About

Kelly Reynolds-Stewart

Kelly has never been certain what she wants to be when she grows up.  Her mishmash of skills and abilities that can loosely be called talents, do not lend themselves obviously to one craft. Recently,  the looks that children give her and the letters the government sends her, cause her to think she may be a grown up. 

She completed a degree from the University of Michigan. One thing she is certain about – she loves science and the outdoors. So in the middle of her junior year when forced to finally,  declare a major she chose Resource Ecology and Management.  This lead to her first job sitting at a desk and writing things  about the environment for other people and waiting for squirrels to come to her office bird feeder.  She moved to Grand Rapids and spent time treading water in another ill-fitting position while waiting for something better.

Frustrated and disheartened when career and mothering seemed incompatible, she stopped doing things she didn’t like, for people she didn’t like, that had questionable motives and intellect.  She devoted herself full time to her offspring and their development into healthy, happy, responsible people. She spent the next ten years turning two larval men into independent beings.  She still wondered, though, what she is supposed to be when she grows up. 

In between mind numbing loads of laundry and carpool, she decided to study human nutrition which has always been of great interest to her.  As her kids got older and could do without her more and more, she returned to the gym which is another thing she has always been certain that she likes.

With her voracious curiosity, wicked case of ADHD and a tendency to question the motivations of authority; Kelly began to wonder if becoming a Registered Dietitian would also lead her to a desk job and waiting for squirrels at her window.   Maybe she needed to do something else too?  She decided to consider alternative pathways to helping people find pleasure in their own health and fitness.

Because five-year-old boys ask her for recipes and strangers talk to her at length over their grocery carts, she got the notion she should use all those writing skills that she honed during those long desk days, to write a little about heath and fitness.  Right now, that is as far as her plan goes. 

People around her are frustrated by her inability to stick to a path or a chosen course.  Frustrated that at 39 she doesn’t know what she is, or what she wants to be, she is deeply jealous of people that do.  Kelly has started to consider the possibility that maybe she isn’t supposed to ever arrive at anything, but is just supposed to try to get there.

Kelly recently loaded her kids, her fish, and a few cookbooks in a car and headed back to Ann Arbor.  First, she worked as a dietetic technician at a hospital and shuffled around a lot of breastmilk.  Finding the hours difficult with a family, she now she busies herself as a Spinning and group fitness instructor.  She also manages the paper and et cetera at a lovely little Pilates studio.

She is trying to get a handle on being a single working mother and all the rewards and frustrations that come with it.

Kelly loves to cook.  Her other hobbies and interests include gardening and entomology. Entomology because insects are beautifully, efficiently designed and know exactly what they are supposed to do and they do it.   She has a strange fascination with bad tattoos and awkward taxidermy.  She is trying to learn how to meditate and finds it excruciating.  She has recently resolved to be very brave.  She really likes licorice and banana Laffy Taffy.  She can kind of be a pain in the ass.

Kelly irregularly contributes to Exterminating Angel Press and some of her work, creative and informative or neither, can be found at http://www.exterminatingangel.com

She would appreciate it if you would send her pictures of really bad tattoos (food related are the absolute best) or taxidermy.  Stuff like that makes her giggle. She needs to giggle. Write her at   CondensedStew@gmail.com