Jun 13
When I was five years old, I remember people asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Makes sense. I do it now all the time with my own children because what they say is so darned funny (Gabriel alternates between paleontologist, astronaut, caveman, and bad guy, while Lily says things like …
May 07
Tomorrow, my “baby” girl will be five years old. Five years since my father told me I needed to hurry up and have this baby because his flight home was booked for only a few days after the conversation. Five years since I squatted down to pick some asparagus on May 7 after days of …
Mar 25
A friend of mine in Helsinki recently returned from a trip home to visit her father after surgery. She shared with me that, in State Department circles, there is an unwritten rule concerning returning home within 6 months of a deployment. They recommend against it because you haven’t yet fully put roots down in your …
Mar 25
Like many American parents, I spent a great deal of time the past two years completely freaking out worrying about sending my children to school. Public school? Broken, underfunded, full of bullies, a little scary. Private school? Long commute, overpriced, not feasible, full of rich kids & drugs, a little scary. Home school? Holy shit. …
Jan 17
Since I just admitted that I’m suffering from some degree of SAD, perhaps now is not the best time to ponder my cultural identity. Then again, perhaps it is the perfect time, especially as several catalysts (MLK Day, the recent shooting in Arizona, and a US identity-related assignment for Gabriel’s Kindergarten class) have conspired to …
Nov 14
Yesterday, the kids & I arrived in Finland for good. A one-way ticket is always a little bit of a scary thing, but it didn’t really hit me until I checked in at the airport and the guy asked me when we were returning. I told him we weren’t, then proceeded to freak out a …
Dec 16
Last year, I would have liked to use protecting the environment as an excuse for not sending out the annual Christmas card, but the truth is I just ran out of both time and inclination. But that year off gave me quite a bit of time to think about Christmas cards, what they mean, and …
Nov 01
I blog a lot about things I make from scratch and I realized that I have an underlying philosophy that I’ve never spelled out. So here goes. When I was young, I was fortunate to spend many of my weekends on a farm my parents owned with a friend of theirs about two hours from …
Oct 15
Today is Blog Action Day and I’m proud to be participating with other bloggers around the world in raising awareness about the topic of climate change. With all the press the upcoming talks in Copenhagen have been getting, doing something tangible about climate change can seem overwhelming, or out of our hands as individuals. It’s …
Oct 12
This past January, a psychiatrist wrote me an unexpected prescription that finally succeeded in pulling me out of two and a half years of depression. It was not for an SSRI or any other anti-depressant that comes in pill form. It was a prescription for exercise. Although I had to visit with the staff psychiatrist …
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