Category Archives: Love and Other Drugs

November 3, 2026 · 12:18 pm

There is a Season…For Every Quirk

When it comes to nature and the great outdoors, I have some idiosyncrasies. Quirks, you might call them—multitudes of peculiarities for every season under the sun. I have no way of knowing how many of these I share with all of mankind, but I’d bet some of them are not unique to me.

For starters, I can’t go for an autumn walk without stepping on the crisp leaves that have fallen in the street. I can’t begin to express how satisfying I find the corresponding crunch beneath my feet. It’s a rule—I have to crush them, sometimes great bunches of them all at once. Of course, it’s equally satisfying to kick piles of leaves as I walk or to watch children do the same. Likewise, I can’t resist a falling leaf without trying to catch it midair, taking me back to my youth and many a sundrenched afternoon spent chasing them with my brother. What’s more, I feel compelled to rescue woolly bear caterpillars from the middle of the street, transporting them to a grassy or woodsy area where they can continue their wanderings.

Similarly, I like to catch fireflies at dusk for as much of summer as humanly possible, and listen to the chorus of crickets and peepers as night falls, awaiting the magic when stars begin to emerge in the east. I’m fascinated by dragonflies, too, as they skim the surface of a pool or a pond with expert precision, their iridescent wings gleaming in the sun. And as trips to the beach go, I can’t possibly refrain from walking barefoot in the sand and surf. Nor can I pass by an opportunity to build a sandcastle or gather seashells by the bushel. To me, collecting seashells is one way to bring a bit of the gritty sand and briny scent of the ocean home—not to mention countless memories.

Winter is no different with respect to my oddities. I have to catch snowflakes on my tongue, and taste the earthy, almost dirt-like flavor of a handful of snow as a general rule. Naturally, I have to build snowmen, too—even if they’re miniature and somewhat misshapen. I try to situate them somewhere near a window, so I can watch them melt in the spring. I say, you’re never too old to build a snowman. It’s a project worthy of anyone’s time. On that note, I’m also especially fond of feeling the warmth of the sun in mid-January, and I only recently learned there’s a term for it—apricity. It gives one hope in the dead of winter that spring will eventually arrive, along with its warmth. Never mind the biting cold air during those endless months. Besides, there’s something truly exhilarating about filling one’s lungs with it—especially on a crisp, blue-sky day, surrounded by snow and its blinding white light. Those are some of the best days to soak in what winter has to offer, in my opinion.

No matter the season, I am always captivated by the moon, in all its various phases; but I am especially transfixed by a full moon on the rise—massive and gloriously yellow. Even in the wee hours if I happen to awaken and notice the room bathed in moonlight, I feel compelled to go to a window and gaze at its striking beauty. In fact, I’ve been known to text people GO LOOK AT THE MOON, even if they don’t share my unbridled enthusiasm for it. Just ask my kids.

Furthermore, I find it virtually impossible to pass a white pine tree without reaching out to feel the incredibly soft needles or breathe in the sweet, citrusy scent. Likewise, I can’t resist touching my favorite tiny pine cone on the hemlock in our backyard every time I pass near it. Yes, I have a favorite pine cone. And it has become a ritual to find it hiding within the branches and gently boop it as if it were a dog’s nose.

Likewise, if a red-tailed hawk circles above me or a flock of Canada geese happens to pass overhead, honking emphatically, I have to stop whatever I’m doing, crane my neck and watch. Naturally, I must point out such things to anyone nearby as well. It’s a rule.

The older I get, the less embarrassed I am about my quirks, especially the ones related to nature. Instead, I try to embrace them, throughout every season under the sun.

Welcome to my world. It’s where I live (listening for Canada geese). Visit me there at www.facebook.com/NotesFromPlanetMom. Signed books are available on Etsy at PlanetMomMarket.

Refrigerator Art

Our refrigerator used to be the hub of our home, mainly because it was covered with photos that depicted almost every milestone or significant event in our lives as a family—to include preschool graduation, Halloween costumes, photo booth fun, birthday parties, family vacations as well as a snapshot or two of an ordinary Tuesday here at home. Of course, in those days there was also a giant calendar wedged between the photos upon which we had scrawled important upcoming dates and phone numbers. By contrast, I keep practically everything in my smartphone calendar and contact list now. No need to hang a ridiculously large master schedule smack in the middle of the fridge anymore.

