Long Days, Short Years, Stiff Drinks

Christmas is rearranging half of your furniture and art to accommodate a tree and decorations that you will enjoy for 3 weeks. Christmas is cleaning out the playroom and bookshelves and closets to make room for more things to fill your playroom and bookshelves and (eventually) closets. Christmas is always having the radio tuned to that soft rock station you would never normally listen to that plays round the clock Christmas music, even though they are playing Last Christmas, Jimmy Eat World instead of the vastly superior George Michael rendition. Christmas is listening to three song singing decorations belting out different tunes at once repeatedly interspersed with the train noises of the toy train circling your tree because your three year old just can't get enough and can't hear you begging for mercy over the joyous sounds of the season. Christmas is fielding a barrage of questions regarding the logistics of execution, plausibility of this guy being real while, fo...

The calendar of our lives are marked not by dates or years but events. Events that lead our minds to organize the files of our existence into before and after. Before kids. After college. Before I met him. After I left him. Before the storm. After the split. Before cancer. After death. How can it be that two years have passed away since he did? And yet how can it only be two years? The passage of time when met with the enormity of loss can play such tricks. The before sometimes feeling painfully short and the after an endless expanse. But life, and time, marches steadily on despite our warped perceptions. And life is truly and magnificently good despite the fact that it must inevitably end. I love him. I miss him. In this exceptional after.

Let me start with the full disclaimer that I ADORE my children. They light up my life, amaze me (almost) every day with their capacity to learn, laugh, love, and live fully and I simply wouldn't want to be in this world without them. Obviously. That being said, they have some super annoying behaviors and habits that I could most definitely live without and in my observations of other people's offspring, these habits appear to be somewhat universal. These are things that make me roll my eyes, whisper not so nice things, and on the occasion, for fleeting but intense moments, question my decision to procreate. In no particular order, 7 habits of highly annoying children: 1. Answering the question "How was school today?" with a 15 minute monologue about the Five Days at Freddy's game you played at recess or yelling at me across the house to "Come quick!" like someone's hair is on fire only so you can corner me for approximately an eon yammering ...

A friend recently relayed a story to me about her 4 year old daughter and a dress code at the preschool she attends.  Girls are required to wear shorts underneath their skirts, which is no big deal if your child goes along with the policy. In my friend's case, however, her daughter wasn't on board and it made for a very trying and tiring ordeal getting ready on school days. Getting kids fed, dressed, and out the door with a healthy meal in hand is HARD work. Having to fight over a pair of shorts under an already perfectly reasonable garment is not a battle worth waging. In order to regain calm in their morning routine, the teacher and mother discussed the conflict and came to an agreement. Her daughter could skip the shorts so long as she wore long dresses or skirts. Problem solved, right? Technically speaking, yes, the problem was solved. But it points to a much larger underlying issue that needs more illumination.  Our culture has an unhealthy relationship wi...

As things have increasingly heated up over the last couple weeks, I've found myself overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with information, with emotions, with uncertainty.  At times I'm overwhelmed with disbelief and even anxiety.  But above all of these things, I'm totally and completely overwhelmed with negativity. And that is going stop.  Now. At the risk of coming across as too apathetic, I'll admit that I tend to live my life inside a comfortable and selectively clueless bubble.  My bubble is filled with family, friends, and community.  Inside of it I teach my children to be good people.  I partner with a man who makes me feel like we can move mountains together. I strive to be the best me I can possibly be. I make goals and work hard to achieve them.  I share myself openly with those I like, care about, and love.  Lately, though, my cozy little bubble feels at risk for popping.  And I'm not willing to let that happen. So I'm going to build...

I don't know what to say, except that it's Christmas and we're all in misery.  -Ellen Griswald Lately I’ve seen an article here or there making the case for a cozy little Christmas at home with just the immediate family gathered round.   And I totally get it. The absence of busy airports or crabby kids on a long car ride, the avoidance of days of packing to go and days unpacking to get resettled at home, the potential for sleepless nights with kiddos not tucked into their own beds, and a litany of other headache inducing drama that goes hand in hand with a Christmas that involves extended family.   Not having to deal with all that and more has big appeal.   But here’s the deal for me and mine.   Christmas just isn't Christmas without all that. We’ve committed to spending Christmas with our extended family as long as possible, even though it’s sometimes outrageously difficult.   Here’s why.   For us, part of what is fun about the holi...

Dear Reproductive System, It's been a long, exciting, and sometimes nail biting ride but like a teenager that's tapped into her second bottle of Boone's Farm, I'm sorry to say it's time to cut you off.  Before heading into surgery bright and early tomorrow morning, I wanted to take a minute to properly acknowledge your contributions.   To my ovaries, I want to say thank you for producing healthy, viable, single eggs each month with the precision of an expensive Swiss timepiece.  Two of those lucky eggs, thankfully 36 cycles apart, met up with some fantastic sperm friends and resulted in the finest baby boys a parent could dream to create.  And though you may continue dutifully to push those eggs out onto their yellow brick road to a new world, I'm afraid to say that henceforth, they will be met with a road block too perfectly engineered to subvert.   To my uterus, it's been an honor.  I felt merely a bystander as you grew to such astonishing ...