February 12, 2023
Zoe and I had a great conversation about music in the car the other day. We were listening to a playlist I had put together for all-school assemblies, which is harder than it sounds because you have to find music that appeals to all ages of kids from four to eighteen. It’s a great playlist, though, and it’s Zoe’s default go-to when I make her choose (if she doesn’t feel like playing Taylor Swift, Tom Petty, or Joy Oladokun).
February 7, 2023
Members of the Family, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press, Friends, Fellow Citizens, I come before you today to report on the state of our union. Thank you for this opportunity.
January 29, 2023
Mostly because the outpouring of support from friends and family after my last post was overwhelming and lovely, so I want to be sure y’all know that I’m doing better. (And give you all credit, because all of your support has helped me in so many ways.)
January 19, 2023
I hit bottom, y’all. I sank down and settled into the muck and just stayed there. It was comfortable…for about five minutes. Then I got stuck.
October 15, 2022
A few weeks ago we watched NASA crash a spacecraft into a small asteroid named Dimorphos that is orbiting a larger asteroid. The best part was that it was on purpose. The project, appropriately named Double Asteroid Redirection Test or DART, is an attempt to secure knowledge and data should a “killer” asteroid ever be headed straight toward Earth. The idea is to change the trajectory of an asteroid, but to not hurt it in any way except for maybe leaving a weensy crater where the projectile—in this case a vending-maching sized craft—crashes. Sorry for the scar, Dimorphos.
August 20, 2022
My husband and I are competitive with each other, to say the least. We trash talk and we swagger when we win. I won’t play him in pool, ping pong, or pickleball, mainly because he has perfected the art of “putting a little English on it” and I have yet to crack the code on how to defend against that. He refuses to play Wii Fencing with me, intimidated by my “shock and awe” tactics which consist entirely of becoming the Tasmanian Devil from Looney Tunes cartoon lore. We’ve raced cars, go-carts, and remote-control vehicles. He out-runs me and I out-yoga him. He usually beats me on the mini-golf greens, but I’ve improved my game in the past few years and have won a few times. (Turns out that when I’ve had a few glasses before and during putt-putt, I stop caring, relax, and turn into Tiger Freakin’ Woods. Ironic, no?) Competition is an ongoing thing in our house. Our child has been drawn in, competing regularly with her father in rock-paper-scissors with the defeated having to hear “You went down in a blaze of glory” upon their loss. Because RPS, as we all know, is absolutely filled with glory.
August 16, 2022
This is the first day of the last year of my 40s and one of my birthday gifts is being given time to write. Which is great because that doesn’t always happen but which I also suspect was given with ulterior motives: Zoe has homework and M wanted to leisurely peruse eBay in search of vintage beer lights for the bar. Well, no gift is selfless, so I shall take this in the spirit with which it was intended.
July 26, 2022
Things you learn when your sump pump dies during an epic, 500-year rainfall:
July 12, 2022
Instructions for a Colonoscopy, Translated for the Rest of Us
February 4, 2022
The forecast was looking super nasty on Tuesday and we thought there was a decent chance we’d be snowed in Wednesday and Thursday, and possibly even Friday. Still at work, I realized that although we had plenty of food from my shopping trip the weekend before (my type-A meal planning routine was paying off), we didn’t have enough bread for sandwiches. This might be a problem since now all three of us were going to be lunching at home. Zoe and I had also attacked the bagels pretty hard and our sleeve of six was already down to two. Okay, bread and bagels. The bread might be a little hard to come by on a last-minute trip to the grocery store with a snow storm looming, but I was confident I could score some bagels. I drove straight from work to the grocery store, along with the rest of St. Louis.