For years, I said the thing all busy parents say when we’re wading through the drama of raising humans – the feeding and cleaning, the last-minute science projects, and the after-school activities that swallow up evenings and whole weekends. On days when I felt outnumbered by kids, errands and messes, I’d mentally reassure myself with this one hopeful phrase: “When the kids are in college, I’ll have time to take care of myself.” And now here we are. All three kids in college. No one needs me to drive them somewhere, sign permission slips, or edit their college application essay. It’s time to do the thing I always said I’d do, right? I started small, which was hard for me […]

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If I didn’t have to share mental space with an inner 12-year-old, I would’ve already put on a pair of progressive glasses or bifocals and been done with it. That’s what most people my age do. Instead, I’m stubbornly rooted in defiance. When I was a 12-year-old girl trying not to look or feel as awkward as I was, I spent weeks learning how to put in, take out, and clean contact lenses. I worked to free my face from glasses and thought it would last forever. But then I turned 50. That’s when my inner child realized she now lives inside a nearsighted body that has somehow become farsighted, too. How is that even possible? The girl says this […]

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I’m not sure how it happened, but Tom and I raised three kids who love scary movies. It wasn’t genetic. These precious babies, who once watched cartoons while sipping juice boxes, grew into young adults who love to pile into a car together and go to a movie that would melt my face off and cause permanent insomnia. Why do they do this? What’s so fun about being scared? I just spent two decades trying to protect these people from terror, only to have them grow up and pay eleven bucks to be immersed in it while devouring Milk Duds. How does this happen? After some research, I think I’m beginning to understand. It turns out that fear is more […]

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I have a problem. And if the first step is admitting it, here goes: I’m a snooze abuser. If there’s a snooze to use, I’ll do it. Again and again. I’ve been abusing and snoozing for several decades. When I was a teenager, I had a waterbed (because it was the 80s) with a built-in shelf on the headboard. One year for my birthday, my parents gave me a Sony Dream Machine digital clock radio because they were sick of dragging my lazy butt out of bed. I loved the clock radio and placed it on the shelf above my pillow, dutifully setting the alarm every school night. And every school morning when that alarm went off, my arm shot […]

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When I get up in the morning, the first thing I do – before caffeine and hygiene – is trick the dog and cat. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But the attempt has become my morning ritual – an act of love and deception. Each night, I arrange the dog and cat’s food bowls and other tools of trickery on the kitchen counter so everything is ready for the morning. If your brain (like mine) wakes up later than your body, it’s helpful to dummy-proof the process so you can fall back on routine and muscle memory. Tom and I have reached that magical age where even our pets have their own pill organizers. I labeled them with the […]

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One of the many reasons we love food, other than survival and taste, is the way it intertwines and defines the progression of our lives. So, can you capture your life in five foods? Let’s find out. Crackers and Cool Whip in the 70s: At age 4, I didn’t know daycare, but I did know Mrs. Fischer, who watched me and her two grandkids during the day while our moms worked at the local bank. She fed us sauerkraut and kielbasa for lunch with apricot kolache for dessert, and she and her husband, Mr. Henry, taught us how to play dominos as soon as we could count. Their granddaughter, Stacey, was my very first friend. When Mrs. Fischer needed us […]

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Regardless of age or level of education, sometimes we think we know things only to find out we were wrong or knew only a fraction of the facts. That’s what happened last week when I discovered details about the human nose that blew my mind (and my nose). Since we’re at the beginning of cold and flu season, I’ll share a story that your nose knows, which perhaps you don’t. I owe this revelation to a writer named Sarah Zhang, who wrote an article for The Atlantic about a year ago titled “Everything I Thought I Knew About Nasal Congestion Is Wrong.” I was skeptical when I saw the headline because I didn’t think there was much to know about […]

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Have you heard the phrase “Mom Brain”? If you’ve been a pregnant woman or have been married or related to one, you’ve probably heard it, said it, or both. Most people use the phrase “Mom Brain” to explain why a pregnant woman or a new mom is scatterbrained, foggy or forgetful. No one uses the term to describe someone at the top of her game, which is why many moms don’t like it. But it turns out that having a mom brain is far more complex than we ever realized. This week I read an article on the University of California at Santa Barbara website about a recently published study documenting the “trajectory of brain changes” during pregnancy and the […]

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You know that little voice in your head that says you’ll do a certain thing when you have “more time”? Perhaps you should tell that voice to be careful what they wish for. Now that Tom and I are empty nesters, there’s no denying we have more time. We’re not shuttling kids to school, signing permission slips, or racing to Walmart at 10pm for a poster board project due tomorrow. Instead, we’re sending buckets of money to three colleges and hoping our undergrads become graduates one day. In the meantime, we’re finally going to get some things done around here. So, we made a list. (Technically, I made the list and wrote Tom’s name next to the stuff I don’t […]

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I thought empty nesting would be more peaceful. But as soon as the kids moved to college last month, a war broke out on the home front. The only “kid” left in the house is an opinionated Corgi with short legs and an ear-splitting bark. Lately, Cooper has decided that – in addition to the Amazon delivery guy – our frail, elderly cat is his mortal enemy, even though the two of them rarely come nose to nose. Percy the Cat prefers to spend her golden years in the sunroom at the back of the house, where she sprawls across shafts of light flooding through the windows. When she’s done sunbathing, she curls up in her bed for a marathon […]

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