The first recorded sighting of the strange birds occurred in August. A man posted a picture on my Facebook neighborhood group: Plump, chicken-esque body. Red beak. Black-and-white striped wings. Bandit mask over the eyes. Commenters were quick to ID the bird. Definitely a chukar. More photos revealed there were at least five roaming the streets. […]
This post originally ran August 16, 2018. But as COVID19 cases surge, hospitals reach capacity, and the long, dark winter descends, you can bet I’m again feeling the weltschmerz. Two years ago, a poet named Maggie Smith wrote a poem called ‘Good Bones.’ I printed it out, and I find myself reading it over and […]
Less than a week after my eight-month-old started daycare, he spiked a fever. No big deal, I told myself. Maybe he was teething. Maybe he had picked up a cold. I tried not to spin out thinking about the third possibility. Babies get fevers all the time. COVID seemed like the least likely explanation.
Eight years ago, I wrote a post about my struggle to decide whether to have a child. Now I have two. The latest addition, who is almost eight months old, is a determined, wiggly, often screaming bundle of chub. He is wonderful. He is awful. He defies description. This is a letter I wrote in 2015 […]
Confession: I, like so many of my fellow Americans, am not getting enough sleep. Blame the baby. Blame the preschooler. Blame COVID anxiety. Blame my doomscrolling. Blame the dog, who threw up a clump of grass next to the bed at 4am. On a typical night, I sleep between six and seven hours with two […]
My daughter has a well-loved copy of Richard Scarry’s book, What Do People Do All Day? The book, first published in 1968, shows all the workers in Busytown at their various jobs. Kids love it. Adults love it. Four and a quarter stars on Goodreads. But 1968 was a long time ago, a different era. […]
A couple of months ago, my husband and I drove into the Sonoran desert. We were in pursuit of the weird, heading for a mountain celebrating God’s love and constructed almost entirely out of latex paint. We left Palm Springs and drove south toward the Salton Sea.
This post originally ran April 3, 2014. I’ve added a brief update at the end. Yellowstone National Park spans three states and nearly 3,500 square miles, making it one of the largest parks in the US. So when I read that Montana officials are searching for a home for 135 Yellowstone bison living on Ted Turner’s sprawling private […]