Proudly serving unpolished working motherhood, with bipolar depression & hilarity on the side
What’s it like to compete at the pinnacle of sport, the national championships, in an adult body? That was the original idea that flashed through my mind for this post as 400+ of my best friends and I swarmed the University of Delaware for the 2022 US Adult Figure Skating Championships. But unlike the guy […]
Driving to the doctor’s office the other day, I saw it – our old home away from home. The toy park. Our once beloved, now forgotten spot that my daughter and I visited at least once a week for years, whiling away hours pushing plastic lawn mowers, ducking in and out of playhouses and going […]
You could find cars in the average junkyard that were nicer than the beaters parked in my family’s driveway growing up. There was the time my grandfather, for reasons unknown, removed the front passenger seat from my mother’s almost-antique Mustang. I loved it, because it revealed a rusted-out hole in the floor and we could […]
Of course it was a man without children who said it. “You just need to get up a few minutes earlier. Then you’d be here on time.” He said this, to chronically-running-behind-to-this-entirely-optional-activity me, the way you might tell someone the sky is blue or that they need oxygen to breathe. Poof! Simple solution. Except when […]
Skating and I fell in love in a vulnerable place. For me, that is. I get that it’s not reciprocal or anything. I’m not that far gone. How vulnerable was this place, you say? Well, back in my college years while being pummeled by depression, I also fell top-of-my-head-to-tips-of-my-toes in love with the person I […]
It’s a life choice that sneaks up on you, a strand at a time. Maybe it starts as a novelty – your first gray hair! Probably, you comb it back and forget about it. Probably, that works for years. You’re the only one who notices it, after all. Until you’re not. While my kiddo was […]
“Aren’t you afraid he’ll slit your throat in the middle of the night?” These were the fears of the neighbors to Mayme Czajka when she fell in love with Lawrence Voletti in 1936, an era when “Italian” was synonymous with “mafia”, or at least it was in their first-generation Polish neighborhood. Mayme knew this for […]
Being a kid is both comforting and maddening because it’s all so pre-plotted for you. Milestone to milestone, grade to grade, many of us are more or less traveling the same path as everyone we know, shepherded by grown-ups. The twenties? Mon Dieu! You’re Audrey in Breakfast at Tiffany’s! Actually, hopefully, you’re not, but you […]
You know how when you’re approaching a milestone, it feels almost inevitable to look back and reflect on what’s gone down in the past decade or two? I am standing on the cusp of 40 and thus far have failed at my younger adult dreams. I haven’t written a best-seller, haven’t started a world-changing nonprofit, […]
I never had much in the way of boobs. One of my favorite tricks is still to wear a double-layered camisole and pass it off as a bra. If I’ve got to go business casual, it’s A cup all the way. Because as my then four year old niece once exclaimed, after brazenly looking down […]