At any rate, we remodeled our kitchen and replaced our old fridge with a stainless steel one a number of years ago. So I boxed up the wealth of photos and kids’ artwork and put them somewhere safe, although I can’t recall where just now. For longer than I’d care to admit, I pined for the antiquated fridge with its canvas of snapshots and magnets inscribed with favorite quotes, often finding myself standing in front of it, reminiscing over times when my children were small.

In all honesty, it took more restraint than I had imagined to refrain from plastering the entire surface of that new fridge with an embarrassment of photos once again. Self-imposed restraint, I might add. I don’t think my husband, or the kids for that matter, really had an opinion about how pristine (or not) the new fridge looked. They probably would’ve been fine had I festooned it from top to bottom and on three sides once more. But I didn’t. However, I couldn’t completely kick the “refrigerator art” habit. I settled, instead, for designating just one side of the new fridge for photos and the like. As a result, the part of me that appreciates an unblemished, smudge-free surface that gleams in the morning sunlight is happy. Similarly, the part of me that reveres seeing the cherished photos and reading the inspirational messages on a handful of magnets is thrilled. It’s a win-win situation, I guess.

Not surprisingly, I chose photos of my favorite people and pets this time, too, although most of them are updated, more recent versions of the originals. There are favorite images of our twins caught in mid-performance in the marching band they so loved, some of them during their college years, some printouts of old holiday greeting cards we had made, some of my parents and mother-in-law who have since passed away, a dear church friend we also lost and even a picture of our old fridge—the one that was inundated with the trappings of life. I also added a smattering of pics (and even an ultrasound image) of our granddaughter, who is now eight.

I think the pics of the pets we’ve lost get to me the most. They pull at my heartstrings. Even though our curly-haired, pint-sized Bichon whizzed indiscriminately on the floor almost every day and our 95-lb. yellow lab “puppy” occasionally dragged us across the street because she wanted to eat other dogs, I still miss them. And our black lab mix, with the caramel-colored eyes that made me melt—he is missed, too, along with our black cat, Mr. Binx, once feral and eventually tamed. And I can’t forget our long-haired orange tabby, who was known for fetching things like a dog and for sleeping on whoever happened to be ill, to perhaps make them well again. Since the space on the new fridge is limited, I framed and hung pictures of nearly all of our pets in an adjacent room. The Pet Wall of Fame, if you will. Now I rekindle the abundance of memories I possess standing somewhere besides the kitchen when I want to revisit a time when they were all here. Of course, I’ve included images of our current cats who are alive and well in that room, too.

It’s a far cry from the coveted fridge space, I suppose, but it’ll have to do.

Welcome to my world. It’s where I live (probably admiring my refrigerator). Visit me there at www.facebook.com/NotesFromPlanetMom. Signed books are available on Etsy at PlanetMomMarket.

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Filed under Daily Chaos, Family Affair, Gratitude, Growing Pains, Home Improvement, In the Trenches of Parentville, Love and Other Drugs, motherhood, Mushy Stuff, Normal is Relative, Refrigerator Art, Welcome to My Disordered World

Tagged as family, family photos, growing pains, kids' art, life, love, memories, parenting, refrigerator, refrigerator magnets

September 15, 2026 · 12:50 pm

The Woods are Lovely, Dark and Deep

Sometimes a walk in the woods is something you didn’t even know you needed—until you take that walk. For me, at least, it’s a good way to reconnect with nature and with myself, more specifically, by hugging trees, admiring moss and touching a lot of bark. There’s something incredibly cleansing, almost healing, about spending time in the woods—both for physical and mental well-being. Forest bathing, or shinrin yoku, is a term coined by the Japanese to describe the practice of wandering through nature, trees in particular, in order to reap a host of benefits. And apparently, there is some promising science behind that statement. As reported by the Cleveland Clinic, trees release tiny particles called phytoncides and when people inhale them, immunity is boosted. Cortisol, a stress hormone, is also reduced along with depression. So aside from the possibility of tick bites or a sprained ankle, a walk in the woods is thought to be good for you.

In my mind, it’s also a surefire way to fill one’s tank, so to speak—a way to escape the noise and chaos of civilization in order to drink in the calm and stillness of nature. A week or so ago, my husband surprised me with a trip to accomplish just that. Cook Forest State Park is an 8,500-acre expanse of old-growth trees and recreational facilities for hiking, canoeing, camping and cross-country skiing located in remote northwestern Pennsylvania along the Clarion River. As a many-decade resident of the state, I can’t believe I’ve never visited this extraordinary wonder of nature, until now.

