This morning, I woke up and I remembered I like to write. Maybe it was the journal my friend gave me yesterday. (Maybe, the journal was a hint.) Maybe it was reading a blog post my sister texted me in the night, that struck a chord. Whatever. This morning, I woke up and I remembered: Yeah. This is a thing I do. In June, I watched my daughter -- little Babygirl! almost six years old! -- slide off the side of a pontoon boat in the Pacific Ocean to swim with sea turtles. LittleMan screwed his courage to the sticking place and leapt from the deck. It never stops blowing my mind, that we ... [READ MORE]
The Ostrich
April 5, 2017 by Leave a Comment
Is it okay if I just hide in one of these for a while? One year ago this week, I sat next to my mother on a flight to London. We were both wearing Ostrich Pillows -- these lovely squishy turbans that double as eye-masks -- that she'd picked up at one of those hipster-y travel stores, along with wildly unstylish flat, stretchy slippers. Every time we made eye contact in we collapsed laughing at ourselves. Then the lights went down and she slept, which she can do -- seriously, anywhere -- and I watched about fifteen movies, paced the aisles, and cursed that the eye mask caused all my fake ... [READ MORE]
Oscar Night in Wine Country
February 27, 2017 by Leave a Comment
I'm lying all curled up in a bed in a Hilton in Santa Rosa. For the record, I've been lying in this bed for THREE HOURS. For the record, it's 9:36pm. It's been grand. I literally cannot remember the last time I spent THREE HOURS -- three reasonably day-lit, dinner-bath-and-bedtime-ish hours -- doing so much of absolutely nothing. Besides watching the Oscars! Drinking wine! And doing an experimental "energizing Korean face mask" that my beauty-guru girlfriend gave me for Christmas! I feel simultaneously giddy and terrible. Surely, somewhere in this world, there is laundry to ... [READ MORE]
Strange Places
January 23, 2017 by Leave a Comment
These are strange days. The rain has been endless, the news has been relentless, and the children have been so sick. Fevers and sniffles and that croaking cough that haunts our sleep. I spent all of last Wednesday night in the octopus-like grip of Babygirl as she hacked her way restlessly through the long, dark hours, the humidifier bubbling steam into the bottom bunk. I awoke after intermittent rest with a stiff neck and a child no closer to being healthy. We have been housebound, all of us together in this apartment high above the city, for what feels like weeks. I am grateful for our ... [READ MORE]
The Most Perfect Roller Coaster
August 1, 2016 by Leave a Comment
A funny thing has happened in the past couple of months that my husband and I are just beginning to wrap our heads around, in that way that you notice something but you're not sure it's real yet, and you don't want to get too excited or even name it lest it turn out to be a phantom or a fluke: Our kids seem to be becoming...friends. This quiet, joyful turn in their too-often-fraught sibling relationship coincides with another funny thing happening -- that I have very mixed feelings about -- and that is the fact that my Babygirl, my tiny dancer daughter born with the big smile and the Buddha ... [READ MORE]
The Only Grown-Up in the Room
July 11, 2016 by 1 Comment
Home. It's good to be home. Last week, after a glorious, extended July 4th weekend, I found myself standing in a hot, dry wind in the parking lot of an insurance office -- or possibly a bank, I'm honestly not sure -- in Travis, California. My heart was beating in my ears and every inch of me was sweating as I stared at our crumpled hatchback and (perhaps slightly hysterically) instructed the agitated children in the backseat to PLEASE AFTER EVERYTHING THAT HAS HAPPENED JUST STAY IN THE CAR. I was breathing hard, trying process all the thoughts and questions stacking up in my mind. In no ... [READ MORE]
Nature
June 3, 2016 by 1 Comment
LittleMan and I announced our arrival at Mother-Son Scout Weekend by nearly killing some people and damaging Boy Scout property. In a move that would elicit more than a few "Oh, that was YOU..." comments in the ensuing 24 hours, we (and by we I mean, ahem, A Scout is Helpful) lost control of the steel wagon we had used to haul our two bags up a bumpy hill from the fairgrounds to the campsite, sending it rocketing back down the hill, scattering 7-year-old boys and their already-kind-of-skeptical mothers in all directions before it hurtled into a creek bed about ten feet deep. As I ... [READ MORE]
