Notes from my kitchen table.

Today is the twentieth entry of this little blog. I sat down this morning at the kitchen table with my coffee and I just looked at the calendar and felt — I don't know what the right word is. Tender, maybe. Quietly proud. Mostly grateful.

Twenty days ago I locked the bathroom door for five minutes and wrote four words in a blue journal. Since then I have run fifteen minutes straight (we are calling it a miracle in this house), poured forty-six candles and shipped twenty-eight of them, had one real conversation with my husband about the next five years, told my mother I love her without a fight attached, gone to bed at ten almost every night, said no to two committees, said yes to one Saturday off, and written ten thousand words to you. Ten thousand. About the kitchen and the kettle and the closet and the candle and the man I married and the kids I am raising and the woman I am, slowly, becoming again.

I want to tell you what I have learned. I am going to keep it short because Emma needs her hair washed and Noah is asking, again, whether dinosaurs liked spaghetti.

I wrote a letter this morning, on a piece of cream-colored paper Diane gave me at Christmas, to the woman I was at twenty-five. I want to share parts of it with you because I think most of us never go back and tell that woman she did okay.

Dear twenty-five-year-old Lucy,

You are sitting in that apartment in Iowa City with the carpet that smells like the last tenant's cat. You are eating ramen at a card table because you have not bought a real one yet. You are working two jobs and going to school at night and you are terrified you are behind.

For a long time my 'me time' was the hour after the kids were asleep, when I would sit on the couch with a glass of wine and my phone and watch one more episode of something and then one more and then one more, until I was crawling into bed at eleven-thirty wrecked, only to have Noah wake me up at five-forty for water.

I called that hour mine. It was not mine. It was the leftovers of mine. It was what was left of me after everyone else had had a turn.

I started going to bed at ten last month. Just ten. Not nine, not 'when the sun goes down,' just ten. By eleven I am asleep. By six I am awake before the alarm with enough margin to do my four words in the journal and my lemon water and my three things in the mirror, and the day starts in a way that does not feel like an ambush.

Mark watched the kids for an entire Saturday today. From eight in the morning until five in the evening. Nine hours. I did not know what to do with nine hours. I want to tell you what I did, because I think a lot of us, when finally handed time, lose our minds.

Eight a.m.: pickleball with Megan, as always. We split with the retired guys, one each. Honor was satisfied.

Nine-thirty: coffee at Sweet Magnolia, just me, not Megan, because Megan was actually working. I sat at the little corner table by the window and read an actual book for forty-five minutes. A real book, with chapters. I had forgotten what the inside of a chapter feels like.

I have made a quiet list this year. It is not on the fridge. It is in the back of the journal Megan gave me, in pencil so I can keep editing. The list is called Things I No Longer Do for People-Pleasing. It is short and brutal and freeing.

I no longer apologize for the state of my house when someone drops in. The house is the house. The toys are the toys. I am raising humans, not a magazine. If you came over, you came to see us, not the floor.

I no longer say yes to volunteering for things I do not have time for at the school. I love Emma's school. I love her teacher. I have served on one committee this year and that is the number I have. The number is not zero, which is what last year's me would have demanded. The number is one, which is what this year's me can carry.

Last night Mark and I had a conversation we should have had three years ago. Maybe five. Maybe at the wedding rehearsal in 2017. We had it on the back porch in our pajamas at nine-fifteen on a Wednesday, with the candle going and the cicadas going and Biscuit asleep on the porch boards with her chin on my foot.

The conversation was: what do we actually want the next five years to look like?

We have talked about the next month. We have talked about the next paycheck. We have talked about whether Emma should do the summer reading program at the library (yes) and whether Noah should try a real big-boy bed in the fall (probably). We have not talked about five years. Not honestly. Not on purpose.

Somewhere around 2009, in the waiting room of a dentist in Iowa City, I read a one-page article in some glossy magazine — I want to say it was a back-of-the-book column — that gave me the only fashion advice I have ever consistently used. I cannot find the article. I cannot remember the writer. I want to tell her, wherever she is, that her words saved me an estimated ten thousand dollars and approximately four hundred bad outfits.

The formula is this. Three pieces. One that fits, one that is comfortable, one that you like.

That's it. Look down. Are you wearing one thing that actually fits your body — not your old body, not your hoped-for body, your current body? Are you wearing one thing that is comfortable enough that you forget you have it on? And are you wearing one thing that makes you genuinely happy when you catch it in the mirror?

I had two grandmothers. They are both gone now, the first when I was twenty, the second when I was twenty-seven. I think about them every Wednesday morning when I am writing checks for Mr. Miller and sometimes when I am pouring candles in the laundry room. I think most of what I know about money I learned from them, and almost none of it from a book.