To say that we enjoyed our excursion through the innumerable stands of white pine and hemlock is an understatement. The scent alone was intoxicating, not to mention gazing up at the canopy of leaves and needles far above—the sky barely visible, completely enveloped by the forest. A carpet of ferns stretched out before us in a blaze of green while countless trees that had fallen lay throughout the woods in varying states of decay. Like a great shroud above us, foliage blocked a good bit of sunlight as soon as we stepped foot on the trail, our skin noticeably cooler as we hiked deeper and deeper into the forest. Everywhere we placed our feet, rocks and roots greeted us, but thankfully, no snakes or poison ivy.

Well into our journey along the path (that was not especially well-marked), it was as if we had been swallowed by the very essence of density, surrounded by trees hundreds of years old—wonderfully disoriented, soaking in the eerie stillness, alone together with our thoughts. The quiet was what I found most striking of all, aside from birds calling to one another and chipmunks scurrying about in the thick underbrush, it was dead silent. No traffic. No lawnmowers. Not even a plane overhead could be perceived. But I swear I could hear my heartbeat.

Naturally, I turned around a number of times realizing just how easy it would be to become lost since I had long ago forgotten from which direction we had originated. We chuckled about that, and the notion that we had yet to see a bear. So, we kept moving forward, but in the back of our minds thought it best not to stray from the trail and pray that we get out long before dark, as the lingering shafts of afternoon sunlight served as a reminder of how long we had been there. And because the gods were smiling upon us, we did get out, but not before we heard the distant rumble of thunder along with soft taps of rain, which I found strangely comforting, cloaked by the forest all around.

Robert Frost was right. “The woods are lovely, dark and deep.”

Welcome to my world. It’s where I live (recalling my respite, deep in the woods of Cook Forest). Visit me there at www.facebook.com/NotesFromPlanetMom. Signed books are available on Etsy at PlanetMomMarket.

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Filed under A Tree is Nice, Endless Summer, Gratitude, Love and Other Drugs, Lovers of All Things Rockish, Unplugged

Tagged as beauty, Cook Forest State Park, forest, hiking, nature, Robert Frost, stillness, The Forest for the Trees, trees, walk in the woods, wellness, woods

July 7, 2026 · 12:22 pm

Thunderstruck

Apparently, I am a ceraunophile—a lover of thunderstorms. The term is derived from the Greek word keraunos, or “thunderbolt” and the word -phile, which means fondness. It’s a good thing my husband discovered the term lest I go through life not knowing this interesting tidbit of information.

It’s not a new development for me. I’ve always loved thunderstorms, even as a kid. I remember many a summer sitting with my dad, a fellow ceraunophile, for the duration of an untold number of storms, safe beneath our carport in scratchy lawn chairs. There was something special about the time we spent there, together sharing our fascination with one of nature’s most extraordinary events, talking about everything or instead becoming still and allowing the rumbles of thunder to shake us to our core and to swallow our conversations whole. Most of the time the thunder was our cue to get out of the pool and head for shelter, wrapping ourselves from head to toe in beach towels, the air heavy and humid. Those moments live in my memory even still.

Things haven’t changed much; I continue to be infatuated with summer storms, especially just before the rain hits—when the winds shift and swell, the trees sway with indescribable ferocity and the air fills with an electric energy that seems almost tangible. There’s something exhilarating about watching the skies grow dark and hearing a low rumble in the distance. Even the birds know something’s about to happen as they retreat to their nests and suddenly go silent.

I look to the clouds as they gather en masse, now steely gray or blue-black, in anticipation of the coming crescendo—when bolts light up the sky, thunderheads crash and torrents of rain pelt the parched earth. It’s such a moving experience and, to me, the smell and sound of the rain beating against the hot pavement is positively intoxicating. Never mind how comforting hard rain on the roof and rolling thunder sound in the wee hours of the night.

I’m pretty sure my kids have inherited my penchant for thunderstorms too, although when they were small, they were frightened by the deafening cracks and low rumbles that shook the house. We huddled together, as I remember, reading books on the couch in lieu of watching TV since we usually lost power if the storm was especially damaging. The dogs cowered, desperately searching for a place to hunker down in order to escape the rolling thunder that seemed to envelop us all. I’ll never forget one of the cats hiding behind our washing machine for the duration of one storm—a place I never once considered a refuge before.

At any rate, I am intrigued by an approaching storm, as the leaves of nearby trees show their undersides—especially the silver maples. Apparently, it has something to do with increasing humidity. And the more the wind intensifies, the more noticeable the silvery backsides of the leaves become, almost as if the trees are signaling a warning. And somehow the green colors deepen to an even greener hue during downpours (or maybe that’s just my imagination) as I watch the leaves drip onto the thirsty ground below.

