Author Archives: gmayeaux

Today, I’m canning with a friend. On the menu? Salsa, dilly beans, peach freezer jam and just possibly dill pickles. Not too shabby. Due to a low-tomato crop this year, I haven’t had the near-daily process of “squeezing and freezing” tomatoes from the garden. That meant… gulp… a trip to the farm market to (oh,Continue reading “Homesteadin’… yuppie style :)”

So, I am not already singing Christmas carols. And no, I’m not a parent looking ahead on the calendar to the start of the school year. Instead, I’m late summer-into-fall’s biggest fan. Yep. This is just the most wonderful time of the year. Normally around this time, I have a big cushion of hours soContinue reading “The most wonderful time of the year!”

One thing to know when you decide to head to the rural “beyond” for a quieter life: the roads have potholes. Seriously. This isn’t a metaphor. There is a reason we drive slow and weave all over the road. No, we’re not desperately trying to search for a cell signal so we can call civilizationContinue reading “My barely paved road.”

I’m all about girl power. I was a CEO and a darned good one at that. I financed my own lifestyle, including buying my own house and all of my renovations to that house. I planned and took fabulous vacations while a single girl and I knew that if I never found “the one” thatContinue reading “The myth of “girl power””

It’s been a summer of graduations and weddings. And now, perhaps the greatest celebration of all: my niece and her husband are coming home. There is just something about the late summer months and the idea of family returning home that is incredibly affirming to me. A year ago at this time, we were dealingContinue reading “Coming home.”

Over two years ago when I started this blog, I wanted to catalog my life as I learned to be the new me – a woman who stepped away from a very demanding professional life to instead live out a women’s fiction novel: happy working part-time at a cool job with a great husband, aContinue reading “Back from the beyond…”

The New York Times had an article today describing the macroeconomics of quiet quitting. It’s point: it may be a somewhat unstoppable train but that it will hurt our economy overall and the general tone was that quiet quitters were hurting all of us. However, somehow buried within this message was a simple fact: withContinue reading “Why I quietly quit.”

Last night we had a frost advisory. Now, with half of a crop still out in the garden, frost advisories usually trigger a scramble to harvest what we can and cover the rest. Last night? Honestly, we were way too tired after an evening of taking care of grass and leaves that we rolled theContinue reading “The lights from the windows…”

I read a title of a NY Times column today about “not wanting an extraordinary life”. I was scrolling, so I can confess to not reading the column, but the title resonated with me. I, too, don’t want an extraordinary life. Instead, I want an uncommon one. Let me explain the difference. An extraordinary life,Continue reading “An Uncommon Life”

Today, I hit the brakes. A plan that started last December, went into “official” impact in July (but I didn’t get the benefit of it) is now complete. I am part-time, both in my heart and soul and on payroll. There’s been a lead up going on around here. I could feel it happening asContinue reading “No longer pretending…”