Grandma June, my dad's mother, lived in a tiny ranch house in eastern Iowa with linoleum floors and a chest freezer in the garage that was always, always full. She kept an envelope in the kitchen drawer labeled CHRISTMAS and another one labeled CAR REPAIRS and another one labeled JUST IN CASE. Every Friday after Grandpa got paid she put a few bills in each envelope. She paid cash for almost everything. She died with no debt and a small surprise of a savings account that my dad still talks about.

Grandma Ruth, my mom's mother, lived in a slightly bigger house in town and worked at the bank for thirty-two years. She would not pay full price for anything. Anything. She bought our family Christmas presents at the after-Christmas sale and put them in the closet for the next year. She knew, to the dollar, what every utility cost every month for a decade, because she wrote it on the back of the bill before she paid it.

I have to be honest with you. Last Tuesday I cried in the cereal aisle of the IGA. Wednesday morning I sat in the car in the school drop-off line and could not, for a moment, remember why we do all of this. That is a thing that happens, friends. That is a sentence I am going to say out loud, because the women I love do not say it enough and then they think they are alone in feeling it.

The hormones, the heat, a hard conversation with my mother on Sunday about her doctor's appointment that she keeps not telling me the details of, the second water bill in a row that was bigger than it should have been, the way Mark fell asleep on the couch before I could finish telling him about Noah's stutter — it all stacked up. I went to bed Tuesday at nine and Wednesday I did not want to get out.

I made a list. The list is called 'Anyway.' It is on a yellow Post-it on my bathroom mirror. It says: drink water anyway, brush teeth anyway, sunscreen anyway, walk Biscuit anyway, three things in the mirror anyway, twenty squats while the kettle boils anyway, one candle poured anyway, one kind text to one person anyway, dinner that is not cereal anyway.

I am going to tell you what's on the shelf in my bathroom and exactly how much it costs, because the entire skincare industry would prefer I not.

One bottle of cheap drugstore gentle cleanser. About six dollars. I use it morning and night. I do not use anything fancy because my skin does not want anything fancy. My skin wants to be left alone in a kind way.

One jar of plain moisturizer with SPF for the morning. About nine dollars at Target. I put it on every single day, even in February, even on the days I'm not leaving the house, because the sun comes through the kitchen window when I'm doing dishes and the sun does not care that I'm 'just inside today.'

Sundays used to wreck me. I would wake up with the whole week sitting on my chest like Biscuit when she has decided she is a lapdog. The fridge was a disaster. The laundry was a mountain. The calendar was a series of question marks.

Then I read a tiny blog post somewhere — I can't even find it now — about a twenty-minute reset, and I tried it on a whim one Sunday in April, and I have not skipped one since. I want to give it to you.

Twenty minutes. I set the timer on the microwave so it dings. I do these things, in this order, and nothing else.

Every Saturday morning at eight, no matter the weather, no matter the week, Megan and I play pickleball at the cracked old courts behind Cedar Falls Elementary. We have done this since February, which means we have now played pickleball in snow flurries, in mud, in a heat wave, and once in a drizzle so persistent we just kept playing because we had nothing left to lose.

Today we won both games against the retired guys, which I have decided is a sign from the universe.

But here is what I really want to tell you. The reason this matters is not the score and not even the exercise, although the exercise is real — my legs were jelly the first three weeks and now they're not. The reason it matters is that I show up. Every Saturday. Rain or shine or sleepy or grumpy or in a fight with Mark or behind on laundry. I put on my sneakers and I go.

Tonight, friends, Mark and I had a date. A real date. Without the kids. For under twelve dollars. I am writing this down before it slips into the blur of all our other Fridays because I need to remember it on the days when it feels like we will never get to be the people we used to be again.

Here is what happened. Joanne, our neighbor with the petunias and the pink bathrobe and the husband who passed last spring, has been telling me for months that she would 'just love' to have the kids over for what she calls 'grandma practice.' I have been politely refusing for months because, and you know how this goes, I felt guilty. Guilty for asking. Guilty for needing it. Guilty for being someone who had a perfectly good husband and still wanted three quiet hours with him.

Today I called her at noon and said yes. She nearly squealed.

There was a season of life — maybe a decade of it — when I told myself I would 'start working out' the moment I had a free hour. Friends, that hour never came. It never comes. Anyone waiting for the hour is in fact waiting for retirement.

So I gave up on the hour. I traded it in for the kettle. Specifically, the four to five minutes it takes for our old chrome kettle to boil on the back burner.

