Tag: family
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On Showing Up
As a fundraiser for multiple sclerosis, Alex did a 150 mile bike ride at the beginning of May. The race is split over two days–80 miles the first day, 70 the second. After fighting through a broken gear box and finishing the first 70 miles using only two gears, he came home late on Saturday,…
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Rest in Peace, Gracie
I’m coming clean. I got my dog at a puppy mill. But I need you to give me a break because she was born in 2008, which is basically before the internet and I didn’t know about puppy mills. Alex and I were 6 months into marriage, moving our married life to a new city…
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Sculpting Stalagmites
Our recent cold snap has Alex fretting (rightfully so) about frozen pipes. The Kid and I are instructed to leave cabinet doors open and faucets dripping. We have some space heaters pointed just so at pipes on exterior walls and if Alex gets up to pee in the middle of the night, he flushes the…
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Stop the Ride, Please
One of my foundational memories as a kid was going through the automated carwash behind the convenient store near our house with my mom and my sister. We spent a lot of time perusing the aisles of that convenient store. I specifically remember that Leah would look for the candy with the strangest packaging- if…
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Dear Niece: Here’s What’s Coming
Hey F.A.S, You and I haven’t hung out much yet; you’ve been busy being an infant and I’ve been busy taking children to the hospital. Well, there was that one time when I baby sat you but you mostly screamed and I mostly wore noise-cancelling headphones. We didn’t get to chat. I did get to…
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Rock Steady: A Tribute
What do you get for a woman who has everything? Or perhaps more accurately, who often doesn’t know what she needs because she’s too busy advocating for grandkids at hospitals, cleaning dishes, ironing Band concert clothes, or cleaning under the fridge? Well, she likes rocks. I was purchasing recycling bags at our local city hall…
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Progress: A Tale of Two Splash Parks
Last summer, a friend and I met up with our kids at a splash park, the not-quite-pools that have glorified sprinklers and rubberized floors so no one slips. Her daughter is a good deal younger than The Baby, but we met up anyway because he was just a little sack of potatoes and didn’t care…
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The Reason I Got Pinterest
I resisted getting a pinterest account for years and I had a good reason, too. I spend an inordinate amount of time wasting my life on the internet already and I knew that Pinterest was like a great, sucking hole that would drag me down into the depths of the DIY internet for the rest of…
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How to Have Your Very First Family Adventure
The local library had an amazing children’s program with live birds scheduled at 2:00 today. I’ve been talking it up all week. 1:40pm– The kid and I had gone to the dog park this morning and his shoes were dirty. So, he and Alex were out on the driveway smacking them on the concrete to get…