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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It has never happened before and will probably never happen again. But it happened once, and it was thrilling. Before I tell you what it was, let me preface this by saying that I’m one of those people who is easily delighted by the little things. An ice-cold Dr. Pepper. Clean sheets day. Three green lights in a row. And my kids grew up watching me celebrate when pulling into the ideal parking space. “Rock star parking!” I’d say as we pulled into a front-row spot at a busy store. But what happened two days ago feels like a fantasy unicorn experience. I drove my mom to see her oncologist in a city three hours away, where the traffic was […]

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Have you ever been grateful you’re not good at something? This year I decided it’s probably best that I’m terrible at selfies. Truly, absolutely awful. But I’m not anti-selfie. I love getting selfies from my college kids because it gives me a glimpse of them in their natural habitats. But when I turn that camera on my own face and then look at the resulting picture, I immediately cringe away, as if I’ve just seen a festering wound. Delete, delete, delete. I don’t have the smartphone skills of a Gen Z kid, so maybe I’m doing it wrong. Somehow, I always end up with crazy eyes and bad angles. My arm isn’t long enough to snap the picture at a […]

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Dear Empty Nesting Professionals, I need answers. Tom and I are new to being parents with no kids in the house, so I want insight from people who have lived through this transition and have stopped crying about it. Here’s the backstory: Last Friday morning, our 20-year-old brought his pillows down from his bedroom and stuffed them into the last remaining nook and cranny in his Mazda. He and his dad had spent the previous night loading his stuff into the car in what looked like an elaborate game of Tetris – moving one box here to slide in another one there and then stacking three more levels on top of it. When they finished, there was barely enough room […]

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There are less than 100 days until the election, which means the next three months will be filled with people yelling about politics on television, radio, and podcasts. There’ll be plenty of furious ALL CAPS typing on social media, too. The issues are important, but all the back-and-forth theatrics are exhausting. Most of us will need coping mechanisms to get through the next few months, and laughter should be at the top of the list. In the northern part of Japan called Yamagata, the local government passed an ordinance encouraging residents to laugh daily. The exact wording of the new rule says people should “make efforts to shape mental and physical health through means such as laughing once a day.” […]

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