Even as I squeezed the paste onto my toothbrush, I could tell something was weird. It came out much quicker and thinner than usual, curling onto the bristles in a pleasing twirl — like frosting being piped onto the top of a cake. I’d rushed into the bathroom to both brush my teeth and throwRead more…
Friday Faves: What I’ve Read So Far in 2019
Can I read 30 books this year? One of my goals for this quickly passing new year is to read (or listen to) 30 books. Ambitious? Perhaps. But if you saw the stacks of books filling the nightstand next to my bed, you might be inclined to agree that I need to pick up myRead more…
Scary Things: How a picture and a threatening message scared our entire school.
My 16yo son came into my room after 11:00 Sunday night to wake me up and ask whether I heard about the potential shooter threat at his high school the next day. I’d gone to sleep about an hour earlier, in my new effort to get more sleep (and pretty much overhaul my entire lifeRead more…
Friday Faves: Mac & Cheese for a Crowd
I came downstairs a few weeks ago wearing maroon leggings, a black sweater and new trucker hat with our high school’s pirate logo, and my daughter looked me up and down and said, “Who ARE you?” She was having trouble finding her mother — the one who favors all-gray ensembles and rarely wears hats —Read more…
Football Mom
On Monday during my son’s junior varsity football game against the local Catholic school, he tackled a kid running with the ball who fell on top of his head and kind of knocked him silly. It was one of those situations where the game paused and all the players took a knee while my sonRead more…
Friday Faves: Get Organized
Greetings to all who haven’t had enough of me since the dawn of my Blogging Renaissance earlier this month. A few weeks ago — as summer wound down and it seemed my time running a beach share to 20-somethings looking for a place to escape the city’s heat and eat all my food, was just aboutRead more…
Pressing ‘Pause’ on Drinking
Last Friday night, my son’s high school football team won a nail biter of a game — with a touchdown in the last 10 seconds — and honestly, it was one of the most stressful nights of my life. It was one of those games that went back and forth, when at any moment eitherRead more…
Friday Faves: What to Watch
The Emmy’s are this Monday and you know what that means: all my TV viewing over the last year is finally going to pay off. Even though I haven’t read or written as much as I would have liked to, I’ll feel validates Monday night when I’ll have watched pretty much every show and nominatedRead more…
On Letting Your Kid Drive Half-Way Across the Country. Alone.
This spring, on the cusp of her 21st birthday, my younger daughter flew from New Jersey to Minneapolis, rented a U-Haul and stretched a little further west—driving a few hours into North Dakota. Then, over the course of the next four days, she worked her way back east, making her last stop along the coastRead more…
Friday Faves: What I Read This Summer
When my kids were young enough to come to the beach with me every day, but old enough to get themselves to the pool or spend the day trying to sell friendship bracelets up by the cabanas at our club, I’d squeeze in a lot of reading. I’d sit in a circle on the beachRead more…