My mother was a terrible cook. Like smoke alarm sounding, oven slamming, pot scrapping terrible. It wasn’t so much that she lacked the ability, it was more that she would get distracted by something else and walk away from the kitchen only to find her thoughtfully planned meal burnt. As a child, I distinctly remember the sound of a knife scrapping across burnt bread as my mom frequently attempted to save a forgotten and therefore blackened grilled cheese sandwich. I will never forget the aroma of my scrapped down grilled cheese or the speckles of burnt crumbs that littered the read more…

Christmas. Dun dun dun, it’s coming. I know you likely don’t want to think about it, in fact you may be in denial about it’s inevitable arrival but I am telling you… IT IS COMING AND YOU CAN’T STOP IT! Last year, Christmas snuck up on me and seriously bit me in the ass. I ended up doing way too much last minute shopping which meant I spent way too much money. It was honestly the first time in my life where Christmas shopping felt like a huge chore that was all about commercialism and sensationalism; I found myself feeling read more…

I’m pretty organized and I’ll admit it, I like to rub it in my husband’s face that I am always more prepared then he is for special occasions. This year for Father’s Day I decided several weeks ago I was going to take him and the boys to The Marina Restaurant for a fancy-ish Sunday brunch. I thought I was so smart calling for a reservation 5 weeks before the big day. Clearly I wasn’t the smartest one out there though; I was shocked when they said they were already all booked up and were only taking names for a read more…

I am about to venture into a new land, one that I am not entering willingly but rather, out of necessity. It is a place where cumbersome, three dimensional rectangles comfortably contain large families, some of whom sit at the back of the rectangular box, transfixed by moving images on a tiny, square screen. It is a place where one can almost convince him/herself that the box is not so bad until they step out from the box and take in the reality that they are in a rectangular box while others are not. I am going to this mythical read more…

In 2008 I planned my 10 year high school reunion. It was basically one of the most mortifying experiences of my life because I was 4 months pregnant – you know the time in a pregnancy when people can’t quite tell if you are pregnant or if you just have a huge beer gut and they don’t want to ask for fear they will get punched in the face – and I was still carrying weight from my first pregnancy so I was not looking my hottest. But, I was hell bent on having that reunion and swallowing my pride read more…