What follows the storm is almost as satisfying to witness, as the clouds break and the sun finally reappears. The air has a newness about it, as the steam rises from asphalt, concrete and grassy spaces, warm puddles all around—so inviting to bare feet. The heat returns with a vengeance as the searing sun beats down upon the land.

Even still, a distant rumble of thunder can be heard, which makes my heart happy.

Welcome to my world. It’s where I live (anxiously awaiting the next thunderstorm). Visit me there at www.melindawentzel.com. Signed books are available on Etsy at PlanetMomMarket.

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Filed under "N" is for Nostalgia, A Tree is Nice, Endless Summer, Gratitude, Love and Other Drugs, Unplugged

Tagged as clouds, love, nature, storms, summer, summer showers, thunder, thunderheads, thunderstorms, weather

June 16, 2026 · 12:00 pm

Good Grief

My parents’ estates have long since been settled, but over the years I’ve found that I’m still tethered to my past—not only because of the memories I hold dear, but because the tangible possessions I inherited help me connect to those memories in a very positive and concrete way. Perhaps a good type of grief, triggered by remembrance.

I can still envision just where the antique prints, mostly of children and their pets, were situated in our ranch-style house. I never thought much about the paintings growing up, but I now see why my mom was so drawn to children as subjects. She was a third-grade teacher for most of her career and, of course, loved kids. She had so many paintings that they were almost too numerous to count, let alone hang on available wall space. I sold the majority to an antique dealer in town, but kept a handful—my favorites—to place in my own home. I don’t think there’s a day that I refrain from noticing a new, small detail in the artwork, one that I somehow hadn’t before and I now understand what attracted her to each individual print.

Likewise, the furniture I received is special in so many ways. As I run my hands over the primitive oak, mahogany and yellow pine pieces I instantly return to my life growing up in my parents’ household. I remember which dishes were housed in which cabinets and kick myself for not keeping those, too. They were so pretty. At least I salvaged some of the earthy, old crocks and decorative trinkets, my parents’ dressers that were handmade by my great-grandfather and the tiny wooden cabinet I played with when I was a child—one that is inundated with a cache of vintage, metal dishes that my cousins (as well as my mother) played with, too. Moreover, I kept a pair of Adirondack chairs that we had gifted to my parents years ago—chairs that they lounged in as they watched the deer gather in their front yard on many a summer’s evening. Never mind that the paint is fading and the wood has seen better days.

And I can’t forget the massive hutch my mom picked up for me at an antique sale—the one that boasts four doors, five shelves and its original metal latches. Together we painted it on a sweltering summer day in the shade of our carport. She chose the color—a glorious shade of forest green that now complements my rustic kitchen décor. Who knew it would one day be wedged perfectly between our windows that overlook the front lawn?

What’s more, I can’t forget the cozy, faux leather chair my brother and I somehow crammed ourselves into—together with our dog—while watching entirely too much Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry. My husband and I had to have the chair reupholstered once it wore out because I just couldn’t part with such a tangible reminder of my past—especially since my brother is no longer here to reminisce with. A generous sampling of his décor now adorns my kitchen countertops and the aforementioned hutch, too, and I can’t help but recall how they once looked in his house. The wicker basket he used for incoming mail. The beautiful canisters of colorful pasta. The crock full of old wooden spoons he collected.

I think he’d be happy that I’ve placed them prominently.

And then there’s the car—my mom’s black BMW coupe. I loved that car and surmise that she loved it, too. I truly hated to part with it, but had to trade it in eventually because the Blue Book value kept inching downward with each passing year. I drove it for close to nine years, never once becoming involved in a fender bender, thankfully. Frankly, I don’t think I ever felt so comfortable behind the wheel (before or since). It just fit me as if it knew me—like it was cradling my body. It fit my mom apparently, too, which is probably why she kept it so long. I sometimes scroll through my photos to find her car—pictures I took just before I traded it in—in an effort to say goodbye, or hello, to Mom. I zoom in to the photos to remember the details, its sleek design, its undeniable beauty—and I smile.

Sometimes the grief we experience is the good kind of grief—remembering what was, (and as they say) smiling because it happened.

Welcome to my world. It’s where I live (probably smiling). Visit me there at www.facebook.com/NotesFromPlanetMom. Signed books are available on Etsy at PlanetMomMarket.