It was 3 am and I was very much asleep when it happened. “Hey-low,” a woman said in a singsong-soft voice, her lips just inches from my ear. She said it quietly, the way my grandmother might once have gently woken me on a summer morning… but this voice definitely wasn’t my grandmother. “What?” I […]

First, there was ice. It poured from the sky, covering the streets of Nashville on Valentine’s Day evening. In ordinary times, this would have caused a whole lot of chaos and grumbling across the city about ruined date nights and cancelled reservations. But these are not ordinary times. Since there’s nothing romantic about dinner for […]

It’s my last visit to my parents’ home before they move and as usual, I’m staying in the rooms my grandmother occupied for a decade before her death in 2015. I was very close with my grandmother growing up and being among her things during our visits has definitely helped me say goodbye to her […]

You might assume that because of Pandemic Times, I no longer have any interesting adventures to report — and you would be right, barring That Time I Took a Walk and Saw a Really Big Turtle in the Pond. (Expect my memoir with that title from Doubleday in Spring 2022.) However, a couple of nights […]

When it comes to bad bosses, she was one of the worst — the kind who had no personal life outside the newsroom she managed. We joked that she slept in her office and never actually went home, and honestly, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine her emerging from beneath her desk each morning, straightening […]

Truth be told, I’d rather close the book on 2020 and never, ever look back. But this blog is a record of my life, after all, and when historians carefully pore over these entries centuries from now for insight into how suburban white women lived during the (guessing here) Doucebaggian Period of American History, I’m […]

Well, hello! I’m sorry to be AWOL for so long, but 2020, man. It’s been such a kick in the gut… and while I thought it would at least give me plenty to write about, it turned out EVERYONE felt the same way and with so many opinions and arguments and noise spilling out of […]

My Facebook feed is overflowing right now with adorably filtered pictures of your kids’ first days of school-at-home. You’re all so sweetly optimistic; it truly warms my heart. You’ve repurposed your breakfast nook into a cozy learning haven! You’ve decorated your walls with maps and alphabet letters! You’ve replaced the stacks of magazines, old mail, […]

Dear Parents, As you may have heard, our school board unanimously decided during last night’s Zoom meeting to hold in-person classes at all of our district’s schools, starting August 10th. Although some parents have expressed concern about sending their children back to school in the midst of an out-of-control pandemic, we have come to the […]

So. Let’s talk about school. And let’s talk about it with the caveat that I’m not trying to push a position on you here, and I’m certainly not telling you what you should decide for your kid. Each of us has our own individual set of circumstances and we’ve all got to do what works […]