Life As a Pearl

Here's something that's a little cute and a little unfair, all at the same time: every Sunday Eric and Ayana go out for donuts (cute), but they leave me at home because I can't eat donuts (a little unfair). I'm happy they have their little date, sad that I'm necessarily excluded, and exhausted by the sugar-high monster Eric hands off with an I- have -to-study shrug. Excluding the donut date, Sundays are usually a mother-daughter day in our house. Eric really does  have to study, and I usually like the throwback sensation of single motherhood. I know wasn't a dream lifestyle, but for a day? I'm just saying it's not hard to dredge up the fond memories.  Sometimes Ayana still lets me slip her into her sling for old time's sake. That's 38 lbs and 43 inches of kid on my shoulder, and man it feels good. OK. It feels heavy. But it's the kind of burden a mama's body never forgets how to bear. Anyway, there's a story in here and I...

You and me, reader—we're buds, right? I mean, I can tell you something—something about me—and you'll promise not to hold it against me, won't you? I'll warn you: it's not flattering. It's not really the kind of thing people want to go writing about themselves and posting all over the interwebs. But I'm not people and this isn't the interwebs (just go ahead and ignore the part where neither of those things is true): I'm a writer and this is my blog. Telling you shit about myself is just part of the gig. That's enough disclaimer for all of us, right? Good. Here goes. I am a writer . Wait. I already said that like two lines ago. I am a writer? That's it? That's my big, unflattering reveal?  Is this like one of those job interviews where they ask you what your weakness is any you say, "I'm just too goal-oriented," or "I'm a deadline fanatic." I mean, the word fanatic is a little off-putting, but you're ...

We have a pretty sweet New Year's tradition in the McSmadon-BronSterner family (that's a surprisingly awesome mashup of the last names of my buddies). I'm not going to bother to explain it, because traditions are always boring to the outside world—a pretentious inside joke that really shouldn't be inside at all because traditions are available to everyone. Especially the tradition of the new year's resolution, which is essentially what we do. So even though the McSmadon-BronSterner family does our resolutions different, you'll never have to be bored by the specifics of it. All you need to know is that this year, I ended up with courage as my directive.  There's a whole lot involved in that word, and I'm not usually good with lots. I'm better with a key phrase I can lock on to. Because that one word came with a rather garrulous analogy about a wildflower, I was able to find the key phrase I needed to guide me through the year:  Surrounded by ...

It’s October 31st. Let’s say the year is 1992 (because I’m not trying to be factually accurate, just set a scene). There are apples bobbing in bathtubs, pumpkins glowing on stoops, leaves crunching under boots and bike tires, and pillowcases, divested of their typical stuffing, waiting to be glutted with candy bars. I’m sure you were all there, bit parts or lead roles in the Halloween scene that played out across every neighborhood in America two decades ago. Maybe you were Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Or Egon from Ghostbusters. If your mom was less creative or your family hard up for cash, you might have been just a garden variety vampire or cowboy or scarecrow.  It didn’t matter though, did it? Everyone got the same amount of attention and candy, because that’s what Halloween was all about. It was about kids. It was about spooky decorations and drinking cider and carving pumpkins and eating more candy than you actually wanted, just because you could. I’m guessing,...

And by ladies, of course, I mean the wives and girlfriends of professional football players, who are enjoying watching their men beat other men for a change. OK. That was a cheap shot. Even though abusive footballs players have been dominating the news lately, they probably don't dominate the field. I think we all hope the majority of NFL players treat their partners with dignity and respect, and exert their physical dominance only on their professional opponents. We hope. But what do we really know  about intimate partner abuse? Did we know this? "The more than 11,766 corpses from domestic-violence homicides between 9/11 and 2012 exceed the number of deaths of victims on that day and all American soldiers killed in the 'war on terror.'" Rebecca Solnit That's just in America. That's just men killing women. And that's just women with whom men have had an intimate relationship. Please don't even get me started on what goes on off our h...

Some of you have noticed I wrote a blog post yesterday, then took it down. Because people have been asking, I wanted to address it with a sweet follow-up post. I’ll warn you now, it’s not as witty as I want it to be.   My post yesterday asked the question and generated interesting conversation about whether or not we should be honest when our lives aren’t exactly perfect. The post was prompted by the myriad complaints I’ve been hearing about people not being real on social media—always presenting the pretty picture of their perfect lives. So I’ve been hearing that a lot, mulling it over, wondering how I feel about it all. Then, as luck would have it, my husband really pissed me off. It seemed like a great opportunity to bring up the topic. Should I or should I not tell my audience that I’m really, really mad? Now if you missed the post, let me explain that I didn’t say what he did and I didn’t invite commentary on his actions—I merely asked if it does harm or good for ...

The premise of this post is going to make you jealous, so feel free to just deal with that emotion right now. Eric and I went to Costa Rica for a week and we did all the cool things imaginable. We went zip-lining and hiking and kayaking and rafting and rappelling and canyoning. We saw just-hatched baby sea turtles find their way to the ocean. We ate so wonderfully much arroz con pollo that we didn't look so great in our swimsuits. So yeah. It was awesome and as much as you're happy for us, now you want to do all that cool stuff too. If it helps any at all, we had to sleep with spiders and scorpions and beetles flying at our heads. And don't even get me started on the way howler monkeys are obviously in some kind of competition with roosters and donkeys for waking folks up at irritating hours. Because the monkeys are winning. Hard. Are we better now? Have I evened things out? Because I'd like to get to the point. Which is this: Have you ever seen one of these ...