“I just don’t want to get my hearing tested. I already feel like I’m old.” “Honey, it’s not any different than needing glasses.” There’s a stigma around hearing loss as we age. It’s for old people. And by old I mean 90. I may be feeling my years but I’m definitely not 90. So I put it off. Working from home full time during the pandemic made it easy to ignore. Make my family come closer or turn up the volume on Zoom. Easy peasy. No hearing aids required. “Let’s review your test results,” says the very nice audiologist. “You have mild to moderate hearing loss in both ears and…

I took most of my babies to school yesterday for the first time since March. We’ve nearly forgotten how to do a morning routine. Thankfully, it’s like riding a bike complete with scrapes and bruises. I sit clicking away on my keyboard in a quiet house. Eerily quiet. The cats wander across my desk confused by the lack of humans and the dog comes in on occasion to make sure I’m still here. All this quiet has me reflecting on the many lessons we’ve learned this year. Life Lesson #1: The size of my pants doesn’t matter as much as I thought it did, but physical activity does. For the…

Dear Grandpa, I learned early this morning that you have journeyed on to whatever comes next. I keep trying to focus on work, but I keep thinking about you. I’m not sure I ever truly thanked you for your insistence that I continue to write. I still remember years ago when you encouraged me to start a blog. I thought, “If my grandpa can start a blog, surely I can too.” That little blog turned into a website. My website turned into publications. As I pursued my writing, you were there by my side. You encouraged me every step of the way as I honed my craft and it is…

The number on the scale is wrong. Not wrong in the sense that the scale is broken, wrong in the sense that it really bothers me and I want it to be different. I want it to be younger and less stressed. And lower. I want the number to be lower. I’ve discovered over the last few years that I have an unhealthy relationship with my scale. I’ve let it dictate my worth, my sex appeal (in my own head), and my comfort in my own body. I’ve let it boss me around. I have the same problem with the number on the tag in my pants. And I’m tired…

The den is uncharacteristically quiet this morning. My only coworker is my husband who is also working from home today. (It’s possible we are both “working.”) The puppy has been banished to the outdoors because she thought it was a good idea to eat a couple of apricots off the ground and has the runs. The kitten and fat cat are lazily snuggled in the other room. And the children are at their other parent’s house for the weekend. Quiet. Some days when I go to work, (or walk into the den) I’m brimming with ideas and to do lists. Other days, I stare at the blinking cursor willing it…

It’s 2:30 a.m. and I can’t sleep so I sit huddled on the couch in my den reading under the glow of a small, silver lamp. Just a chapter until I fall asleep. Ok. Maybe two chapters. Fine, I’ll finish the book. 4 a.m. Time flies when you are voraciously reading the end of a good book. Ready Player One I know. The movie just came out.   But you’ll miss out on the best 80’s references if you don’t read the book.  READER TIP #1: Don’t watch the movie within 12 hours of finishing the book. I found the movie to be disappointing simply because it didn’t truly follow the…

As a writer and full-time grammar Nazi, the first thing I noticed about this book was the lack of apostrophes and quotation marks denoting the speaker. It lacked as many elements as the post-apocalyptic world described by the author. Once I got out of my editor headspace and into my creative, I quite enjoyed the flow of this book. It was easy to become quickly and completely absorbed by the characters and the story. The main characters, the man and the boy, are not given names. (In my head I’m thinking, “that’s smart.” Naming my characters is as tough as naming children or pets.) It’s immediately apparent that the only thing…