I order tomato seeds from Italy. I write a poem to my daughter’s friend. I meander through downtown gardens with my husband and youngest, popping in for a London Fog from a boutique hotel a few blocks away. While waiting for the barista, I people-watch, pretending I am just another tourist in a lobby full
Ideals + Musings
A Lasting Truce
A poem for the woman in the co-op fumbling for an avocado, and for the right words. Stage 4, she says into the phone.
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Ideals + Musings
The Things We Need
Tis the season. Last weekend, the kids and I teetered up and down the attic stairs in search of salt dough stars and knitted stockings. Up and down, up and down, many times over, on the hunt for that one box with the Russian tea dolls, no not that one, the one with The Christmas
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Self Reflection + Growth
Giving Ourselves What Technology Can’t
My book, The Opt-Out Family will land on your stoops and library shelves in a few weeks, which means I’ve finally arrived at the universal publishing milestone in which an author wakes at 3am and realizes she’s forgotten to say something that needs saying. In all honesty, the book is 320 pages long and has
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Ideals + Musings
Currently
This weekend, Bee will don a polyester veil and trot down the sanctuary as Mary in our church’s pageant. Can you send me her measurements, or take a look at these size charts? our children’s director asks before sending me links to various costumes on Amazon. We sift through dozens of options, find ourselves giggling
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Ideals + Musings
How to Slow Your Life
Two years ago, on a brightly lit stage in West L.A., Maria Shriver asks me this: But how? How do you do it? What would you tell someone who wants to slow their life, but can’t? Who feels totally buried already? I pause, blink at the lights. I say something about how there’s no easy
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Ideals + Musings
3 Good-for-Me Habits, and Another One
First, something: I’m wary of assigning sanctimonious yarns to everyday behaviors. In truth, what makes for a good habit today doesn’t always carry the years. Related – For months, in college, I subsisted solely on free dinner rolls from the restaurant I waitressed at in a valiant attempt to save enough money for my first
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Ideals + Musings
A Good Thing to Be
On a walk in the woods, it’s not uncommon to transform. Who do you want to be today? I ask.