“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.'” — Kurt Vonnegut Any minute now the door to my sons’ bedroom will swing open and the house will shift from calm…
I went swimming this morning. This might not sound like that big of a deal, but up until two weeks ago I hadn’t been in the water to swim laps for more than five years, fifteen years since the last time I had done anything even remotely close to something…
Little did I know, four years ago, when I sat in my friend Angie’s kitchen, this is what would happen. As I sat on a stool at her large kitchen island, and our kids flitted about making messes here and there, we chatted. We talked about kids and families. About…
The phone rang in our motel room around 9 a.m., startling us all. In 1987, motel room phones only rang if it was a wake-up call or a noise complaint. Unfortunately, it was neither. My mom answered the phone, sitting sideways on the bed next to the nightstand. She talked…
After my oldest son was born, I found it nearly impossible to leave the house. We lived in the city without on-site parking so just getting to the car was a bit of a hassle. Then there was the issue of lugging a heavy car seat. And what if he…
January has been a long slog of a month. If there is one word that comes to mind when I think of the past four weeks, it is BLEH. This time of year I tend to fall into a pit of gloom. I feel edgy and irritable. Lethargic and lazy.…