Half Over

In the summer of 2024, I began craving hard exercise. I hadn’t done any exercise more intense than walking since well before the birth of my second child two years previously. I hadn’t been to a group exercise class since the pandemic. But, one June day, I went to a class at my local Barre3 […]

SWAG

A couple years ago I wrote the first three sentences of my autobiography: The year was 2006. I was listening to Justin Timberlake’s FutureSex/LoveSounds album nonstop. I had never been more lonely in my entire life. It’s a good start, a fantastic start even, but where to go from there? It isn’t true, either. Yes, […]

Metronome

The other night I had a dream that I was sleeping over at my grandparents’ house. In my dream I woke up and my older daughter was crying. I got out of bed to help her and my husband said he’d like to help, too. I hoisted him onto my back and carried him over […]

Work

For a long time my job has been to write grants. Sometimes I tell myself there is a mystique to grant writing, as if the field is imbued with power or meaning in the popular imagination. I know I’m flattering myself. Most people think of grant writing very little, if at all. Grant writing is […]

Zoloft

My husband’s therapist told him that if we don’t go on regular dates, we will have nothing when our children are grown. I resented her for it. I like dates, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t resent the suggestion that we’d end up with nothing, either. But I did resent the idea that there is […]

Wish

My mother-in-law once told me that when her children were young she had three prayers. The first was that none of her children would get lice. The second was that she would not have any more babies once she turned 40. The last was that all of her problems would be money problems. She told […]

Hex

I’ve been reading a good book lately. Sometimes reading a good book makes me sad, and I’ve been thinking about why. What I’ve come up with is that a good book conveys the human experience in all its complexities. A good book makes me, as a person, feel seen. Feeling seen by a book is […]

big Fan

The other day my daughter gave me a hug and I recalled a particular section of Cherry Street. You know the spot where the train track crosses Cherry, just before Highway 65? If you’re driving east the street rises up on a little hill, where the train tracks are, and then it rises further and […]

Violent Fancy

Last Saturday we visited the Laura Ingalls Wilder House and Museum in Mansfield, Missouri. Tony and I had recently read Little House in the Big Woods to our 5-year-old daughter. Mansfield is less than an hour’s drive from Springfield, and this was a pretty weekend for it. The tips of the trees were just starting […]

This is Your Notice

My headaches have been getting worse lately, and I’ve started a new medicine, Topamax. Topamax is supposed to prevent migraines when taken daily. I’ve been on it just a few days, not long enough for it to have made a difference. I hope it ends up working for me. Getting the prescription was a weird […]