every month needs a big win to count. Sometimes the progress is quieter... showing up, managing what you can, and finding a few good moments in the middle of winter.

So that’s it for me! See you next month!

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Across the Board (One Minute Memoir)

A Memoir of Stolen Turns, Childhood Cheats, and the Boy Across From Me

Setting: August 2025 — At the table with Holden, where the rules are mostly optional.

Playing games with children is lawless.

There are no rules. Or rather, there are rules, but they’re constantly being bent, broken, and reimagined in real time by sticky fingers and mischievous grins.

Growing up, my friends and I loved games. Bingo, poker, all sorts of board games. We were intense. Competitive to the point of chaos. We’d get into full-blown screaming matches with each other and my other mother, who had to referee more than once. The stakes were always high, even if we were just playing for bragging rights.

So I’ve carried that spirit with me. Not in most things — I’m pretty easygoing about life in general — but games? Games are where I draw the line. There’s order. There’s justice. There are consequences for moving a piece out of turn.

Enter: Holden.

Holden loves to cheat.

He’ll move a peg an extra space in Trouble when he thinks I’m not looking. He’ll announce it’s his turn again before I’ve even touched the dice. Sometimes, in a moment of “generosity,” he’ll even try to help me move a piece out of home, despite the fact that I didn’t roll a six.

I usually catch him. I usually call him out. Because that’s not how I play games. Games are sacred. Games have structure. Games are serious.

Tonight, he won three out of three games of Trouble.

Only partly because he cheated.

But mostly because he’s getting older.

He’s learning the moves. Learning the rules. Learning how to beat me fair and square.

And someday, maybe sooner than I’m ready for, he will.

It won’t be like this forever.

One day, the rules will stick. The cheating will stop. The magic will fade just a little.

So tonight, I let it be wild. I let it be messy.

Because somewhere between the stolen turns and extra rolls, I realized he’s still little.

And I’m still lucky enough to be across the board from him.

This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.

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The Stories That Saved Me

On the pages that held me when I couldn't hold myself

There was a stretch of time last summer when I was never without a book in my hand.

I read in the car before work, in the breakroom at lunch, on the couch after dinner, and in bed long after the house had gone still. Every spare moment, every pause in the noise of life, I filled with words that weren’t my own.

Nine, sometimes ten books a month. I moved through them like air. I’d close one, reach for another, and disappear again. It wasn’t discipline or even passion that kept me going. It was survival.

Reading was the only place that didn’t hurt. Between the pages, I didn’t have to think about everything that was falling apart. I could live inside someone else’s story: one with structure and purpose, where things made sense and endings came on time. In a season when my own life felt fractured, fiction became a kind of oxygen.

Looking back, I can see how frantic it was. The pace. The hunger. I wasn’t just reading... I was running.

But somewhere along the way, the need softened. The urgency faded.

I started to look up again. At the light through the window, the sound of the boys laughing in another room. I’d finish a chapter and let the silence stay. I didn’t always reach for the next book right away.

I still read, of course. I always will. But now, it feels different.

It’s not an escape hatch anymore; it’s a companion. Something that steadies me, that moves with me instead of pulling me away. The pace is slower, the pull gentler now. I can close the cover and step back into my own life, one that, little by little, feels like a story worth living again.

Books have always been there: a quiet refuge when the world felt too loud, a steady friend when everything else around me shifted. They carried me through the hardest parts and reminded me of who I was when I started to forget.

They don’t need to hold me up anymore. But they still hold me — in the ways that matter, in the quiet that follows the chaos. 

Now, the words don’t carry me away. They carry me home.

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Four Dollars and a Little Doubt (One Minute Memoir)

A Memoir of Tiny Teeth, Craft Box Cash, and the Fight to Keep Believing

Setting: July 2025 — Where the Tooth Fairy was running on improvisation and spare dollars.

The other night, Holden lost another tooth — not the first in a recent run.

This one came loose at bedtime, dramatic and urgent, as if it couldn't wait another minute. It sent us into another late-night scramble, quietly checking wallets and hoping between us we could make it work.

Eventually, Mimi found four folded dollar bills stashed in her wallet... because, of course, I had no cash. As always.

A little while later, Holden saw me with the bills. Unfolded them and examined them, smoothing the creases with his thumb.

“What’s that for?”

I panicked and told him the first thing I could think of:

“Diet Cokes.”

Later, after he was asleep, I slid the money under his pillow, fervently hoping the story would hold overnight. 

In the morning, he woke up and counted it out.

“Hey! You had four dollars too! Are you the Tooth Fairy?!”

Then came the real inspection.

“These are folded the same way! Bent in the middle! Is the Tooth Fairy fake?!”

He kept going, poking holes in the story, testing it from every angle. He even brought it up to Caleb, looking for confirmation I couldn't give him.

Eventually, he tucked the bills into his pink craft box — the one where he keeps his stash — and carried it off to his room. He didn’t say much after that.

I’m not sure he believes anymore.

But I hope we can hold onto the magic just a little bit longer.

This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.

