Perfectly Useless Concentration

Travel. Family. Health. Writing. Photography.
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With photos from Adrian Collins Photography
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    To Josefine on Your First Birthday

    To Josefine on Your First Birthday

    One year ago right now, you were still inside me. A machine spat pages to my left—my heartbeat and yours, jagged mountain ranges side by...
    Namesake

    Namesake

    Last night, on the eve of the 10-year anniversary of Nanny's passing, my daughter recognized her name for the first time. We were lying...
    36 Weeks: What I've Learned About You, What I've Learned About Me

    36 Weeks: What I've Learned About You, What I've Learned About Me

    Photo by Adrian Collins Photography Early on, when mornings were still surreal with the idea of you inside me--when you were the size of...
    Pregnancy Plan

    Pregnancy Plan

    The first time I heard the phrase "birth plan," I had no idea what it meant. Then I found out, and honestly, I thought it was silly--the...
    Fifteen Weeks

    Fifteen Weeks

    Fifteen weeks. I'm 15 weeks pregnant. Every morning in bed, I curve my palms around the little hard globe of my lower belly. Good...
    How to Perform a Resurrection

    How to Perform a Resurrection

    Every year on September 6, I make tortillas. And every year, they're wrong in a slightly different way. The first year, they were as hard...
    On Charlie's First Birthday

    On Charlie's First Birthday

    Dear Charlie, The night before you were born, I woke up every two hours to check my phone for a text message from your mom. She’d been...
    PCOS and Infertility: What My Doctor Didn't Tell Me--And What I'm Doing About It

    PCOS and Infertility: What My Doctor Didn't Tell Me--And What I'm Doing About It

    Photo by Adrian Collins Photography When I made a "Health" category for this blog, I sort of hoped I wouldn't have so much to say. But...
    Biopsy

    Biopsy

    As a birthday gift, my mom wanted to take me shopping. So we were in the Nordstrom shoe department and I had one leg deep in a black...
    Eight Years Gone: Dancing With a Limp

    Eight Years Gone: Dancing With a Limp

    “You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get...
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