- Publisher : All En Crafts LLC Press
- Language : English
- Print length : 297 pages
- Reading age : 12 +
- AvAilable Formats
- eBooj
Paper Cover
Hard Cover
Unstable Conditions
Domestic Forecasts and Animal Fronts
A Musings of The Sawdust Sage BookSome days arrive with warnings.
Most don’t.
Unstable Conditions is a collection of poetry, reflections, and observations about the weather systems we live inside—both literal and human. The shifting pressure of family life. Sudden storms of grief, humor, memory, and grace. The unexpected ways animals, children, and ordinary moments reveal truths adults sometimes overlook.
Across nearly three hundred pages, James Allen, writing as The Sawdust Sage™, turns his attention to Midwestern life, back roads, kitchens, animals, family, and conversations that seemed insignificant until someone stopped to notice them.
These pieces don’t chase spectacle. They look instead at what persists: routine, loyalty, absurdity, love, memory, and the thin line between having control and realizing you never really did.
The collection moves through domestic scenes and internal weather fronts—cats and toddlers, authority and instinct, exhaustion and wonder—with occasional black-and-white illustrations providing a pause between thoughts. A change in pressure. A moment to breathe.
This is a book for readers who find meaning in small moments, appreciate honesty and humor without unnecessary polish, and understand that stability is often temporary—and still worth tending.
Unstable Conditions doesn’t promise answers.
It offers attention. And sometimes, that’s enough to change the forecast.
The Origin of Unstable Conditions
The spark for Unstable Conditions came from a winter storm that apparently hadn’t read the forecast.
The predictions sounded serious. The actual weather didn’t come close to matching them. That disconnect got me thinking about forecasts in general—how much confidence we place in predictions, and how often life ignores them completely.
From there, the idea expanded beyond weather. Families have forecasts. Relationships have forecasts. Work, health, animals, children, and ordinary daily life all come with expectations about what is supposed to happen next. Then the pressure changes, something unexpected blows in, and suddenly the forecast isn’t worth much.
That became the organizing idea behind the collection: poems, reflections, humor, animals, family, and everyday observations gathered under the realization that conditions are always subject to change.
Sometimes all you can do is watch the sky, adjust accordingly, and see what actually arrives.