My teenager just started her senior year sitting in front of her computer. It is the safest option my head tells me. My heart, on the other hand, wishes things were different. ID for the start of virtual high school COVID-19.Roughly six months ago, a novel coronavirus brought life as we knew it in the US to a stop. Everyone has lost someone or something from their previous life. People have died. People have become sick with long and lingering serious after effects’ from infection, including brain damage, lung, and brain damage. The truth is that we do not yet know all of the consequences of b ..read more

Colleges and universities must go ‘test blind’ for the class of 2021. Making scores ‘test optional’ is simply not enough right now. If colleges do not adopt ‘test blind’ policies’, they will create an admissions process which is inherently unfair. In pre-pandemic times, some colleges opted to go ‘test optional’ and some dropped testing altogether. All students- not just some- had the opportunity to take entrance exams. Students had a choice. They could choose to test and they could choose to report scores. During the current pandemic, ‘Test Optional’ admissions policies are not at all the same ..read more

So, a funny thing happened on the way to the COVID-19 pandemic: My foot stopped working after back surgery. Hilarious, right? You know what’s even funnier? Being alone so much that the phrase ‘My loneliness is killing me’ pops into your head. Googling those words reminded me they were part of the lyrics from  Britney Spears ‘One More Time’. Of course, Britney Spears is now the philosopher in my head. Seriously, though…my long and painful recovery from two back surgeries has been incredibly hard. After weeks of being home alone and in pain, it did feel like loneliness was killing me. I nev ..read more

“Write that down. It’s going in my parenting book.” I am always giving my kids crazy and ridiculous advice, which is shocking, I know. Ridiculous advice is a strength of mine, actually. I DO give them real advice but I try to mix it in with some half-baked ideas because it keeps them on their toes. I also figure if I tell them enough idiotic things, they won’t want to go along with their peers’ foolish ideas because they will think, “That sounds like something that would come out of my mom’s mouth.” For years, whenever I came up with one of these little gems, I would tell whoever was standi ..read more

“I think I finally got a glimpse of what you were like when you were young,” Steve said carefully. “I can see why you would have been a bit of a handful.”  He was referring to a couple of  things I may have said in the first days following my back surgery. “What do you mean I was a handful?” I asked. “I had to stop you from chugging that huge bottle of Frank’s Red Hot sauce. You picked it up and put it right up to your mouth without saying a word. Riley and I were yelling at you, No! No! No! We really had to yell at you to stop you from doing it.” This statement kind of makes me wonder if he e ..read more

I am going to try to keep this short and sweet, because I am exhausted and my brain isn’t fully functioning yet. On December 12th, 2019, I had a an L5-S1 spinal fusion. Technically speaking, I had an Anterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion (ALIF). The ‘need to know’ info on this surgery is the surgeon makes an incision through the abdomen and then creates a space where the neurosurgeon clearly sees the spine. From there, the neurosurgeon stabilizes the problematic parts of the spine by fusing them together. In my case, the doctor used a cage and screws. (Insert jokes about how I should have been in a ..read more

Marriage is a really just a commitment to make years of stupid decisions with someone who also has no idea what the hell they are doing. Or where they are going, for that matter. One of my ‘wifely duties’ in our marriage is to find interesting places for us to hike or run. Early this summer, I scoped out Blodgett Peak, which is a mountain in the northwest part of Colorado Springs. I had wanted to do this hike for a while, but I used to always be so focused on miles or elevation gain or whatever, so I just never got around to doing it.  I was pressed for time one morning, so I figured it was a ..read more

We need to have an honest conversation about youth sports. We need to admit to ourselves- and everyone else- that while many kids reap the benefits of youth sports, not everything is a rosy as we want to believe. In fact some young people endure experiences which derail their athletic future and destroy their emotional and physical well-being. Our culture worships at the alter of athletics, and it feels like heresy to suggest youth sports are not always in our kids’ best interests. My first negative experience with youth sports: a fun run with my younger daughter. A dad continually berated hi ..read more

We need to have an honest conversation about youth sports. We need to admit to ourselves- and everyone else- that while many kids reap the benefits of youth sports, not everything is a rosy as we want to believe. In fact some young people endure experiences which derail their athletic future and destroy their emotional and physical well-being. Our culture worships at the alter of athletics, and it feels like heresy to suggest youth sports are not always in our kids’ best interests. My first negative experience with youth sports: a fun run with my younger daughter. A dad continually berated hi ..read more

November 1st starts the beginning of Pancreatic Cancer Awareness month. I have been trying to process my own pancreatic cancer experience less publicly for the last couple of years. My experience, however, still matters, particularly because the survival rate for pancreatic cancer still remains in single digits. I am one of the ‘lucky’ ones, and I never, ever forget it. On November 18, 2013, I had what turned out to be life-saving surgery for pancreatic cancer. While pancreatic cancer not the focus of my daily life, my profoundly affected me and my family. I did not plan to acknowledge pancrea ..read more