Pen and Moon

musings, life lessons & poetry from Theresa Jarosz Alberti

To Duluth With Dante

July 2, 2023 / / 2 Comments

This week I did a quick overnight trip with my son Dante (28) up north to Duluth, Minnesota, a less-than 3-hour drive from Minneapolis.  I’d been wanting to take him there since he doesn’t remember Duluth at all, even though we’d been there as a family when he was growing up. I had some hotel points to use up, we could just leave the cat easily overnight, and a quick trip fit my still-unemployed budget. So, throw some items in a bag and off to Duluth!

One cool thing about Duluth is that you can drive 150 miles and really feel like you are Someplace Else. Its main feature is that it is a port city on Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area. Duluth is bordered by bluffs with the lake and port below, so there are many spots to get breathtaking and expansive scenic views. The lake is a powerful presence of nature that permeates the city. Duluth is dramatic and peaceful at the same time, which makes it a favorite destination of many. Continue reading

Bathroom Remodel – Before and After!

June 15, 2023 / / 0 Comments

It’s done! I’m excited that I can now share with you the process and results of my bathroom remodel, and more about the repairs and remodeling that were done on the rest of the house. I always love looking at other people’s remodeling photos and hearing how the experience went, so I hope you’ll enjoy this dive into how mine turned out.

This was the third big remodeling project that I’ve been through in my 32 years in this house. The first (in 1997) was to chop off the back of the house and do a 3-story addition including a much larger kitchen, giving us the space we’d need to live as a family of 5 in a small house. The second (in 2006) was mainly finishing the attic space into a bedroom and bath, giving us a second bathroom in the house (yay!).

This current remodel project encompassed a lot of bits and pieces to improve the house, repairing things that weren’t working, replacing parts that were rundown, taking care of long overdue tasks that needed maintenance. The work was done by Wonderwoman Construction, a wonderful woman-owned company that had also done the previous attic and bathroom remodel. I’ll get into more of the nitty-gritty about the full project below.  But first, a few Before bathroom photos. Continue reading

Poetry Challenge Day 15: “Earth Day Sonnet”

April 15, 2023 / / 2 Comments

One of the prompts this week was to write a sonnet. I haven’t written one since I can’t remember when, so I wanted to give it a try. Writing structured poetry to a form is kind of like a puzzle, trying to make the lines and the rhymes work out. The sonnet form has 14 lines with 10 syllables per line. The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG (each letter being a particular rhyme). Here’s what I came up with.

Earth Day Sonnet

You’re looking rather peaked, my dear Earth.
Has our party been getting out of hand?
Thanks for hosting our rave of endless mirth,
despite our dancing heating up your land.

We appreciate the resources you share.
You’re huge, you have so much to give!
Your fossil fuels, plants and animals, the air,
water, soil, and food we need to live.

Oh, your ice caps melt and weather’s getting crazy?
Oh darn, but don’t ask us to change our ways.
It’s fine right now, and the future’s just too hazy.
Surely there’s time to fix it all someday.

Hopefully we’ll soon get past our deep delusions,
to heal you, dear Earth, with creative solutions!

Photos  by Nikola Jovanovic and Melissa Askew of Unsplash.com. Art by me.

Poetry Challenge Day 12: “Not Too Late”

April 12, 2023 / / 2 Comments

No poem yesterday. In an attempt to slay my own perfectionistic tendencies, I’ve decided to relax my goal of doing a poem a day, if a particular day doesn’t work out. To be honest, my drive to be accountable makes me cringe and feel anxious at the idea of NOT achieving the goal I publicly committed to, and yet when I finally let myself off the hook, I was able to relax. So this is progress for me! I still want to try to write a poem a day this month, but if it doesn’t work out, I’m not going to beat myself up.

That said, today’s poem is actually one I wrote in the poetry challenge of 2018. It has recently been popping its head up and I’ve had a few people express interest in hearing it. So I will post it here– it’s a message that I myself need to be reminded of again and again. I hope it may be helpful to others too.

Not Too Late

Continue reading

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