Here is the routine. I push the kettle on. I do twenty squats while the water heats — slow, deep, hands on the kitchen island for balance the first few. I do ten push-ups against the countertop, the kind that look small and feel surprisingly large in your shoulders. I do thirty seconds of marching in place lifting my knees high, looking, I am sure, completely ridiculous, while Biscuit watches with deep philosophical concern.

I want to tell you about a thing I started doing in front of the bathroom mirror, and I want you to promise me you will try it for one week. Just one. If it doesn't work for you, you can go back to whatever you were saying to yourself in the mirror before, although I bet none of us would say that thing out loud to a friend.

The rule is: three things, every morning, before makeup, before hair, before I have done anything to my face except splash cold water on it. Three things I like. Out loud.

Today my three were: my collarbones, my eyebrows (Dani trimmed them on the side a little, bless her), and my hands. I like my hands. They are small and capable and they have a little freckle on the left ring finger right where my wedding band sits. Mark calls it my 'extra ring.' I had never said out loud that I liked my hands. Saying it felt strange and then it felt good and then I almost cried, which is becoming a theme in this blog, I notice.

Okay. Deep breath. Today I want to tell you about Lucy's Little Light.

Six weeks ago, after I read a library book about small business and a YouTube video about soy wax, I melted my first batch of candles in a soup pot on the stove while Noah was napping. I poured them into little jars I bought from a restaurant supply place in Waterloo. I made a label on the free version of a design app at 11 p.m. with a glass of iced tea sweating onto the kitchen island.

The first one I gave to Megan. The second one I gave to my mom Diane when she drove over for Sunday lunch. The third one I lit on our bedside table and Mark said, 'Did you buy a fancy candle?' And I said, 'No, I made it,' and the way his eyebrows went up — friends, I lived off that look for a week.

On Sunday night, after the kids were asleep and Biscuit had stretched out in front of the dishwasher like a furry rug, Mark and I sat at the kitchen table with a calculator, a glass of cheap wine, and the last three months of bank statements. Romance is alive in Cedar Falls.

Here is what we learned: the grocery store was eating us alive. Not because we were buying steak. We almost never buy steak. Because we were going to the grocery store five and six times a week, every time grabbing 'just a couple of things,' every time leaving with seventy dollars of stuff we didn't sit down to plan.

So we made a plan. A grown-up, boring, perfect plan.

I have been cutting my own bangs with the kitchen scissors for the better part of three years. I would like to say I do it with skill. I do not. I do it with vibes and regret.

Megan finally lost patience with me on Saturday morning after pickleball. We were sitting on the bench in front of the courts, sweaty and pleased with ourselves because we had actually beaten the two retired guys who always cream us, and she looked at me and said, 'Lucy, I love you, but you are coming with me to Dani's on Wednesday and she's going to fix that situation on your forehead.'

Dani is the woman who does Megan's hair at the little salon above the bakery. Twelve dollars for a bang trim. Twelve. I have spent more than that on a single Target run by accident, on things I cannot now remember.

Big news, ladies: I am officially in training. There is a 5K in October, the Cedar Falls Harvest Run, the same one Megan does every year while I cheer from the curb with a thermos of cider. This year I signed up too. I clicked the button at midnight like a woman possessed and then immediately panicked.

I told Mark this morning over his coffee. He said, 'Okay babe,' the way he says 'Okay babe' when I tell him we need a new vacuum, which is to say with love and zero follow-up questions. That's fine. He'll see.

Day one of the app was a walking warm-up, then sixty seconds of jogging, then ninety seconds of walking, on and on. Sixty seconds, friends. Sixty. I have given longer pep talks to Noah about putting on socks. And yet — when that little chime went off in my earbuds and the cheerful British man said 'Begin running,' I almost cried.

I want to tell you about a tiny rebellion. It happened this morning, somewhere between Mark's truck pulling out of the driveway at five-thirty and Noah's first sleepy thump down the hall.

I locked the bathroom door. Just the bathroom. Just for five minutes. I drank a tall glass of water with half a lemon squeezed in it, I sat on the closed lid of the toilet like it was a velvet throne, and I opened the little robin-egg-blue journal Megan slipped into my birthday gift bag back in March. The first page was still blank. I have owned that journal for almost three months, friends, and I have written exactly zero words in it. Today I wrote four: I am still here.

That is the whole entry. I am still here. And then I sat there and felt how true it was. I am thirty-four. I am still here, in this little blue house on Sycamore Street, in Cedar Falls, with the wallpaper Mark and I keep meaning to peel off and a husband who works construction and a seven-year-old who draws horses on the backs of her math worksheets and a four-year-old who refuses to wear any shirt that isn't dinosaur-related. I am still here, and somewhere along the way I started saying sorry every time I tried to be here on purpose.