Every year I buy four hanging ferns for my front porch and every year I kill them before the summer ends. I just don’t have the patience it takes to help them grow in a less-than-ideal environment. This year was no different… I bought them way too early and a late-April snow storm had them shriveled to near death within days of them coming to live at Chez Adams.

Ever have one of those friends that just knows everything? Not one of those know-it-alls that claims to know everything, but a girlfriend that is so well-read that she has a little something about just about anything tucked in that big, beautiful mind of hers? A girlfriend that is, say, a co-host of your podcast and, when interviewing a guest who was a one-time President of the Michigourders, starts asking her questions about Incan gourds because, OF COURSE, she knows about Incan gourds?

A few times a week I’ll pose a different question in the SheHive Facebook group to get the conversation going. The questions are always crafted with the intention of being a bit disruptive… to shake women out of their everyday thoughts - even if just for a moment - so that they can take a breather and ponder something that, I hope, is important to them.
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A while ago I asked the question, “What topic could you talk about passionately for 17 1/2 minutes with preparing?” The responses starting pouring in - Chinese medicine, African American history, finding your inner Magic, why we need more women in the film industry, board game design... It went on and on and on.

One of my favorite things in life is a road trip with the Mister. I love discovering new things – new landscapes, new people, new cultures. I love the freedom of being temporarily off the grid and not beholden to strings of urgent emails and phone calls. I love the “just two of us time” – being the center of each other’s universe for a thousand miles.

It all started a few years ago when I decided that 2018 was going to be MY YEAR. I Googled “things I should do every day,” compiled a list of everything that was mentioned in the articles that showed up on the first page of the search results, and made a plan to randomly try a different, new activity every week. 

The intention was to find out what would stick and help me become a better me. I even started a side project - a blog called Fluff the Cushions - to track and share my progress. It was named for what I believed to be the most inane of all the suggested "shoulds" - I should fluff my couch cushions every day.