My mother-in-law loves telling the story of "Jocelyn and the Moth." The story goes a little like this... One crisp autumn morning in 2011, our small family of three combined forces with my husband's family of four. The seven of us piled snugly into the Ford Explorer and set off on a grand leaf-peeping adventure. My brothers-in-law--both Mark and Neal--were crammed into the back. Billy and I sandwiched our little guy's carseat in the center. Julie sat shotgun. Bill drove. (This was before he lost his fight with ALS in 2013.) Given that this was early October, the leaves had yet to reach...

We live in this ass-backwards society where its perfectly acceptable to blame inanimate objects for the actions of stupid people. For instance: Guns shoot people. Spoons make people fat. Pencils misspell words. Cars drive drunk. And now, this one--this is an instant classic--historic mills throw themselves into the road and impale speeding cars. I mean, seriously? Somebody had better flatten those damned mills before someone else gets hurt. As a matter of fact, I know of a couple trees that are repeat offenders and must be chopped down before they kill again. Just the other night, I was driving...

Summer is gone, but she went out kicking and screaming. These past few weeks were downright brutal. The earth was baked solid--concealing the good signals and testing my patience for digging plugs. Also, I might be taking this one a bit too personal... but I'm pretty sure the sun tried to kill me last week. I've never sweated so much in my life. There was sweat beading on my nose and dripping into my eyes. By the end of the dig, my makeup had nearly melted off my face and all the flammable junk in my hair had almost ignited. In the end, all I had to show for my suffering was a few bobbles,...

It happened today. I was at church, watching my children skip across the rows of sanctuary chairs like circus acrobats--when a visitor posed the question, "You're that metal detecting girl, right?" I must have blushed ten shades of red. Had he been a regular at our church, I probably wouldn't have been so flattered--but he was just visiting for a baby dedication that morning. He recognized me from my blog! I asked if he metal detected--nope, he just followed my blog. Needless to say, this stranger made my day--perhaps even my month... dare I say year? This must qualify for celebrity status?...

A few days after I graduated first grade, my parents uprooted our entire family and moved us out West. I traded clam chowdAH for barbecue, rolling waves for endless plains, and soda for pop. The cultural whiplash took awhile to recover from, but once I realized ya'll was essentially the same as youz-guys--I got along just fine. While living in Kansas, I remember going on lots of fields trips--this was back before schools had to worry about all that liability. Heck, all you needed was a signed permission slip and you could feed tigers at the zoo or take an inflatable raft down some wicked...

Every now and then, you knock on a stranger's door hoping to obtain a permission and you get a surprising response--sometimes its a face full of front door, sometimes its a explosion of profanity, and sometimes its the business end of a twelve gauge and a strong verbal warning to skedaddle. Then, sometimes... its a tour of the one room school house, a complete history of the area, and free rein of the hundred-and-fifty acre property. Sometime last Fall, I turned down a country road in search of a rumored property. I snaked my way through the orchards, the cornfields, and the pastures of...

I talk to dead people. Now--hang on a second--before you call the loony bin and have me committed, you should hear me out... I talk to dead people, but the dead people don't always talk back. I mean, sometimes they do. Sometimes they give me a nudge in the right direction. Sometimes they whisper through a gust of wind. Sometimes they manifest as a crow perched in tree--constantly heckling and shouting commands. Granted, this is usually when I'm all by myself at some abandoned homestead--with no one to confirm the phenomena--but I assure you that I'm not making this stuff up. Yesterday was a horrible...

This weekend was epic--my husband hates when I use that word, but I would be robbing the experience if I used any lesser word. Allow me to begin with the story of Daniel Kaufman. Mr. Kaufman was an abolitionist icon--if you will--and those who supported slavery attempted to make an example of him in order to deter others from helping slaves find freedom. If your happen to drive through the quaint town of Boiling Springs, you will see a large brick home with a historical marker. The marker reads: "Daniel Kaufman: An Underground Railroad agent from 1835 to 1847, when he was sued by a Maryland...

The other evening, my husband and I took the munchkins to the park. A few kids were already scaling the playground equipment and digging around in the mulch. For the most part, the parents hovered nearby... but there are always exceptions. One parent dropped off his hellions and wandered across the soccer fields with his hands stuffed in his sweatshirt pockets--disappearing from view. There is nothing more infuriating than parents who abandon their misbehaving children at the playground for everyone else to deal with... especially, when those misbehaving children have a massive dump in their...

On Saturday, I had the privilege of introducing a friend and her teenage daughter to the hobby of metal detecting. Their passion was so refreshing. Not many people get excited for digging iron, but these two special ladies were over the moon when they dug up a square nail at eight inches--with screwdrivers nonetheless. In my experience, digging eight inches with a screwdriver to recover an iron something-or-other is commitment. Allow me to back up... this escapade was prompted when Liz requested a retreat from a personal hardship. And in my experience, there is no better distraction from an emotionally-draining...