The search for an ideal life.
I think I’ve always looked pretty young. When I was 19, I went to a movie with a younger friend and the theater employee asked if she was my mom. Everyone always insisted that I’d appreciate this when I was older, which infuriated me at the time. Yeah, everyone’s infantilizing you NOW, but just imagine …
A friend tagged me recently in one of those “25 Random Things About Me” lists on Facebook, and I thought it could make a fun writing exercise. I feel like I’ve been experiencing a bit of writer’s block ever since I caught Covid in October. For a few weeks, it was a full-on brain fog …
Well, we made it through January! Happy February, baby! Here’s how my personal goal of embracing winter has been going: The first few weeks of January were really chore- and errand-heavy. Dentist, eye doctor, take down Christmas decorations, and general day-to-day life maintenance stuff. So, I made the decision that “THIS WEEK WE ARE REALLY …
“One berry / Two berry / Pick me a blueberry.” —Jamberry, Bruce Degen A couple of weeks ago, our grocery store was having a sale on giant containers of blueberries. Thanks to frequent readings of kids’ books like Blueberries for Sal and Jamberry, I have berries on the brain anyway. I was excited because (1) …
I’ve never really been a winter person. As a kid, the lights, magic, and sweets of the holidays all seemed to take the chill out of the air. I devoured every soup commercial and very special Christmas episode of Touched by an Angel featuring Randy Travis as if they alone held the key to Yuletide …
Well, here we are at the end of the year again! New Year’s Eve can honestly be kind of a letdown. For many, it marks the end of the holiday season and the beginning of a dark, joyless winter when you’ve resolved to join a gym. You want this last hurrah to go so well! …
“I Will Buy You a New Life” by Everclear came on the 90s radio station in our car this afternoon. I remember listening to that song as a teenager, during the summer at my grandmother’s house in Minnesota. There was one of those giant, old antique cabinet radios in one of the bedrooms there. My …
Before our daughter was born nine weeks early, everything I knew about the neonatal intensive care unit was from an episode of Boy Meets World. Although “Boy” is one of my longtime comfort shows, the episode with Cory’s baby brother in the NICU is one I always avoided rewatching. Ugh, way too sad, I’d say …
“You know, I always thought it was very funny that losing your sense of smell was called anosmia. Anos-mia, you know, like schnoz-mia.” –J.D., Scrubs For most of my life, I had no sense of smell. The reason was a mystery until my 30s, when I was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition called Kallmann …
