I was just thinking about a time someone gave me a big box of chocolates. It was a few years ago but I still remember how excited I was. It was one of those boxes with the diagram inside the lid. Diagram. Treasure map. Samesies to me. Because: chocolate. But something awful happened the next day. I got sidetracked and forgot to take the box out of the car. In the summer. A few hours in my oven-car and instead of a box of chocolates, I ended up with one big, sort of un-shaped, chocolate … [Read more...]

I always keep dried fruit in my desk drawer so I’ll have a healthy snack handy when I’m working. Except those dried fruits are so dry that all that’s left is these nacho cheesy Doritos. Also, I sometimes buy my dried fruit on the potato chip aisle. Somehow it makes it an even sadder snack situation when I reach for my “fruit” and all I find in the bottom of the Dorito bag is a bunch of orange powder. I hate that. Some people would suggest that whenever that happens, I would do well to take … [Read more...]

Ever get to that “I need to peel a roll of cookie dough and eat it like a banana” state of stressed? Cookie dough. So good, but so bad. But I’m talking about a shaky-hand kind of stress that goes beyond even the “I have to pour liquid into a small-necked container” level of stress. I confess, I can be bad at guessing the timing of rest—and how much I need it. I usually under-rest-imate. So I want you to know, I get it. I live mostly in an “immediately if not sooner” life space. It’s a … [Read more...]

She swallowed them. Swallowed ‘em right down. My daughter Kaley and I were working on a book together. I traveled the four hours to her place, and on day two of hunkering down in her apartment for a week of writing, I came down with an ick flu bug. A fever-running, cough-your-head-off, whine-for-days, eat-up-your-writing-time, will-I-survive-this flu bug. Also I sounded like Batman. My doctor assured me I would survive and told me what to take for the fevering, coughing, whining, and … [Read more...]

It looked like the sideview outline of a little robot ducky head. Sort of cute, really. I was shocked when somebody told me it’s the check engine light. That light doesn’t literally mean to check the engine, though, right? Because I feel like my engine is still there whether I check or not. Not that I would know exactly where to find it. If I found it, what then? I’m not equipped for car repairs, people. I once untangled my seatbelt. That exhausted the full scope of my car repair … [Read more...]

That Christmas feeling. All year long. Because Christmas movies. All. Year. Long. I have a high threshold for these things. I watch them all. So when Christmas rolls around for real, I get excited. Christmas movies—at Christmas! I’ve seen enough of them to know that to experience the season well, you have to fill it with the proper Christmas components. Christmas cookie-baking (spoiler alert: the secret ingredient is love), decorating the tree while singing loud carols (possibly falling … [Read more...]

I already felt a little uneasy about the day. Then I heard myself say to a family member, “Oh, that train wreck has already left the station,” and I realized it might be worse than I thought. It was early so I figured the angsty, disconnected feeling might be because it was still not-enough-coffee o’clock. The fix? Iced coffee! It’s like the polar plunge of beverages. Me: Hey, freezer door dispenser. Could I have four ice cubes, please? Door dispenser: Sure. HOW ABOUT 8,000? The ice … [Read more...]

Infomercials almost always worked at my house. When we were raising our five kids, I’m not sure a week went by without one of them running to me with some version of: “Mom! We have to get the Kitchen Magic Missile! It does the work of 25 kitchen tools!” I got such a kick out of the times one or another of my children could deliver the entire pitch in full-on sales voice. “It’ll make a smoothie. And it slices and dices. And who’s Julie Ann?” In all fairness, I didn’t know what “julienne” … [Read more...]

I’m a people person. To the extreme. So extreme that I’m often that seriously annoying kind of people-people-people-y person. That one. That’s me. Every time someone tells me that it takes a village, it doesn’t even matter much what we want the village to do, I come back with an enthusiastic, “Yes! Bring me that village! And all the surrounding villages. Tell the villagers to bring potato chips! I’ll take folks from three or four villages over. And their finger foods. Village-fest at my … [Read more...]

I was tempted to give somebody a piece of my mind the other day. Really tempted. And then I thought, Know what? I can’t spare it. I have no spare mind-parts. No surplus of brain cells here. Why would I give even one away? I need the pieces of my mind. All of them. It’s mindboggling though, how some people seem to know exactly how to find our anger buttons. And then they also know how to push them. Stomp on them. Jump up and down on that anger button like it’s just the most mad-fun … [Read more...]