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Published (New Chapters, Ch. 2)

New Chapters ◦ Chapter Two: The Rebuild ◦ Entry 6

This post is part of my New Chapters series — a collection of personal essays about rebuilding, resilience, and writing what comes next, told in evolving chapters.

← Previous: Rough Draft  

Published: On sharing the story before it's perfect. ✨

By the time summer gave way to August 2025, the rebuilding I’d been doing quietly had reached a kind of pressure point. The blog I had taken down during the collapse of my life was finally standing again — restored piece by piece, reshaped through late nights and careful edits. What started as private reconstruction had become something real enough to share.

Up until then, I had been writing again quietly.

Restoring old posts. Drafting new ones. Rearranging words in private. Letting the blog exist only on my screen... safely unfinished, safely unseen.

But by August, the work had outgrown hiding.

The site was ready enough. The words were ready enough. I was ready enough, even if I didn’t believe it  

So I picked a day.

I told myself that was the day the blog would go live again. No more endless polishing. No more pushing it off into some vague future version of courage. Just a date on the calendar and a promise to myself that I would finally stop treating this as a rehearsal.

And then the day arrived.

I avoided it almost impressively. I stayed busy with anything that didn’t require opening the site. Ran errands I didn’t need to run. Cleaned things that weren’t dirty. Found small, harmless ways to delay the moment I’d already decided on.

By evening, the quiet got louder.

I sat down at my laptop and stared at the button longer than I’d like to admit. My stomach tightened. My hands actually shook. It felt absurd to be nervous about a website, but it wasn’t really about a website. It was about being visible again. About letting people see where I actually was instead of where I wanted to be.

It felt tied to everything else I’d been slowly stepping back into — friendships, routines, ambition, the version of myself that wasn’t only surviving anymore.

Hitting publish felt like pushing the door open on a room I’d kept locked for years.

So I did it.

I clicked publish.

Then, I shared the link on social media before I could talk myself out of it.

After, I closed the laptop like it might explode.

The world didn’t end.

No one laughed. No one pointed. A few people reached out and said they were glad I was writing again. Some said they’d missed my voice. Some said they saw themselves in the words.

That’s when it landed for me.

Hitting publish — on a story, on a life, on a version of yourself — isn’t about being polished. It’s about being seen. Not after you’re ready. Not after you’ve found the right words. Not after you’ve wrapped it up neatly.

It’s about learning to stop hiding while you keep becoming.

Letting myself be seen now also meant making peace with what was already out there: the earlier versions of me, the chapters I couldn’t edit away, the story that had already been told whether I liked it or not.

The past couldn’t be rewritten anyway. It was already published — flaws, footnotes, and all.

So instead of trying to erase who I had been, I started practicing showing up as who I am.

I’m still more comfortable on the page than out loud. Still someone who processes in paragraphs. Still figuring things out as I go. But I’m learning to let myself be seen anyway. In relationships, in small risks, in showing up imperfectly instead of disappearing.

Because life doesn’t have to be flawless to be shared.

You don’t have to have everything figured out to step forward.

And you don’t need to know the ending before you’re worth reading.

So I hit publish anyway — messy and real and still in progress.

And somewhere in that small, shaking click, I realized something else too:

I wasn’t just publishing a blog.

I was finally pushing publish on my life.

Chapter Three Begins: COMING SOON →

Visit the New Chapters landing page to explore each chapter and read the story in order.

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Playing Their Part (One Minute Memoir)

A Memoir of Two Brothers, One Keyboard, and the Chaos in Between

Setting: Summer 2025 — Being subjected to a home concert no one asked for

Caleb has always been a little musician. He has a quiet, contemplative soul and long piano fingers. Back in first grade, he learned about Ray Charles at school and was completely captivated. Around the same time, he went through a little Beethoven phase — soft, serious music for his soft, serious soul. It was dramatic, heartfelt, and kind of perfect. For a while, it was the soundtrack of his tiny world.

He declared he wanted to play the “plano,” and he’s been in lessons ever since. Last year, he added French horn and chorus to his musical lineup. He’s serious about it. Literal. Focused. Careful.

Holden… is not quiet. Or serious. Definitely not contemplative.

Holden is feral. He’s a human tornado with sticky fingers and a laugh you can hear across the house. Every so often, he’ll flip on Caleb’s keyboard, mash random keys, and activate the godforsaken auto-accompaniment feature that sounds like a karaoke bar from 1987. It’s chaotic. It’s loud. It is not music. But still… he plays with the kind of confidence only a little brother can possess.

Recently, after one such performance, Papa smiled and said, “That was really good!”

From the other room, Caleb — deadpan and entirely sincere — chimed in:

“I’m not sure I agree. I mean… it was ALRIGHT.”

He wasn’t being mean. He was just being honest. Honest in the way that only Caleb knows how to be: thoughtful, careful, and completely literal.

Two brothers. One instrument.

One makes noise

The other makes music.

And somehow, in the middle of the chaos and the laughter and the off-key confidence, they're both still exactly who they're meant to be, each one playing their part.

This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.

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