I’m supposed to come up with an icebreaker for an upcoming workshop, and all I can think of is … beer pong. I’m not big into icebreakers, something to which anyone who’s ever thrown me any kind of shindig can attest. For about as long as I can remember, my main party requirement has been […]
Homecoming, Halloween and a cure for those distraught over bacon
It’s been a while since we’ve visited our alma mater, University of Idaho, and it almost took an act of God to get us all in the car and on the road in time to actually get there before dark. It’s a six-hour drive to Moscow from here. We’ve been meaning to get up there […]
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Betty, Bill Gates, and Beer Pong
Originally, today’s post lamented the lack of beer pong at baby showers. No, really, it did. This is an important conversation to be had. However, I recently also realized that today is World Polio Day, which is another subject that speaks to me, although it occupies a different part of my consciousness than beer pong. […]
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Teen Drivers and the Tao of Natural Consequences
When the kids were little, I was known for making threats that would be difficult, inconvenient or downright impossible to carry out. Mostly, this consisted of vowing to deposit a passenger or two on the side of the road if they didn’t stop arguing, or to “turn this car around” when we all knew wherever […]
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Autumn is awesome. You shut up.
Among the latest Internet hate-fest rampages is the subject of autumn. I don’t get it. People seem to have lost sight of the fact that pumpkin spice lattes signal the end of the asphalt-melting, sweating-out-your-eyeballs, my-lawn-is-crispy-but-I-no-longer-care season. But I haven’t. True, summer around here has yet to come to an abrupt end. It’s still that […]
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Don’t make me shop with these people
Do you want to know what I enjoy more than clothes shopping for myself? … That is to say, more than hauling my carcass to some monolithic mecca of commercialism smack in the center of an asphalt plane crowded with cars? More than wandering through crowds of gabby, smelly shoppers and their sticky progeny meandering […]
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A Dog Day Run
It starts like this: She’s back in there. Where the shoes are. The sunscreen. That hat. That hat that’s for running. Oh that hat. And the shoes. And so I wait. I whine very small to remind her I’m here. I yawn. And stretch. And groan. Why doesn’t the door open? Finally, she’s in the […]
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The Punishment Light
A package came to our house this week. I wasn’t expecting it until Monday. Colin was expecting it by 8 pm Sunday evening like the tracking website promised. I showed him it was being sent via USPS and explained they don’t work Sundays. His shoulders drooped. He wouldn’t have the precious headphones he’d researched and saved for […]
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What to do with a couple bazillion cherry tomatoes
Every spring, Mike starts putting things in pots that he swears he’ll care for properly and that won’t die out in mid-August in our yard in front of God and all the neighbors. Around about this time a year, he’s all but given up on those plants and I get to be responsible for keeping […]
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Of Hobbits, French Crepes, and Crappy AC: A Night of Junior High
By the time we got to the school, all the other parents had cleared the halls and filed into their kids’ respective first-period classrooms. Our first stop was orchestra, where the parents who’d arrived before us filled the whole room except the front row. I stifled the urge to bow as Mike and I passed […]
