I’m sweaty from running C to school in the stroller, breakfast dishes are still on the table, I’m hungry, and I need a shower before my 9am call. But I told my friend Wig I would do a 21-day writing challenge. Because I can’t run away from needing a daily writing practice any longer. Every writing teacher will tell you that if you want to be a writer, you need a daily writing practice. Well, I’ve always bristled at the notion of a daily anything. As soon as I think, “this [fill in the blank] is good for me, I should do it every day!” my internal debate cranks up: “…unless I really don’t feel l ..read more

On Friday, my newly-minted second-grader came home with a homework assignment: come up with 10 story ideas from your personal experience. In the instructions, the teacher made it clear that parent(s)/guardian(s) should help with the brainstorming, but the child should actually write out the list. As such, we decided to keep the story ideas short–but with enough information to trigger the actual story in E’s mind. The teacher also asked her students to keep the ideas very specific: instead of writing about a whole vacation, write about the moment you found a jellyfish on the beach. Instead of t ..read more

I’m sitting at the dining room table in a silent house. Refrigerator humming. Cars splashing by occasionally out front. A foot of buttercream snow covers the houses and bushes and yards–we’re living in a snow globe. The freshly-made coffee sitting beside my laptop has milk in it. After going nearly a week drinking black coffee (because we were out of milk, because for some reason milk from Fresh Thyme goes bad a week before its date), this feels like a great luxury. We really have to notice luxuries right now. It’s February, a famously tough month for people in a normal year. It’s gray, the co ..read more

These are strange times. It’s the peak (here’s hoping) of the pandemic and we’re in the days between the (second) impeachment and the inauguration. (As someone on Twitter said, “I can’t believe it’s time for another impeachment already–I feel like I just took down my decorations from the last one.”) I wanted to try to capture what life feels like right now, because I know I’m not the only one feeling this weird mix of emotions. In the past two months, Biden won the presidency by a landslide. Dems flipped the Senate. We have an effective vaccine and I already know many people who’ve been vaccin ..read more

This morning, I emerged from the fog of 2020 into the promise of 2021 and found myself here, back on my blog. After quite a long hiatus (let’s say… 7 months?). I just said “Happy New Year” to E and he said, “Yay!” then “Well, not exactly yay.” And I know what he means, even though he was distracted and couldn’t elaborate on what he meant by that. Kids are good at boiling things down and not even knowing why. While I do not mean for this to be a retrospective (because who wants to relive 2020), it was pretty uniquely terrible. Living through a time of so much suffering, so much loss, so much da ..read more

I was just getting into the groove of occasional pandemic blogging when George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis. The world was already on fire before it happened, but this event took us to another level of anguish and devastation. Millions of people expressed their collective outrage as they took to the streets to protest yet another horrific killing of a Black person by the police. A huge awakening was and is taking place as more and more people are committing to taking action to dismantle racism in this country. I stopped writing in here. There are always many reasons not to get a ..read more

The goddesses have blessed me with a quiet moment at 7:14am with my cup of coffee, chirping birds, and two sleeping children. The sun sneaks through the north-facing bay window of my dining room at this time of year at this time of the morning, for only a few weeks. I’m always really conscious of this- I keep track of splashes of sunlight in unusual locations, sometimes due to a reflection. The angles of the sun orient me. Today it feels like the sun is going to revolve around our house, filling it with light and warmth, and very welcome after two days of chilly rain. Oh, friends. What a time ..read more

I’m sitting with E on the couch on a rainy Saturday afternoon. He’s watching Wild Kratts while I write on my laptop. C is napping. E asks me for a sandwich because it’s 3:30pm and, aside from dinner, meals are requested at super random times. He mostly wants to live on cheese sandwiches and tortilla chips, but I’ll sneak some fruit or veggies on there for him to ignore. On my way to the kitchen, I pick up several dishes from the dining room table so as to make my trip as productive as possible. An important trick to this whole solo management of everything is: no wasted motion like walking fro ..read more

My manager recently mentioned to me that she was walking 2.5 miles per day in her compact NYC apartment. That really impressed me. Granted, she doesn’t have two small people to block her path and ask for snacks but, still- it planted a seed. I’ve been grateful to have the double stroller that I acquired at the beginning of quarantine because it allows me to get out even if no one is in the mood. Strap them in and give them trail mix with M&Ms in it. I’ve done up to four miles with it and it’s a smooth ride. But yesterday, when I felt like my body really needed it, it was snowing. Again. An ..read more

I’ve wanted to write forever but guess what- there’s a reason you don’t hear from any solo parents lately. Like- I haven’t read an excellent single parent perspective essay since the pandemic started. And that’s because there is no time, energy, or bandwidth. We are slammed. I just finished eating dinner, alone, because I mis-timed the snacks and my little housemates are not hungry, playing with magnatiles around the corner from me in the living room. Thank goodness they have each other. Then I realized my laptop was in reach. And charged. And no one is looking at me or asking for anything. Go ..read more