A few days ago we were eating at our local breakfast taco place when the Brooks & Dunn song “Neon Moon” (1991) came on and I remembered with a start, “Oh yeah, that’s right, I LOVE this song.” I tried to explain my brief flirtation with ’90s pop country music…

A few weeks ago and with absolutely no context, Beatrice (who goes by Apollo now) ran up to me and said, “I can’t believe you threw me into the pool!” “What are you talking about?” “I read it in your essay!” And so it begins. …

This year Halloween landed, for me, in the hiatus between (adult) vaccinations and new variants when I felt briefly okay-ish about going places, and so my sister and I went with our friend Lisa to a Halloween event billed as a “haunted cocktail soiree” in an old church, now event…

The very first thing I did when I found out I was pregnant with Thomas was google “triple bunk beds.” I did this even before I went downstairs to tell Zac, who was in the kitchen making pancakes for the four children we already had. …

Some time ago, I became allergic to everything. I’d always had a few mild allergies to a few foods, things like avocados and sunflower seeds, and I managed just fine (though Southern Californians are forever baffled by anyone who doesn’t eat avocado). Then the food allergies began to grow, in…

There’s been a lot of talk in the last week or two about whether or not there will be a Halloween this year. Of course there will be a Halloween! Twitter user pennysnark said it best:

Last week, after months of sadness and worry, I got a promotional email from the Spirit Halloween store and instantly I felt glad to be alive. As in, I literally thought, verbatim, “I’m glad I am alive.” This week on Twitter there’s been a lot of talk about what Halloween…

I started this letter on March 4 and just reopened it again. The original letter began: “Yesterday was an election day. I woke up early to go stand in front of the elementary school with some other parents and wave signs that read Yes on Measure I (a local school…

This week the most extraordinary thing happened. Beatrice was studying for a geography test, filling in a blank map of the United States, and her dad sent me a video of her memorizing all the states’ names and locations by reciting a long, convoluted mnemonic device that included lines like…