Years ago, Alesia taught me about food menu trigger words. She described them as words on a menu that immediately jump out as something you’d order. One of her triggers is artichoke. My trigger words are descriptions that include lemon, apricot, cherry, pear, blue cheese and candied nuts. And fresh…
There’s nothing like moving back to the college town of your youth to make you feel old. Last week my fitness teacher put me through so many jumps that my legs literally buckled. I kind of keeled over on my knees as I reached for my non-existent life alert necklace. She’s…
James is always heckling me when I read my news feed in the evening. He believes it to be a source of endless chaos and negative emotions. I’m sure he’s right. But, I protest, “I’m a princess on a mountaintop! I must know what is happening out in the world!”…
The boys and I are home from our two week jaunt to Santa Cruz for a change of quarantine scenery, and the deceptively easy process of transfiguring zombies back into boys. This summer was supposed to be our very first week of overnight camp with cabins and campfires and crooning. …
Yesterday the boys and I drove up to Santa Cruz for a much needed change in scenery. Today marks four months since we went into lockdown and well, things don’t look to be turning around anytime soon. That said, we’re several weeks into the multi-week process of transitioning the zombies… back…
ish. On June eighth, the boys started soccer camp in Arroyo Grande. Our first taste of normalcy in months. The boys had turned pale after weeks spent mostly indoors. Possibly translucent. Honestly, Nate looked vaguely green. The boys had a great week of soccer. There were some aches and pains,…
On Monday of this week, June fifteenth, Day 94 of lockdown, we added a new crisis to the global-health-economic-meltdown-social-justice list: wildfire. That afternoon, I’m working in the barn, Jacob’s just finishing his last College for Kids class of the day, Nate’s at soccer camp in AG, and James is at…
It sounds crazy town when I say the boys don’t fight. With each other. I have never once heard my children call each other buttface, which is something my own mother could never claim. Now with us there is still plenty of sass, particularly Nate’s response to every request with the…
On Friday afternoon I got an email from UK International announcing there were still spots left in their Arroyo Grande Safe Soccer Camp. No marketing email in the history of marketing emails has ever proven such perfect attribution and immediate behavioral action. I started signing my children up for any…
Ever since the new lawn went in I’ve been basking. That basically looks like me stumbling out of the barn in the evening with the Zoom flu, and laying on the artificial grass, basking in the sun. During the first week Jacob caught a lizard and then lulled it into…