A few years ago I was having lunch with mom, when I recognized our server. She was about my age, and I couldn’t place her. She could have been a distant relation or someone I see every day in some other context. She gave us our bill, and I saw her signature in big balloon letters. […]
Family Farmer’s Market Fiasco
Saturday I woke the kids with an invitation to the farmer’s market and a bribe of donuts. Usually these Saturday morning trips are a date thing with Mike and me. We’re up before anyone else (pretty much any time before noon, so don’t be impressed) and heading downtown on bikes. On this morning, Mike had something else […]
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Baby Daddy and the Sitter Dog
This was the week for sugar babies at Colin’s school: when sixth graders manage a budget and haul around a five-pound sack of sugar as though it’s a real baby. Which meant last weekend was probably when other sixth-grader families collected their requisite five pound bags, wrapped them with decorative duct tape to help prevent […]
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Beer Girl, Wine State
(This could be called something more clever, like The Blog in Which I Out Myself as one of the few non-wine drinkers among moms, writers and social media mavens, but that’s one of those titles that’s going to mess with my SEO in ways I’d prefer not to). I know there is an etiquette to wine tasting, and […]
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The dog ate my homework
I couldn’t remember what I was saying. I turned to the screen, but there weren’t any words. bark, bark, bark-bark, bark I thought I’d had bullet points on this slide. Did I bring the wrong slides? bark-bark, bark I turned back to the group, I’d lost their attention. Some were staring at their phones. One […]
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The thrilling life of parents of teens
This weekend we took the kids to a symphony. It’s good for all of us to see a concert once in a while that isn’t either (a) in a school gym, or (b) accented by strobe lights. We’d seen this orchestra before. Not world famous, but they fill a nearly thousand-seat auditorium. They sponsor an […]
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Running is Stupid and Other True Things
The email came today, the one with the link to the race photos I will not be buying. Instead I’ll take the image I have in my head of me running. Thank you. There I am, all svelte and speedy, with my toned arms, and shorts that wouldn’t even think about bunching up in my […]
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If we’re lucky, there’ll also be bears
We’re going to be schlepping the family to Yellowstone this summer, and as you can probably guess, I’m just beside myself with ambivalence. It’s time, though. On average, about three out of four exchange students will ask to see Yellowstone, and we haven’t even taken our own kids to see this American family vacation icon. […]
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Musings and Mind Games: A Runner’s Race Day Countdown
Tomorrow is the Race to Robie Creek, the self-proclaimed toughest race in the northwest. It’s not so bad. We’ve done it. It’s actually quite a pleasant ascent through a rocky canyon, up a dirt road and over a mountain and back down to a little valley where nudists and tree-huggers and hillbillies live in harmony. True, […]
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Gwyneth and I have more in common than I thought
Last week, Hollywood icon and occasional social activist Gwyneth Paltrow took on Mario Batali’s #FoodBankNYCChallenge to live on a food stamp budget of $29 for one week. For me, this conjures an image of the statuesque starlet hauling her sustainably produced, fair trade, organic canvas shopping totes down to Whole Foods for nothing more than […]
