When we first moved to Dallas, we made some colorful friends who were actors at Scarborough Renaissance Festival- King Henry and a Contessa, to be exact. During October, the Scarborough Fair grounds become a spooky maze of haunted houses, Scary-oke, expensive food vendors, and a throng of tweens looking to snuggle up to their crush …
Tuesday, 7/11/2023, Nashville Airport 2:08 pm I wasn’t anxious about this until we popped open the back of my sister’s van. It’s not the actual flying that concerns me. The Baby is almost chronically un-anxious, as in, he is not anxious even when he probably should be, like when he tries to drown himself by …
January 23, 2023 Dear Mr. Sedaris, My son, {The Baby}, came screeching into the world via an emergency c-section at 26 weeks- a two-pound potato whose vital organs needed lots of assistance to keep him alive. I met him for the first time four months later, when his birthmother invited me to visit the Neonatal …
I remember talking about atheism and agnosticism in my world religions class in high school. In my little conservative corner of West Texas, we didn’t spend much time talking about the godless heathens, but I remember the description of Clockmaker god, who designed the world, perfectly calibrated all of it’s gears and dials, and then …
Let me preface the beginning of this series with a few things: I’m gonna take weekends off for my “writing every day” goal in November. I can do this because I’m a grown ass woman and I want to. I want to explicitly acknowledge that I have AMAZING parents who did the best with what …
Last August, my little family met my parents in Estes Park. We have done this trip every couple of years since I was a kid. We stay in cabins and hike and explore and breathe in the fresh mountain air. COVID made things a little different, but we were just happy to escape Dallas for …
Well, today the Wise family said hello to a new bed and goodbye to two of The Baby’s teeth. A few months ago, we started the laborious process of getting a SleepSafe bed approved through The Baby’s insurance because his crib had become unsafe. He was able to stand up in it and when he …
The Baby turned five this week. It’s crazy. All of those five years tend to blur together. After all, time flies when you’re drowning in medical chaos (just kidding…kind of). On the night of his birthday, our dinner conversation centered around remembering all of his firsts- the first time he sat up, the first solid …
(You can listen to an audio version of this post here.) I went to David’s Bridal today to purchase a bridesmaid’s dress for a friend’s wedding next summer. She had a dress already picked out in the system so they pulled her profile up and I followed the very nice saleslady to the racks laden …
(I realize this is very lengthy so I have strategically placed pictures of smiling animals throughout the piece so that you can mark your place if you need to take a break and come back to it. At my sister’s suggestion, I’ve also made an audio version of this blog. You can download/stream it by …
I grew up in West Texas- land of wide-open spaces, sky high teen pregnancy rates, and a colorblind racial ideology that masks racism instead of confronting it. In colorblind ideology, it is impolite to talk about someone’s race. I remember hearing a story about a friend who was trying to tell her son which store …
I just got back from San Francisco. I went to (hides face) a Christian conference. I found myself hesitant to tell people that it was a Christian conference because of the connotations of that. My sense is that many Christian conferences are lame attempts at pep rallies for God, the adult version of church camp, …
“What was I thinking?” I thought as I stared forlornly into the mirror. I should have known better than to impulsively stop at the hair salon directly adjacent to the Tom Thumb, still clutching my bag of avocados. I was hoping for a cute haircut before I left on my 10th anniversary weekend trip. Instead, …
I was a mere 21 years old when I got married. My uncle officiated our wedding. Before the wedding, my then-fiancee, now-husband, Alex, and I drove down to Corpus to do some premarital counseling sessions and stay with my aunt and uncle. After one of these sessions, Alex and I got ready to leave and …
I went to a vigil in Balch Springs for Jordan Edwards last week. It was everything you would want a vigil to be- beautiful and sad and moving and comforting. Like most, I was horrified by Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice’s deaths. I have been deeply affected before by deaths caused by police brutality, but …
Before kids, Alex and I once went to San Antonio for our wedding anniversary. Coincidentally, it was the same weekend that a Comicon was happening so the people watching was excellent. On our last day, we decided to go off the beaten path and walk away from all the touristy parts of the River Walk. We took … Continue reading
Last week, I finished my second year of teaching ESL to adults. I shepherded a group of 23 Spanish-speaking women through our green textbook. Together, we lamented that the English language has 42 exceptions to every grammar rule. Together, we braved the cruel, cruel world of the past tense and prepositions of time. One of … Continue reading
The Kid recently went to a church lock-in. He loved it, of course. I’m fairly certain that he didn’t sleep at all and ate shit and probably played too many videogames. He informed me that they played a game called Sardines and I was hit with a flashback of epic proportions from my own youth … Continue reading
If you’ve ever been in a choir, you’ve had the experience where the choir stop singing perhaps for a pregnant pause, and you belt a note out in the silence. Usually you realize it pretty quickly, and you stop before many people can realize it. That feels a little bit like faith deconstruction. I had … Continue reading
We just moved. Same city, just a little further South. We added a fourth bedroom and it got The Kid into the schools that he wanted to be in (i.e. more POC kids). By just moved, I mean that our garage is filled to the gills with furniture and boxes. There’s nothing new about that, … Continue reading
In elementary school, I once bought a silver one-piece bathing suit. It fit my round little body like most bathings suits do and the first time I wore it, no joke, I thought I looked like hot shit. I still remember the moment at the indoor pool at the local university where my family was … Continue reading
We recently got back from Austin. I have a grandmother and an aunt that live that that the boys hadn’t seen in a while so I, with the help of my parents who are becoming professional babysitters in their retirement, schlepped the boys, including a giant oxygen concentrator, a gargantuan CPAP machine on a stand … Continue reading
I’m slowly making my way through Ta-nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me because it’s so good and so dense that I feel like I need to savor his words. To help myself remember in the future, I’m gonna drop a few of my favorite parts so far: “Americans believe in the reality of “race” as … Continue reading
My sister had twins in January and I had the opportunity to meet my nephews a few weekends ago. I went to Nashville with the mindset that I was going there to help, to relieve some of the pressure that having two newborns brings. I think I did that but…I’m still recovering. That shit was … Continue reading
If you haven’t watched Marie Kondo’s Tidying Up on Netflix, well, you need to. Actually, know thyself. It will either inspire you and make you soar on the wings of eagles or make you want to sit in your closet on a pile of garbage and cry your eyes out. I binge-watched it on New … Continue reading
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